PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - What was your scariest moment in a helicopter?
Old 13th Sep 2003, 01:02
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RDRickster
 
Join Date: Jul 2003
Location: Gaithersburg, MD
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I can't claim this one, but a friend of mine was flying a 206 at about 800' AGL on a very windy day. A kid with a 1000' string was flying his kite as high as he possibly could. The park he was kite flying from was directly beneath Helicopter Route One.

Well, he flew into the string (no way to see that in a million years). The kite was ripped out of the kid's hand, and some of the string (not all) began to wind around the mast head. He said it made a hell of a racket with lots of vibrations.

So, he dumped the collective and did an auto into the park. After shutdown, they cut the string from the pitch links and checked for bent rods, etc. No visible damage, so they flew out and continued on. He's lucky that the controls didn't freeze on him (string might have binded up on pitch change links or something).
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