To Copter
Copter,
Not so recently attended a Bell Helicopter Aeronautical Judgment Course, during the course Jim Zimansky (hope its spelled right) showed and gave me a copy of a video in which they show exactly the incident that you describe, a 500 which hits a cable over the Niagara area, the video was take by the front seat passenger and one second you can clearly see the skid, then a noise a small oscillation and the skid is gone, the passenger asks whats wrong and the pilot says "I don't know" he goes to the golf field for a landing, and there he realizes that he has no skids, and while the tape is still running the pilot asks the passengers to jump out while in a hover, they comply, jump out and run about 50 yards away and keep taping as the pilot carefully chooses a spot to put it down, and this is where I differ from your narration, the pilot puts it down and very nicely and shuts down completely without the helicopter ever rolling to the ground until the time that the rotor stops, did the helicopter roll afterwards? Or is this another similar accident?
I'll try to put the accident on Quicktime and on the web ASAP if the file is not too large as it is long.
Last edited by BlenderPilot; 9th Aug 2002 at 20:27.