Tail Rotor Failure... Have you had one?

[helispeediii]

helispeediii

had tail rotor failure in 109a in 99 making a slowfinal approach to private site approx 60ftAGL? approx 100 yards to the spot, three greens showing, had landed there hundreds of times in different types, heard?feltbang/shudder i thought a large bird/goose?? had hit us saw nothing untoward up front did i look at the t&ps, dont know< it was inpractical to try to transition away? the aicraft started rotating at a pretty fast pace i try lowering the collective did not seem to slow down so i lower the collectrive as we were spinning round tried to cushion on landing/impact, it did not do the undercarriage much good,but i shut the fuel off shut down the engines whilst checking my pax ok he was i dont remember waiting for the shut downtime on those dear allisonsc20b, put the rotor brake on asap did not wait till it slowed?it smoked a bit did not think at the time thought the air craft was on fire time to get going but without mrb hair cut 109 on its belly front blades pretty low? my door was jammed shut told front pax to depart, eg get the f k out of here! and i followed him out, when i was out i could see it was the rotor brake smoking relielf, the aircraft was a write off, on external inspection i could see tail rotor gear box had departed taking with it most of the lower fin and a fair chunk of the upper fin,! 50/75 ft away we found tailrotor g/box with one blade attached and the root of the other blade ,this was well bedded in the ground eg high powered inpact? the part broken blade was found in a ploughed field,200ft away , aaib,/ informed,/agusta sent over two engineers from italy ,within 24 hrs to inspect,the conclusion discovered later, was metal fatigue ,even though they had a die pentrant test a month earlier,the blades were 75%of 2400to scrap life? agusta told me this had only happened once before and that was the trump machine in the usa which was a fatal ! i think they increased the inspection/xrays on the trb on early 109?, as they say if you walk away its a good one,? i was back flying 109s within aweek, and have done many hundred of hours since, needed a ciropracter to sort out my back !and my brotherinlaw is not keen on flying any more he was the pax! i had a good mate who is an instuctor,who was very helpful at the time . helispeed iii