Hmmm, a bit like asking some rough cowpoke dude in an outback pub, how many kids has he got? Ah well yer honour only 38 on this issue that I’ll own up to. That is, that necessitated the use of those magic phrases, land immediately, or, land ASAP.
On ‘47’s; anything from T/R drive shaft failure in hover at sixty feet to complete damper frame break up, five stars on the spooky side that one, to several mundane eng failures – eng thru bolts, valve failures, rocker shaft fell out once, turbo exhaust pipe x three, fuel pump seals blown out, ditto fuel tap seals x 2, one mag failure coupled to a wiring harness short on two plugs on the other side mag. My first real one, also five stars – couldn’t even see the instruments with the vibes that time.
Magneto drive shaft failure x 2- one of those with the late Lester Chambers on board as a slave, his first slave ride, (he was far too good a man to go the way he did) landed right under a very big tree, no chainsaws and five minutes of hovering to get out after repair. Then there were several xmon types like fan drive failures, one free wheel failure from sixty feet with my father in law on board (another five stars), fan drive belts.
Oh, and the R22 did someone say, one drive belts failure, and one upper bearing failure, each required a full auto in most unpleasant circumstances.
Four of the type referred to by SC, one particularly hang the head job, one I overlooked the fuel tank rigging thereby misjudging the quantity, that one was real funny when my pax asked me "if yer need some spanners to bleed her I've got em in the toyota". That came at flare height.
One quite deliberate with a very obstinate pax, still inexcusable as it gave me a hot stop on the turbo and the last was still a mistake as I missed the fuel contamination into a nearly already full R22, the only one of all events that was bent or even scratched.
Of the six (land ASAP ones) the last was the only totally harmless one. – Just settled into the first cuppa at cruise at daylight or there-about and the most ungodly bashing and banging out the back. Now having lived thru the infernal din of a ’47 free wheel failure I immediately thought the worst, down went the old heave ho. Another magic little spot appeared right there, hmm still had drive power at the bottom, no strange noises, every thing in green??? Got out and it’s the bloody Zeus fasteners on the inspection panel have let go. Knee’s shaking climbed back up, cancelled the emerg call, and carried on. Yeah tonight I will get them repaired.
I can say that all in all, I got a hell of an emerg training vocabulary to rely on.
To classify the two phrases, Landing ASAP usually means that the thing will still fly, but not that is always safe to do so; land immediately is always when the collective goes down as a mandatory life saving function.
I must say that I have always worshipped my ab-initio instructor as the gentleman whose genius blessed me with just enough nouse to get my collective thoughts together and rationalised BEFORE I decided on the CORRECT course of action, EVERY time.
I wonder if the basic first license syllabus, anywhere, covers such capacity nowadays. Most it seems are too bloody scared to switch the engine off.
So you newbies it’s all in the first few hours of instruction (if you have a good instructor) that you will be either blessed by talent or forever wondering if it is luck that you live with. Then again many people go for ever without so much as a burp. And, it’s not always the engine.