To: Krilian
I agree with you relative to the many frivolous lawsuits that are filed. The point I was trying to make regarding the actions that may be taken by Frank Robinson if he were faced with a law suit is that he is protected by the instructions, cautions and advisories in the respective Robinson POHs. The reasons many of these “advisories” are in the POHs is because the FAA mandated them because of the many rotor loss / rotor incursion accidents that happened prior to 1995. The reason the two helicopters were restricted from flying out of trim and from sideslipping is because it was felt that these flight maneuvers would result in high flapping loads resulting in mast bumping. Many responses to my various threads stated that violation of these cautions was done all the time with impunity.
My comment to that was that if you ended up dead having practiced what was cautioned against then Frank Robinson would be your survivors’ worst enemy. If it could be proved that you did violate these cautions then any lawsuit would be mooted. If it could be proven that the design was at fault your lawyers would not be able to collect because FR is bullet proof in that he keeps his money offshore and leases everything in his plant.
It has always been my opinion that the rotorhead design was the root cause of many of these accidents along with the impreciseness of the cyclic control.
Check out the NTSB report on Robinson Helicopter Rotor Loss accidents and see how many are listed as cause unknown. On other reports it is listed as cause unknown or pilot error. Only one accident was the fault of Robinson as they suffered a cyclic control rod failure resulting in a crash and loss of life. All of those pilots in pilot heaven are waiting to be vindicated. If only some spirit medium can bring them back so that they could tell what really happened just before impact.
It should be noted that in year 2000 there were four rotor loss / rotor incursion accidents
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The Cat
[This message has been edited by Lu Zuckerman (edited 20 January 2001).]