Originally Posted by
Pilot DAR
I opine that if a pitch link failed, that blade went streamlined, it was the connected blade which went full travel when the pilot applied lots of pedal at the instant that the yaw began...
So you think when the connected blade went full stroke that is what caused the blade to fail? Then what caused the unconnected blade to fail in the same location at outboard edge of the finger doubler? Its hard to tell from the pics but it looks more like that both blades hit the tailboom which caused the failure at the same location. And only after both blades failed did the TR output quill assembly depart instead of at the 1st blade failure. Quite possible there could have initially been a TR output drive failure of some sort that started the blade failures??
And I think once he lost the TR quill the CG shifted and probably limited his cyclic authority compounding his recovery attempt.
And to note, there is no hydraulics in the tailboom so any fluid smoke would be oil from the TR GBox.