TET,
Your hat is very safe.
Done them...taught them....landed safe on some....crashed some....but only in the Sim.
Was present at a Tail Rotor failure approaching a hover in a UH-1H Huey one time. I rolled the throttles off for the guy flying....after he seemed unwilling to do so for some unknown reason. We got off with just a pair of bent skids as we were still spinning to the right when we hit a bit firmly as he was slow to get the Collective pulled. No big deal as he was reacting and not doing.
The amount of turning force generated by the rotor system under near full power is amazing....and the immediate relief felt in the rate of turn or yawing when you remove that Torque is also amazing. It conveys the message why removing engine power is usually a good thing if you can when these things happen to you.
There are no absolutes and I would suggest what you do is driven by the way the aircraft is reacting to the failure. For sure, being prepared, and thinking about what you are doing is the key to survival.
Some RFM's would suggest a run on landing at some nice flat paved surface in this situation....or for a Tail Rotor failure that results in a lot of "No Power Pedal" being needed. (Counter Clockwise turning rotors....Right Pedal).
That means you get to Terra Firma with lots of ground speed and Power applied to the Rotor System.....as compared to doing an Autorotation with the power to the Rotor system removed, and very near Zero GS and ROD at touchdown.
I lean towards the latter method....because if it goes egg shaped....the forces involved are minimized....and hopefully the outcome is much less dramatic.
I wonder if the Chase Aircraft was filming the flight of the Test Aircraft.....if so...that might make for a very interesting video.
Depending upon what departed the aircraft....and the reaction of the aircraft following the loss of components....would determine the Immediate Action required.
First blush would suggest keep the ol' girl as level as possible, nose pointing as straight ahead as possible, probably by lowering collective and rolling off the throttles....then follow up with what seemed right at the time.
Given a huge Texas sized peanut patch in front of me....I would have gone to the dirt in autorotation....attmepted to do as they did....get the forward speed as slow as possible at touchdown.
As seen....when the ROD and GS are near Zero at touchdown....the results are pretty darn good.
The 214 has lots of rotor inertia so that is not a problem.
Also....these guys are probably pretty darn sharp too.
If it had been a Bell Flight School crew of Instructors....I wonder how it would have turned out as they do autorotations by the bag load each week.
The CG shift is one of the things we do not know from the reporting so far....or how the aircraft reacted when all this happened. One thing we do know they decided parking it as quickly as possible was the right idea. If this had happened at night offshore in really bad weather....I wonder if they would have tried to fly it back ashore rather than try to do an Emergency Ditching in the water.
Last edited by SASless; 10th Aug 2012 at 00:11.