TC, as you seem to agree with G0uli about there being no autorotation, I would put it to you both that given the final circumstances described in my post yesterday at 10:09, that an autorotative landing attempt cannot be ruled out, in fact the indications would suggest that there was indeed some form of 'controlled' flight, right until the end.
Here are my observations on his earlier post, the one where you think he's
onto something;
There are video, eye witness accounts and radar plots to substantiate the fact that the aircraft did not enter autorotation. The main rotor blades stalled and neither the main rotor or tail rotor were turning at the moment of impact.
There is no video.
How can a radar plot possibly tell if an ac was in autorotation or not?
Eye witnesses heard engine popping and the ac cartwheeling & spinning, how can it be then, as the transmission had stopped, that there is no damage to the blades and transmission system and the ac was in one piece?
No structural defects have been noted to date that would affect the effectiveness of the flight controls. All documented and officially reported.
Correct, so the ac was 'flyable'
Given all the above, pilot error and/or mishandling of the aircraft are highly likely to have been the most significant factor in this incident.
Only if the instrumentation was displaying correctly and you assume that every warning, caution etc was ignored by everyone on board. (This of course does not get around the pilot/crew appreciation of the amount of time in the air with the take off fuel load)
Given the published flight profile, the pilot was apparently unconcerned about the fuel state and the dual failure of the engines would have been unexpected, to say the least.
Agreed, very strange given the length of time 'on tasking.'
Total engine failure in twin engine helicopters was regarded as an event so unlikely that virtually no training was undertaken to cover such events, although that may have changed now.
Apart from every six month on OPC's, both previously and now.
So there may well be a case to make that the pilot was faced with a situation for which he had received little or inadequate training. However there is nothing to suggest that if the correct control inputs had been made immediately the engines flamed out, that the aircraft would not have entered an autorotative state.
Possibly, but given the experience level of the pilot, an autorotative profile wouldn't have been strange, however the location wouldn't be the most ideal for a favourable outcome either way.
While a successful autorotation might not have resulted in a "safe" landing, this flight effectively ended as soon as the main rotor was allowed to stall, many hundreds of feet above the ground.
I would suggest that if the transmission 'stalled' many hundreds of feet above the ground, there would have be a far greater mess than there was and there certainly would have been a lot more damage to the aircraft.
Because of that last paragraph, I would suggest that the ac was indeed under some form of control, right up to the point at which it was a few feet above the roof with the transmission stopped.
Simply out of interest, I for one would like to see a 135 tied down, pulling pitch and the engines chopped, seeing how the blades react to an ever increasing collective input, including through the collective pitch override stop, and to see how that transmission ends up stopping.
My only special need TC, is to understand 