Caveat: I knew Jim Ramage the inspector pilot on board, he used to work where I now work, I know his widow. I did not know Roarke or Bill, but I know lots of people who do, and all speak highly of them. As shown above, I flew most of the clean-up operation.
I am not a party to any other part of the investigation or aftermath, so, let me point you towards some clues as to what is being discussed, the 15 points raise serious questions:
A helicopter crash that killed nine continues to raise questions more than two years after the accident. The accident occurred on August 5, 2008 near Weaverville, California as a Sikorsky S-61N helicopter took off from a rugged mountaintop clearing ferrying firefighters to a wildfire in the Trinity Alps Wilderness. Seven contract firefighters, a U.S. Forest Service safety inspector and the pilot were killed.
On Dec 7, 2010 the NTSB met to determine the cause of the crash and make safety recommendations. Their recommendations raised questions about the safety of government aircraft and documents indicated the chopper was overweight.
Two victims' families are speaking out through an attorney against those findings by the NTSB. The Coultas and Schwanenberg families charge the NTSB changed its initial conclusion from an engine failure to a weight issue because the report was written by the wife of the NTSB investigator that was responsible for the security of the parts, according to Gregory Anderson of AndersonGlenn, LLC.
Bill Coultas, who was severely injured in the accident and Christine Schwanenberg, wife of Roark Schwanenberg, who was killed in the crash believe there should be an impartial and unbiased investigation and that there is a conflict of interest with this report.
Both men were pilots of the helicopter, employed by Carson Helicopters. The families, through Anderson, would like to make the following facts public:
1) The original cause of the accident found by NTSB investigators was the loss of power from the No. 2 engine due to a well known issue over fuel filtration. The NTSB reached this conclusion following the inspection of the engines at a Columbia Helicopters repair facility in Aurora, Oregon on August 14th, 15th and 16th, 2008, just nine days following the August 5th accident. Columbia, an approved fuel system contractor for repair of the GE CT-58 engines involved in the accident, was the last party to have physical control of the parts. NTSB investigator Jim Struhsaker turned over control of the Fuel Control Units to Columbia on August 16th, 2008 for shipment back to the NTSB. Carson was not present, having left the inspection on the 15th to attend memorial services of the victims.
2) Columbia, GE and Sikorsky are all financially interested parties as defendants in multi-million dollar lawsuits brought by the victims and their families.
3) The Flight Data Recorder (FDR) was functioning and had 77 hours of data recorded. The NTSB investigators could not coordinate the timeline of the cockpit voice recorder with the FDR data so they labeled it "invalid" or "irrelevant". In fact, it contains information of heading, altitude and engine performance. No attempt was made to integrate this data after August 16th 2008, when the fuel system components were lost.
4) GE, Sikorsky and Columbia had been facing allegations of a dangerous defect regarding the fuel control units, specifically, stuck stator vanes due to a contamination of Pressure Regulating Valves (PRV) and clogged filters, which when clogged to a certain degree, allow the CT58 to continue to operate through the use of an emergency by-pass valve. When this occurs, unfiltered fuel is allowed into the Fuel Control Unit, and results in contamination of the system. The diameter or "clearance" of the diaphragm of the PRV is only six (6) microns in thickness. The filters in use in N612AZ, the S-61 involved in the Trinity crash, as well as the four preceding crashes from this issue, were for forty (40) micron contaminants. The US military identified the filtration issue in its S-61s in the 1990s and switched to the finer, 10 micron filter. Following the upgrade, military S-61s no longer had fuel filter issues.
5) The day following the accident, email exchanges between GE and Sikorsky engineering departments raise filtration immediately after being notified about the accident.
6) The S-61N involved, had a maintenance history that included concerns over stuck fuel system components due to fuel contamination. The maintenance history of the S61N was not considered in the Board's findings.
7) There have been four prior accidents involving the CT58 fuel system in the S-61 where fuel contamination was cited as the cause, including a 2004 detailed investigation by the Canadian Transportation Board into an S-61N firefighter crash where it determined the GE CT58 fuel filter issue was the probable cause. The prior accidents were not considered by the Board.
. 8) The sole evidence that the No. 2 GE CT58 engine in N612AZ was functioning nominally was a sound spectrum analysis prepared by GE using Sikorsky charts of the sound signature of the planetary gears in the S-61 transmission and the sound signature of the gas generator blade rpm. In order to determine whether the No. 2 engine was developing its full power, the NTSB would need four facts: first, "Nr" or rotor blade rpm; second, "Ng", or gas generator (compressor) speed; "Nf" or power turbine speed; and finally, "T5" or turbine inlet temperature, which shows the amount of heat developed in the CT58 combustion chamber (for the CT58-140 installed in this S-61N configuration, that should have been 721 degrees). The NTSB did not determine the second and third required parameters and so could not have determined whether the No. 2 engine had achieved "topping" or top rated horsepower.
9) The sound spectrum analysis is the only "quantitative" data for the conclusion that the No. 2 engine had not failed. Absent this GE/Sikorsky analysis, all of the NTSB conclusions are speculation. Objective facts supporting an engine issue include the No. 2 torque gauge found post accident with a "split" of 30% from No. 1. The NTSB theorized this could be from a power loss but wiring schematics show this to be an A/C powered gauge that would have frozen with a sudden loss of power, not wound down. Even if it had been a DC powered gauge, there would not have been a split: both gauges would have wound down to zero torque. The Emergency Throttle for No. 2 was found in the partially opened position. Bill Coultas and a second eyewitness confirm that he was attempting to open the No. 2 Emergency Throttle after he saw the torque split on the gauges. The only reason to do so was a concern by the flight crew with fuel. The Emergency Throttles are gated and require significant force to move to an open position. Bill Coultas testified they lost power and noted the loss of rotor speed before they hit any trees.
10) Comparison of the markings on the stator vanes are significant.
11) The NTSB ignored Bill Coultas' testimony that they had cleared a 50' (AGL) tree before losing power and descending into the #1, #2 and #3 trees documented to have been hit by the rotor blades in the report. The GPS plot of N612AZ's course, combined with the (NTSB commissioned) survey of the area, prove unequivocally that N612AZ climbed to 60' or more before losing power. The significance is that in sloping terrain (the NTSB survey shows between 8 and 20 degrees of ground slope once the helicopter left the immediate landing area of H-44), the "Hover Out of Ground Effect" ("HOGE") altitude could not have been more than 30' (AGL). To get to an altitude of 60-70' AGL, the helicopter had to climb out of ground effect, which renders the theory of an overweight issue as a cause, speculative. Succinctly, if the helicopter was grossly overweight, it would have never been able to climb out of ground effect (the cushion of air between the ground and the whirling disk of the rotor blades), but would have "settled" back down. This effect would have been immediately noticed by the flight crew. It is a matter of mathematical certainty that an S61N at this density altitude could not have climbed out of ground effect and over a 50' obstacle if it were in a gross overload situation. As a matter of record, N612AZ did climb out of ground effect and transition into forward flight, and climbed over a 50' obstacle. Weight was not the issue.
12) The NTSB asks the public and the aviation community in particular, to believe that a Pilot-in-Command (Roark Schwanenberg), a Second-in -Command (Bill Coultas) and a Forest Service Check Pilot (Jim Ramage), with a combined total of 29,000 hours of helicopter time: lifted off from H-44; never noticed any weight problem; never noticed the helicopter settling; never felt it reacting sluggishly; never considered putting her back down; never thought of their own safety (all three had families –Schwanenberg and Coultas with minor children); ignored the lives of the nine firefighters in the back, and essentially flew directly into the trees.
13) The NTSB took Bill Coultas' statement that "we had plenty of power" and presented it as though he was stating the condition of the helicopter as it was crashing. The transcript of his post-accident interview makes clear he was stating that he and PIC Schwanenberg had determined that they would have plenty of power for the last (crash) flight as they performed the preflight calculations, based on the observed temperature and winds. By taking the SIC's statement out of context, the NTSB presented it as conformation that the engines were producing full power. This is contrary to sound investigation techniques requiring an unbiased and impartial evaluation of the testimony.
14) The NTSB Materials Report (taken off the public docket in violation of the NTSB's "transparency" policy issued in June of 2009), was the result of complaints by the victims and the aircraft's owner/operator, Carson Helicopters to the NTSB and to members of Congress, including Oregon Representative Pete DeFazio. After Carson's request for a congressional investigation into the loss of the parts, the NTSB investigation shifted to an investigation of Carson and the weight issue. Prior to Carson expressing concerns to Congress over the parts, the focus was on the engine filtration issue.
15) In the GE/Sikorsky prepared "worst case" simulation, the helicopter was alleged to have weighed 19,008 lbs. The Sikorsky performance charts, even using the "stock" rotor blades instead of the composite, high performance blades on N612AZ, show that at this altitude, temperature and wind, the helicopter could lift over 19,100 lbs. Assuming every fact in favor of the NTSB/GE/Sikorsky simulations, N612AZ could have and did fly from H-44 until the No. 2 engine failed.