Originally Posted by
gulliBell
Yep. Nose to tail the AS350 is 10m long. So 10m of strop and empty bambi bucket hardware hanging off the hook exposes the tail rotor to impact, which regrettably, brought about the demise here. Had it been 50' of line, the empty bucket would just fly below and aft of the tail rotor zone. Or belly hooked and it's not long enough to reach the tail rotor.
Makes perfect sense to me, especially given that the 10m reference began with the initial report....