Heliport,
The point is well taken...CVR's and FDR's both provide excellent means of data collection. At the expense of sobriety, some of my posts fall short of a universal application to the topic. The majority of crashes involving light helicopters are not mysteries...but usually involve straight forward mechanical failure or in-appropriate application of flight controls....or simply running into something hard. I fail to see the absolute need to install the units in all the fleet as a mandatory requirement.
The additional costs for the equipment and the additional weight are valid considerations. The AAIB and the NTSB in this country are pushing for the installation and use of such devices.
In my country, the NTSB wants the trucking industry to install the equivalent of FDR's on commerical trucks to aid in accident reconstruction of truck-car accidents. The trucking industry of course is fighting such a thing....whereas the more enlightened (in my opinion) are agreeing with the plan....except they want all vehicles to have the equipment so that all driver's conduct can be examined. I would imagine such equipment if installed on all vehicles...commercial, private, truck, and car....would very quickly refute the myth that large trucks are the evil menace they are portrayed to be. Despite one study after another in Canada and the US....it has been shown that truckers are the safer drivers but the media hype will not have it. Maybe then the EDR as it is being called would help solve that problem.
At some point, we have to evalutate the need for the CVR/FDR data for cost versus value. I am for anything that increases safety. However in small helicopters I fear the costs far outweigh the benefit. Would not a HUMS type system be better....although far more expensive yet. If we consider the car-truck situation....maybe we should extend the requirement for having FDR/CVR equipment to all aircraft, to include gliders and balloons, homebuilts, and warbirds. If we are worried only about the data collection and not the expense....then everything that goes airborne should be so equipped.
Where does this end?
Right now I worry more about getting parts for MD aircraft than I am about what clues a basic flight data recorder might provide in a day VMC crash of a MD 369.
One man's opinion here anyway.....