Originally Posted by
roundwego
A couple of questions if I may. Was the aircraft shut down within the RFM wind limits? Having shut the engines down, did the rotor brake fail?
Shutdown was within limits, but the rotor brake on the 175 is poor, and couldn’t stop the wind from rotating the blades. The blade tie downs on the 175 are of the tip sock variety, so trying to get those onto rotating blades that are already flapping in the still-technically-in-limits-but-rapidly-increasing wind would have been impossible. They tied the airframe down and then evacuated the deck as it was getting too dangerous. Not sure of the actual wind speed by the time the video was taken.