PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Multi engine helicopters - Governor failure procedure
Old 6th Jun 2021, 07:58
  #37 (permalink)  
Ascend Charlie
 
Join Date: Sep 2002
Location: Great South East, tired and retired
Posts: 4,388
Received 228 Likes on 104 Posts
I had a high-side governor failure on a BK117, at that time, the first one in Oz. None of us had flown twins, though we had thousands of hours in singles. The instructor was Japanese, and such things were never discussed.
I was in a high hover over trees when the alarm for a torque split sounded. Oh poo, can't hover, can't land, see if I can get some forward speed and fly away. Got to safety speed and climbing, look at the dials. One engine very low, one maintaining RRPM - but I didn't look closely enough at that dial, with adrenaline pounding and first ever apparent engine problem. Identify, verify, move roof-mounted throttle to idle.
Still flying. Hmm.. the "sick" engine is still running. Gently move throttle forward again, oops, high RRPM alarm. WTF?? OK, I am only 4 nm from the airport, fly it back, running landing on the grass, roll engines back to idle. All looks good. Advance "sick" engine - no problem. Advance "good" engine, RRPM go berserk again. Shut down.

A P2 line to the FCU failed, so the engine ran away high - safer than going low I suppose. But being alone in the front, I would have needed 2 hands on the throttles in the roof to manipulate the "good" back down to keep RRPM normal, and I needed one hand on the cyclic - no SAS, no autopilot, just raw inputs. No could do.

So, I learned something, and told the rest of the crews about it.
Ascend Charlie is offline