Exceeding maximum gross weight

[topendtorque]

it seems indicative of the pervasive cowboy nature of helicopter ops IMHO.

Yes there’s no doubt that there will be a certain cowboy attitude creep into – “high volume hours with not a great amount of hindsight experience situations”

I’m guessing that was the problem with the accident which you reported. What is it that you despair about? Not flying the mission yourself and sending the other A/C home, almost certainly still to an untimely end of flight even without its load, or the experience that you may have gained since which would tell you that an A/C which was developing an unexplained lateral or even vertical was an ironclad reason to ground it and send for the engineers?

We found that, and especially an increasing lateral when investigated would yield such unpleasant discoveries such as cracked masts. Now the rule is, - never fly with an increasing lateral. We have since found that blades on A/C which are difficult to track and inconsistent in the vertical plane also is reason to ground the aircraft. No doubt the catastrophic blade failure near Warragamba dam accident will refresh your memory there.

In our case we had studied the over speed engine and airframe check procedures and figured prior to this event that we were on safe ground. My event made us believe that we weren’t. In fact we figured later also that most of the power required to spin up to 3400 was used in doing just that, leaving little for the use of lifting. I even managed to prove that with the difference between 3300 and the red line of 3200. We were on the way to finding the most efficient blade RPM/engine power combination. It was not just a limitation imposed for the health of the engine. That is why we now teach as I stated before, to hold it at the red line and only load it to Max AUW as any a/c with an engine operating in specs will lift vertically its own Max AUW up to its hover OGE ceiling in free air, I.E. not close to trees .

Think about it, that is always a revelation to newbies straight from flight school, and many others and can be easily demonstrated.

If that is the case why on earth did the oz army adopt the cowboy attitude of fragrantly breaching CAR138 with their precious recommendation of exceeding the allowable RPM?

My referral to the crash comic is about an accident where the it stated that “the accident was caused by T/R failure”, when in fact both of the tail rotor blades had been torn off, and one of them flung at least 150 feet through light brush when they had contacted the ground. You would have to admit there is a major problem with that abhorrently fragrant “trial by media” supposition. Particularly, as the accident is still awaiting the pleasure of the coroners’ attention, for seven years now. It sounds to me that you are close to the ATSB action, perhaps if you’d like me to PM you the accident report number and you might look into it.

The beauty of these forums is that we can pass on gems to newbies.
They have been lucky to pick up a few from this one all of which relate to a single regulation, (CAR 138) that I’ll bet most have never been introduced to.
cheers tet