S-76 Approaches
It never made it to You Tube, but somewhere there is a video of what looks to be the quintessential, perfect, by-the-book approach to a rooftop helipad in an executive S-76. A sunny day with a slight breeze.The heading doesn't twitch a hair, the pitch attitude and roll attitudes are rock solid. The slow-down flare is gentle as one should expect in such an environment. All looks in order.
And it was until the pilot hit the edge of the roof with his tail boom. It was the UTC Building and the UTC S-76. I never did hear even a "creative" account of how it happened.
It did have a bit of a special meaning for Nick Lappos and I because we had campaigned rather hard for an improvement to forward visibility during the initial stages of the flight test program in 1977. We had been unsuccessful and Nick's eloquence and my single-mindedness had nothing to show for it. (The original front end lower glass looked very different than it does today).
Then we heard that the SA President, Gerry Tobias, was coming down to West Palm and wanted to fly in 'his" helicopter. I write "his" because Gerry had gone to bat for that machine and it bore a lot of his input.
What to do? Well, I had a typical GOM helipad painted on the runway using a healthy quantity of very white paint. Then, at the end of Gerry's familiarization flight ( and I had put him in the right seat by the way ), which up to that point had gone perfectly for him, I shot a few approaches to that helipad, and asked him in advance to tell me one thing and to call it out: when did he lose sight of the helipad?
You can guess what happened: by the time we had shot four approaches he was all charged up. I hadn't had to say anything; Gerry had figured it all out. So he got out and all of the ranking VP's were there asking about the ship and he waxed effusively about it for sometime, until he changed the subject to visibility. One of the VP's said that the subject was under review and that he would be advising him shortly on what they would be doing.
Gerry looked around and asked for a felt tip pen, turned to the VP with that pen in hand and said, " I'll show you what we're going to do", and drew the present lower plexiglass lines on that prototype. "Thats what we're going to do", he said, "and I'd like to see the design next week". I recall with clarity that two of the VP's turned their heads toward me and Nick, and their looks displayed more than passing displeasure.
But you still have to pay attention when you are landing.
John Dixson