Thomas Coupling asked:
For the MRB to make contact with the victim (assuming the victim was standing bolt upright at the time), would mean that the tip path plane would be at around 6 feet.
With it's teetering head, assuming the body of the helo was fully dragged back when it hit the victim, what height would the skids be off the ground??
Well, the actual type of ship does not matter. And of course, it depends on the bank angle, no? I mean, you could get the blades down that low with as little as a thirty degree bank, I suppose, and the skids would be very low to the ground. But if you increase the bank angle to, say, 60 degrees or more, then the skids will be that much higher.
In this particular case (Bell 412 at Rantoul, Illinois), the issue is not that the skids were very low to the ground, but that the main rotor obviously was.