I'm looking at a poster who on an earlier page complains that there are too many other posters complaining we shouldn't be hypothocating about such a delicate issue on a rumour network and then off he goes branding someone els for coming out with a hypothetical suggestion about fuel starvation??? Sort your life out sunshine.
The jib of the crane lifting the wreckage has a camera on it. This is normal for heavy haulage companies so that the cab driver can monitor his progress. This is what was used on the news last night. It shows the cab dove vertically into the roof top. There was categorically NO evidence of horizontal flight. It "appears" as if the cab went in at a steep nose down attitude (>20 degrees). The entire lower half of the cabin area was flattened. Totally non survivable. Enough said.
Every picture and all videos of the salvage reclamation work that I have seen shows each of the rotor blades to be (relatively) intact. They certainly did not exhibit serious blunt force trauma.
In fact with the exception of one of the root sections showing scarring - the blades were relatively unscathed. The fenestron was intact.
Now assuming one agrees with that statement, what could lead to that?
Assuming the cab was at or around 700' (anyone disagree?), it means the blades stopped within that distance or putting it bluntly, with the a/c even partially under control, the blades stopped rotating during the 30 seconds it took to fall out of the sky.
How could the rotor go from nominal governed Nr of >300 RPM to zero in 30 seconds? 700 feet in the hover to ground level.
1. Fuel starvation to both engines and pilot does absolutely nothing with collective in the hover. Very unlikely.
2 Tail rotor failure - non starter - no rotational witness marks on impact.
3. Pilot incapacitated but collective remains at a high power setting - very unlikely.
4. Sun and planetary gears gears break up, disconnecting the MRH from the engines. Rotors and tail fenestron slow down, a/c descends, pilot instinctively pulls power to arrest the descent. This exacerbates the slowing down of the main rotor blades and they eventually stop rotating.
ALL of the above assumptions are based on photo evidence of intact RB's on impact. Remember that.
IF you assume this to be a fact then fuel/incapacitation/auto/manouevring/engine failure/tail rotor failure............has to be ruled out.
Earlier on there was another assumption: VRS. The cab would have to enter fully developed VRS within 700' / 30 seconds. Not practical.
IVRS would be an easy opt out - all mil pilots are trained to identify IVRS and simply trim fwd in cyclic and fly away.
Two other options haven't been mentioned but I am sure are on the AAIB's list of options:
They both commence with the letter S and one of them is sabotage.
