PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - TV News Helicopter Crash in Brazil with Video
Old 11th Feb 2010, 12:41
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Brian Abraham
 
Join Date: Aug 2003
Location: Sale, Australia
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My understanding was that due to very high loss rates in training tr failure - there was a descision to stop teaching how to deal with tail rotor failure - and the advice became just to enter auto rotation
I can assure you that's codswallop. The first time I had practical training in tail rotor failures was with the US Army in Vietnam, never heard of any accidents (not saying there weren't any) but would have been few, if any. Our unit continued with the practice on checkrides till the end. Was never taught the failure in either the US Navy or Oz Navy.
there are many subleties eg non rotating tr still has pitch control so you may find a location where the tr blades don't oscillate
What level of experience do you have?
You may be asking yourself "Sim validation data exists for tail rotor failures?!" Well.... no, but we are able to infer how the aircraft will perform without the tail rotor using several specialized flight test maneuvers. But in the end we are just making a guess, albiet a fairly educated one.
On the 76 years ago one training organisation was teaching for a tail rotor drive failure in the hover, assuming you had the power available, to climb vertically to 1,000 or so, nose it over to get airspeed, and fly to a suitable strip for an auto. Practiced it in the sim, but always questioned the possibility of being able to do so in real life. The reasoning behind the procedure was that we flew single pilot and not enough hands for collective, cyclic and throttles.
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