It was really good of the USFS supervisory pilot to put together the lessons learned piece above. I think it I simportant that we learn from other incidents before we have to try them out ourselves!
I would also like to say that I disagree with his statement on the facts of the incident, although I was not there like he was..... so I accept this may open my response up to inaccuracies. The issue I have is that he claims the pilot went through "three separate emergencies......settling with power, dynamic rollover, and LTE"
I contend that he suffered none of these and am concerned that it will be attributed to those "labels"
Settling with power (better called vortex ring) is not possible in the scenarios described... Ie that the pilot descended in control and arrested the descent when the control head was in the water. That is, that he some how entered and recovered from vortex ring in less than 150 ft. This is an almost impossible scenario in my view. Vortex ring is not solved by putting the bucket into the water, or even reducing the aircraft load by having it placed on the ground. It is solved only by shedding the main rotor vortices ingestion. A quick search on PPrune for Nick Lappos explanation of this will help.
Secondly, dynamic rollover did not occur, though the symptoms are similar. Dynamic rollover occurs when the aircraft is in contact with the ground, not when the load is in contact with the ground. What happened here was that the load exceeded the ability of the aircraft to lift and the pilot tried to fly away. He was not dynamically accelerated past his centre of gravity, he was pivoted by the radius if his line and centripetal force.
Lastly, he did not suffer LTE. He suffered LTA, Loss of Tail Rotor Authority in that he was pulling too much torque with reducing RRPM for the tail rotor to exert directional authority. It did not enter its own vortex ring state. Again, a search here on Pprune will illuminate the reasoning behind my misgivings on LTE occurring in this example.
As I said before, I was not there and may have missed some evidence but from the witness statement alone, I would offer a different point of view - not necessarily the "right" one, just a different one. And I re-iterate that his preparedness to the detail lessons for the rest of us is admirable.
Re the 212s, when I used to do that, we would compressor rinse every 25 hourly which was each second night as a min, and sometimes when time was available, we would do it every day. There is no solution to avoiding the damage to the engine and compressors unless you avoid smoke. If you cannot do that, then you MUST factor in significant wear and tear increases on the lifed dynamic items or get a very rude shock when you send them off for inspection. From memory, we would factor in at least another 20% operating cost for this type of work, and in the 212 we would pull the floor and treat for corrosion at then end of each season where foam was used.
Last edited by helmet fire; 12th Jul 2013 at 05:42.