.
De Havilland: Col. Bob spoke to me about a 206 emblazoned with the wording 'Pork Farm Sausages' so I am
also keen to discover an image of BALC so painted!
.. Lieut Col Robert Smith, Managing Director of Ferranti Helicopters was appointed a non-executive director of Ben Turner Helicopters.
Well there you go,
something else I didn't know about him!
Further details relating to Ben Turner Helicopters would be keenly appreciated.
There is a back story involving Ferranti and Agusta and which would not have pleased old man Mann. Negotiations between the two were being conducted in the mid-70's and included elaborate plans for a new distributorship facility but .. the details of that story will be brought out in the Ferranti site.
VFR: SPEY
was involved in an incident, although not a ditching:
"The helicopter was engaged on a filming task at low level for which an approved exemption to the Air Navigation Order (1995) had been obtained. The passenger, who was the camera operator, had completed the third of four filming sequences and the pilot then flew to the fourth location. The pilot was aware of an 11 kilovolt (kV) powerline which ran alongside a road but did not see the 33 kV powerline which ran across the valley. After the helicopter had flown into this powerline, and although there was no apparent damage to the helicopter, the pilot made a precautionary landing in an adjacent field. A second company helicopter was despatched to the site with an engineer. The engineer inspected the helicopter and, with the exception of cracks to the lower windscreens, the damage appeared to be contained to the casing of the external camera mount which was then removed. The helicopter was assessed as serviceable to return to its base. Subsequent engineering investigation by the company discovered 'lightning discharge' type damage to some of the avionics and structural elements of the helicopter.
An AAIB Inspector examined some of the components from the helicopter and noted various areas of damage that appeared to be the result of high voltage electric current passing through the machine. In particular, a number of meshing gears within the main rotor gearbox showed pitting of the working surfaces of the teeth and evidence to suggest that internal damage to bearings had occurred. One of the main rotor blades was found to have suffered electrical arcing type damage on the trailing edge near the root, and further such damage at the tip. Both that blade and numerous gearbox components were judged to be damaged beyond repair."
Interesting to see the damage electricity can inflict on a gearbox!
S.