What was your scariest moment in a helicopter?

[sling load]

Ok guys and girls, lets hear em, everyone has a story, lets releive the tension around here...I had a door come off in flight, a snake get out of its container......DOH!..
and some other stuff that sucked the seat cushion up my , er, you know what.

Let the games begin :D :D :D

[Lu Zuckerman]

It was not a scary moment for me but from the pilots’ point of view we were ready to crash.

I was flight mechanic on a Bell HTL-1 (early model 47) and we were returning to base in Traverse City, Michigan from a stint on an Ice Breaker on Lake Superior. We had a leaky tail rotor gearbox so every fifty miles or so we would land and I would fill up the gearbox with of all things, fish oil. Very smelly stuff.

My pilot, Dave Gershowitz, who incidentally was the first helicopter pilot to hit 1000 hours, was easily freaked out.

While flying in the left seat I was holding the oil can between my legs and reading a map. We were about twenty minutes out when Dave saw a bear. He very excitedly told me to look. When I leaned over, my legs spread and the can hit the deck making a loud noise. Dave thought there was something wrong with the tail rotor gearbox and he made a quick turn looking for a spot to land. In the process of making his maneuver he really made a hard over. On that particular helicopter type when there was an excessive side load on the mast it would cause the planetary gears to really growl.
Upon hearing that, he really wanted to get on the ground. He picked out a landing spot in front of what we later found out was a veterinarians office. To get from where we were to that landing spot we had to pass over a turkey farm and in the process we made the turkeys stampede and over 100 birds were killed in the pileup at the fence surrounding the turkey farm.

Oh yes, in the process of landing, we took out the vets' telephone line
------------------

[Thomas coupling]

Taking off from a Canadian frigate in an S61 and still attached to the bear trap cable.
Wondering why she wanted to visit the captain on the bridge wing :eek: All this at night...........Luckily the weak link failed at the right moment :D

How do I attach a picture from my hard drive, anyone?

[ 13 August 2001: Message edited by: Thomas coupling ]

[heedm]

1. I had excessive smoke in the cabin and cockpit over ocean. Flight Engineer told from the back he saw sparks and flames. Smoke elimination unsuccessful and cockpit vis deteriorating so we ditched. Helicopter stayed upright, egressed to liferaft without getting wet, paddled away with our helmets. Helicopter is flying again (had a second ditching since due to engine failure in hover).

2. Slinging sandbags during flooding in Manitoba, Canada I got the right main stuck in mud and got a glimpse of what dynamic rollover would look like. Very fast.

3. Less than 100 hours helo, I was solo at night unaided. Someone else using infield so I turned my circuit to the south, away from all cultural lighting. At the same time the first lightning bolt of a thunderstorm flashed in front of me. Safe enough distance, but the flash blinded me, nothing to see outside, and I had my cockpit lights dim enough that I could see nothing inside. Hey, it may not seem so scary now, but it freaked me out at the time.


Matthew.

[flipflop]

Half way down a standard auto in an Ah64A, had a double generator failure with associated warning lights audios etc. Just about to complete the auto to the ground when another 64 in the pattern told me I was on fire. For those of you that know (Lu), an AH64 burns real quick so you can guess i had my student(and myself) out without undue delay!!!

[exrotarybooty]

I was flying a Bell 47 Sioux with the Royal Marines in Aden in 1967. Tasked to take a photographer to a weapons find high on a jebel. Hovered over a slope near the edge of a very steep drop to check if we could land when there was a loud crack, the cyclic went loose, and we turned upside down! Can't remember getting out, but we both did, unharmed. The only thing that stopped us going over the edge was one of the main rotor blades stopped, pointing down the slope and the wreck was swaying on that! Frightened? I still have nightmares!! :eek:

[ShyTorque]

We were in an AS332L over a Norwegian airfield at twilight, approaching the hover at 2500 feet.

Something, unexplained to this day, went catastrophically wrong. There was a heavy jolt and suddenly we lost all cyclic, collective and yaw control.

The rotor rpm fell to zero although both engines were providing almost full power. The aircraft fell vertically out of the sky, completely out of control. We were no longer flying but falling.

Over and over we tumbled, bunting nose down, end over end, the world spinning crazily before our eyes. The ground became a blur as it rushed towards us. We were thrown forward against our straps. The rear crew began shouting and I could hear sickening thuds as he was dashed from side to side in the cabin. The co-pilot looked across at me with a horrified look on his face as the tarmac rushed up to meet us.

I knew then we were doomed but I kept fighting, fighting the controls to the end.

Even now, night after night, it comes back to haunt me. :eek:

[ShyTorque]

P.S.

:D :D

Sometimes these simulators are just too darn realistic!

The company made it policy for all occupants to be securely strapped in and prohibited the use of "heavy crash" after that!! Apparently the sim floor mounting bolts were beginning to pull out of the concrete.

ShyT

[Roofus]

Tail Rotor drive shaft failure in Navy Seaking.
All too well documented Tail Rotor Control failure in the hover in a AS355F2.

wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. bang!

[collective bias]

Cruising one day in the B47-KH4 in the NT of OZ. Had no door on the RH Side (as usual) and fortunately was at about 1800 agl. Not a cloud in the sky when without any prior indication the aircraft was slammed up vertically coming instantanously to a stop. The collective was driven out of my hand to full pitch, my feet came off the pedals and my knees up to my ears. Everything in the cabin floated momentarily as it swapped sides and the quacker rolled over the vertical to the RHS. Returning to the controls I naturally dumped collective and recovered the rapidly decending RRPM, unusual attitude and A/S. The VSI was in excess of 2000ft/min as we dropped sideways and the heart was maxed out. Everything was covered in dust that had once lived on the floor and passing 500 AGL I accessed that I still had cyclic and engine so tentatively added some collective and it flew out of the decent.
What happened? A local phenomenon called a Willie Willie. The yanks call it a dust devil and generally it is a mini cyclone. Typically you see a smattering of leaves to indicate that you are approaching one but not on this occaision.
I packed myself but you should've seen the colour of the surveyor face who was sitting beside the open door. Thank God his belt was done up tight.... :eek:

[Skycop]

Roofus,

I'll bet you know all about tail rotor spider bearings now!

Was the landing light on? If so, did you switch it off on the way down the stairs?

P.S. Glad to see you guys get away with it! :)

[CTD]

1. AS350, towing a 33ft geophysics survey bird on a 100ft string in the Kiglapait Mountain range, Northern Labrador, Canada. We went out at dawn to get 20 lines or so done in a 3600ft cirque that hadn't let us in for a week due to high winds. Cirque valley was full of snow and it was summer (you mountain boys already know the rest). The cold air decided to rush out of the cirque while we were descending vertically down the cirque wall on Line 12. We lost 1300-1500 ft and recovered at the bottom.

2. SK61, Canadian Arctic. Blade pocket let go causing serious 1/rev all the way down to the creek bed.

3. B212, Cambodia, Jungle, Monsoon rain, lost, both low fuel lights on. While preparing the pax (14 Bangladeshi soldiers) for the landing (if one could find a place), and inevitably being taken hostage by the NADK, the UN camp we had been looking for came in view. Landed, tried to look cool like nothing ever happened, removed horseshoe, drank large amount of black rum.

[BigThumper]

1. Bell 47J2 – freewheel unit let go at top of torque turn at 250 feet. Poor old Lycoming putting out lots of rpm but not driving anything. Big dent in the ground.

2. Bell 214ST – 3000 ft just going offshore – main rotor drag brace snapped – longest 90 seconds I’ve ever known until we landed in a field.

3. Bell 47J2 – U/S fuel gauge – after a long flight, putting 0.5 gallon of fuel more into the tanks than the flight manual total fuel capacity. Stupid boy!

4. Bolkow 105D – as a passenger – guy up front flies us through an 11,000 volt power line – best firework display I’ve ever seen. :eek:

[sling load]

Some Excellent stories here you guys, well done, my snake was in a container that some Indonesian drilling workers were bring back to camp, (the reason why is beyond me) and it was only after a blood curdling scream from one of them, that I realised something was not right, landed in the nearest clearing and 6 of us got out asap, the snake was under the co pilots seat, DOH DOH DOH!!!


Had a couple more but not as bad as some as you guys,

Keep em coming............... :)

ROOFUS, you sure have a thing about tail rotors mate, at least youre still around to tell all of us about it!!!
:D

[ 14 August 2001: Message edited by: sling load ]

[tigerpic]

shy torque: excellent humour! i was picturing how you look like now when i read "rpm to zero".

i had a really long day, only to continue into the night with a following news flight in the morning on a jetranger that was overloaded with equipment, reporter, and fuel. flying tailwind at 500' along a city street, i pedal-turned (following the centerline of the road) the aircraft so that i could hover into the wind. fatigue made my brain work slower and i didn't think when the helicopter slowly started a descent, and upon reaching 100% torque, the machine suddenly was in a well developed settling with power. nose down (slightly), freeze, and recover 80' over the ground. the reporter was very quiet after that, and i was wide awake! :p

[Jiff]

1. Just started doing my first solo flights, I was it, I knew it all, what do you need an instructor for!!
Decided to spend the morning doing some pattern work, took of from the ramp and started to climb to the down wind leg. During the climb you have to cross some tall trees (about 100ft), decided I was uncomfortable in the seat and shifted my fat but around just like you do in the easy chair at home. Minor problem, this easy chair doesn't have two arms, one of them is a collective, missed the trees by about 3 inches and almost filled my pants in the process.

2. Castle Martin in the late 80's, I'm in the back of a Lynx Mk3 acting as an extra pair of eyes looking for the bogies (Hawks from RAF Valley). Saw two bright lights, called bogie green 090 in my best topgun voice, pilot banked hard to the left, I'm stuck against the cabin door with my face pressed to the window and I'm sure it didn't but from where I was sitting it looked like the fin of this hawk went through the disc. The pilot got a real close look at top side of the Hawk.

Jiff

[tell]

Scariest moment?…pull up a sand bag!
I had just taken off from the Fearless and heading south, low level, when four argentinian jets came over the ridge and headed straight for me. In that brief moment when ones life is supposed to flash etc. all I could think about was why the hell they would want to shoot down little old me and my gazelle. Then they were past, dumped their load around the Fearless and buggered off to the west. I went back to the flight LS for a change of underwear!

Roofus, Did you exceed the slopping ground limits for the aircraft!
;)

[sling load]

I bet the Argentinians weren't too chipper either, thats a great one!

[huey]

Collective Bias,
Great story that might explain what happened to me and a colleage in a B47g.
Flying between Mackay and Rockhampton 1500AGL,overcast but no significant wind,we were suddenly and very violently flipped nose up and over to the right full up collective,all hands and feet off both sets of controls (we had the duals in),baggage in front of us, floating,the biggest,scariest vibrations snd noise you can imagine and a very high rate of descent and spinning.I honestly thought we were dead, we were spinning so violently that neither of us could get our hands back on the controls and I'm not scared to admit I was screaming like a baby.Miraculously at about 500AGL the machine(Christine we like to call her now!) :D came right way up,albeit still vibrating and an RRPM of 200-250,**** the tails gonna come off now, was the only thing going through my head as I desperately tried to wind on throttle.Well the RRPM didnt recover before we managed to land quite gently in a paddock,got out looked the machine over and obviously in a state of shock, got back in and flew the remaining hour to Rocky.

Hopefully thats gonna be my only fright in a Helicopter,I dont think the heart can take much more.

Nick

[jayteeto]

Puma, Belizzzzzzzzze, Oil cooler exploded with holes on the cowlings and cabin roof, cabin filled with smoke, MGBP&T, I s##t myself and then autorotate into a jungle clearing with a big splash. Tail drive shaft bent and top deck a real mess. It's not all Pina Coladas you know! :eek:

[ 15 August 2001: Message edited by: jayteeto ]

[collective bias]

Huey...
Christine...haha.
Yeah, once that collective is out of your hold she's all the way max pitch. Glad I'm not the only sucker. Sure makes you hang on tight in the future :D
I just remembered another scary one while offshore. The flying pilot barely lifted to 25ft off the platform and reached Max N1 on both. He started to fiddle with the beeps to squeeze a little more performance out of her, diverting his attention inside rather than outside. The quartering wind then decided to push us back towards the crane and fortunately I noticed the movement out of the chin bubble. I glanced over my shoulder to see all the pax on my side staring in a concerned manner at the BIG yellow crane a good 10ft from the disk. A few exclamations etc and a little encouragement to rotate and the problem was solved :eek:
Its also not nice on finals when its hot, heavy and committed and the crane started rotating towards the helideck. :D

[John Eacott]

Cranes? Hateful things, we had so much trouble with them in the NS in the 70's, with so much construction going on, we eventually wouldn't land on some platforms unless the crane driver was ID'd standing outside his cab, with no one else inside!

Concerned moments in a helicopter? Hanging forward in my straps, looking at the ground <50ft away, with the toe of one skid (LongRanger) hooked on a powercable whilst filming a car commercial, sending a Mayday on the wrong freq...

Feeling of hope when max torque was followed by a very loud "Twang" as the 2 km of power cable pulled off the poles finally broke, followed by a further sense of frustration when the full aft cyclic chopped off the tail boom. Got down hard, but level, and all walked away. Sort of ... ;)

[vaqueroaero]

Although I don't have a lot of time I have had one experience that truly got my heart rate up. My instructor and myself we up in the mountains in Southern California practicing pinnacle landings in an R22. We knew that there was an airshow at one of the local airfields. We were coming in to land and were about 400 feet agl and about the same 'inland' from the edge of steep valley. All of a sudden a P-51 Mustang burst up and over the edge of the slope at about 50 feet agl heading straight at us. My instructor grabbed the controls and banked us hard round out of the way. The Mustang banked hard the other way, his wingtip barely missing the ground. He passed just in front and below us and then pulled up, did a barrel roll and disappeared. Hell of a way to see a Mustang close up but left my nerves in tatters!

[Lu Zuckerman]

Actually, my hairiest moment took place outside of the helicopter. I was among a group of helicopter mechanics getting checked out in being hoisted and operating the hoist. I was picked up from a concrete runway on about 100 feet of cable. I was attached with the old type of horse collar and the only thing that kept me from falling out was by crossing my arms. The hoist operator started winching me in and when I was about 70 feet off the ground the pilot for whatever reason started to move off with me hanging on the cable. He moved towards a stand of trees and I thought he was going to drag me through the treetops. The winch operator brought my plight to the attention of the pilot and he slowed to a hover and I was winched into the helicopter. My only thought during those few minutes was that the pilot did not experience a power failure.

[HeliMark]

Several years ago my partner and I were flying through a canyon. My partner was flying, and I was looking down at the ground when I saw we were going over major high tension power lines and not much higher then they were. I looked at my partner, figured he had not seen them and motioned with my hand that we had to climb as I was also telling him over the intercom. His reply was SH** can't, look above. Sure enough there were the "lighting" wires for the power lines above us.

We flew right through the center of the arch between the "lighting" wires and power lines at 80kts. Pants change on that one.

[HeloTeacher]

I've had a couple:

New on the 212 and not accustomed to boggy landing areas. On take-off one skid let go suddenly and nearly rolled over before the second let go.

Co-pilot in a 412 in northern Labrador, night medevac flight, snowstorm and NVG's, low fuel and last bit of transit over water. The flying pilot lost reference and we impacted the water. After a relatively long ordeal, rescued 34 hours later. All injured but survived.

Climbing in an R22 at 25" MP and the student inadvertantly chopped the throttle, took most of the next 500' to realize what she had done.

Ab initio instruction night dual flight. The student was confusing the runways and I was trying to explain the ground references and traffic pattern to follow. I looked left to check for any traffic (nobody on frequency but let's look anyway). All I saw was a big windscreen full of airplane, bright lights and rivets. Stopped the student from turning into his flight path and away we went.

Too many in flight training to mention.

---Moral of the story is :eek: ...I learn from every one of them and make sure I never make the same mistake again. And if I can learn from someone else all the better.

[Tipstrike]

Taking off at night in a Seaking from Her Majesty's grey funnel line, two spot ship, aft spot, 3am in the morning, overcast, rain/drizzle combined with funnel smoke. Cleared to go by the marshaller (green wand)and as I pulled collective, the nose rotated up, corrected with cyclcic, checked the autopilot, OK, pulled more collective and nose went rapidly up to above 45 deg, despite cyclic hard against the instrument panel, lost sight of the ship, saw the back of the the AI. By now my brain was rapidly searching for an explanation, and I remembered from the tech log that the primary hydraulic servos had beeen serviced that day. Convinced that the cyclic longitudinal controls had been rigged the wrong way round, I moved the cyclic aft to see if that would bring the nose down, at the same time as the tail lashing (still attached for those who haven't got that far) parted. The aircraft rapidly shot forward across the deck and I managed to stop it in time to make a rather hasty and untidy landing on the forward spot (luckily clear of aircraft). If I hadn't moved the cyclic aft I am convincved we would have gone into the hangar. Worst thing was that the aircraft was needed on task so following a rotors running check of the aft tail lashing attachmment, we were ordered to launch for the allotted tasking. Four hearts still doing 180 beats/minute three hours later, as I made the worst landing ever on recovery to the ship. Flight Deck operations were significantly changed after that one!

I'm still learning!


:eek:

[John Eacott]

Talking of King Dippers and the Grey Funnel Line, one of our lookers had his worst moment when I was on mid finals for an aft facing landing on Eagle. Amazing how much HOT oil can leak out of the MGB onto the back seat, and how little concern or sympathy can be elicited from the drivers up front, no matter how much pain you are in :D

http://www.helicopterservice.com.au/gallery/seaking/Eagle_from_aft_facing_landing.jpg

Then there was the cross decking to Forrestal, ending with a late night departure. When Flyco called wind red 180, 25kts, we (I, to take the blame...) started a ground taxi spot turn out to port, to avoid a hover with the wind up my chuff. As we got to face due port, into the total black, Flyco came up a tad concerned and advised the wind now red 90. OK, good enough for a go, pull pitch, 100% Tq to maintain hover, lots of left cyclic, no visual reference, sudden panic as the co looks out the left window to see us drifting into the New York sized fire truck they keep on deck. Rapid overtorque, fall over the side and climb to 200', sort out a trip back to Mother.

The confusion? Flyco was giving wind relative to us, not relative to the ship's head, as we expected. Learnt LOTS from that one! Fortunately, Forrestal had a
very wide flight deck :cool:
http://www.helicopterservice.com.au/gallery/seaking/Forrestal_deck_park_02.jpg

[ 20 August 2001: Message edited by: John Eacott ]

[ShyTorque]

Here's one to ponder.

I was instructing a basic student in a Gazelle. He was hover taxying for a low-level navex which needed a whole bunch of maps. As we approached the departure point he realised he had the wrong map at the top of the stack. After trying to sort his maps in the hover he asked me to take control (left hand seat), which I did. He had applied far too much collective friction in the hover, so I instinctively swapped hands (left hand now on cyclic) and reached across to his collective lever to roll off the friction with my right hand.

As the collective friction came loose, the collective dropped so the aircraft descended.

Brain transmitted: "Aircraft descending in hover, left hand pull up on collective".

Unfortunately, left hand was on cyclic due to swapped hands. Left hand pulled back on cyclic instead, so aircraft moved backwards.

Brain transmitted: "Aircraft moving back, right hand push forward on cyclic".

Unfortunately, right hand was on RH collective so it lowered collective instead. Aircraft descended even quicker.

Brain transmitted: "Aircraft now descending even quicker, left hand pull up on collective even more!" So it moved the cyclic back instead, the aircraft moved back even quicker.......

Anyone guess what happened next, as Brain wondered if aircraft controls had failed?

:eek:

[Semi Rigid]

Scariest moment OUTSIDE of a helicopter - monitoring a student on 2nd solo in an H300 land on the tarmac instead of the grass. He forgot all about recovery from ground resonance and the bird proceeded to thrash itself to bits, severing the tail boom in the process. Tail rotor was still spinning and made a target out of me!
I was standing about 20m away but that tail boom and empennage was honking. It missed, I lived.
Incredible watching a 70kg bloke being tossed around in the cabin like that - even with shoulder straps on.
Why didn't I run?
I was glued to the spot willing him to raise the lever during his impromptu side show ride.
:rolleyes:

[ShyTorque]

No, the student didn't take control; he had his head down.

Brain suddenly went into failsafe/survival mode and told right hand to pull collective. Due to lightning-fast responses (QHIs are renowned for this :rolleyes: ), the aircraft did a rapid rearwards transition over the low fence a few metres behind. Normal service was resumed shortly afterwards when brain told hands to swap back!

No damage and no overtorque but the tail must have got extremely close to the ground and the fence.

I admitted my mistake to Flight Commander after return. A severe listening-to was given to him as he told me what a stupid prat I was. I agreed but argued that it should be publicised because it might happen to another QHI and someone might hit the tail or worse (some were even more stupid than me). He said no, it was just me.

About three weeks later he broke the regs by flying solo GH in a Gazelle from the left hand seat. He went to the relief landing ground, adjusted the friction by swapping hands - and hit the tail hard. After that all QHIs were briefed on the problem and got a chance to (try to) hover in the left hand seat with hands swapped, under the careful eye of a CFS instructor. Most of them did the same as me or worse!

Beware! That problem is still out there, you Gazelle guys

ShyT :D

[Gainesy]

Late '80s, Norway, I was a pax in the back of a Royal Marines Lynx in formation with a RM Gazelle doing a photo shoot, we were about 100ft apart in his 4, same level. Suddenly someone called Break!Break! and a civvy twin-piston (Baron?) flashed past about 50-100ft above us opposite course. Few seconds of swearing and we start to settle down when this 'kin great orange torpedo thing went past in between us & the Gazelle just below our level. It took us a few seconds to figure the orange thing was a target drogue & the Baron was a target tug and the wire had been between the pair of us for a good ten seconds. It went very quiet. Lead pilot filed an airmiss, it turned out that he was a Swedish contractor doing some runs for the Norwegian AAA mates and had gone way outside of his Notamed area.

Edited to change late 70s to late 80s.

[ 22 August 2001: Message edited by: Gainesy ]

[sling load]

Gainsey,
Thats an absolute beauty!! Thats the sort of stuff that makes you shake your head and wonder how did I get out of that!

It reminded me of an incident when I was towing a survey torpedo, we had long survey lines over mountain terrain, and the survey lines took about 30 mins each way at 150ft agl, up and down like a roller coaster. The early morning was the worst working into the sun for about 4 runs east. Anyway, on the way back west on about the 2nd run I saw a hug single span wire at about 300agl and climbed rapidly to clear the torpedo we were towing 100ft below us, the operator asked me why we were climbing and I promptly told him very colourfully, why,to which he replied "why didn't you go under it like you did on the 1st run?"

He thought I had decided to go under it first time, and never bothered to tell me about it thinking i had seen it!!!

He bought the beers that night, and after that, he was spotting wires every day, you couldn't shut him up!

[CTD]

Great stories, Lads.

Semi-Rigid, you stirred up a memory with your question "why didn't I run"......

From the "glued in place, blithering idiot" file.... Somalia, 1994, on the ramp in Mogadishu. Camp under sniper attack. Refueller guy gets hit in the neck with bullet, just behind me. Cobras are up, fixin' to seek and destroy the perpetrators. Self says "Gee, wouldn't it be great to have some video of the Cobra firing rockets?" Of course it would, so I stood out in the middle of the ramp, my camera fixed on the Cobras. After some time, all the cracking and whizzing sounds elicited a sudden rush of common sense, mixed with pee-in-the-pants fear. I dove into my all-metal 212 for cover. :rolleyes:

[helimutt]

In my very few hours, nothing scary has happened really except while transiting Wattisham overhead at 1500' with clearance, they let off a radiosonde just as I was there. I still wonder how I didn't wrap the balloons wires around the main rotors. It couldn't have been any closer without contacting the a/c.
This was in a Robinson R22 and I definitely needed a clean pair of pants afterwards, and many expletives from me to ground which went unanswered.

Only other one was when I pressed the TX button on the cyclic,(R22 again) the low rotor rpm horn came on. (i'm sure I thought about things for more than 1.2 seconds!!)
Me and the pax had increased heartbeats for a while.
Nothing like some of the stories here, thank God.

And they say helicopters are a safe form of transport.??!!!! :eek: :eek:

[Harry Peacock]

Out night pinging in the good old Sea King....Flash green grenade!!(Submarine signal) the 3 helo's out there all rush to the one point in space to Hack/Maim/Kill the tube..I wonder why one of the other doesn't give way like it says in the rules.... he passes just behind us... we all take up our sectors and I then check our lights ....Lights Master switch off = no external lights....OPS!!

Gazelle 'fenestron stall' again 8-900' slow left hand turn trying to turn inside other mutual helo (Well we all do it!!) suddenly it's going round VERY fast with no change with pedal input. Finaly try dumping the collective and it snaps out !! Mate in other helo said 'If planed manouvre... very impressive' but I know the truth.

Being tasked as an 'expendable asset' during Falklands '82. Night, Fog (200m vis aprox) go and visualy identify unknown surface contact!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (If you come back we know what it is, If you don't we'll sink it!!) Nice for us.....Fortunatly a Brit ship but there was 30 mins or so of serious self preservation planning!!!!!!!!!!!!
:rolleyes:

[Lefthanddown]

All very early in flying career.
A weekend away with the girlfriend in an R22 to Southwold. I had planned the whole trip (but not the legs)very carefully, totally ignoring the fact that there was a day in between and the wind had changed significantly against me. Too long into the return flight it dawned on me that there wasn't an airfield nearby and that I didn't have enough fuel to make it back. Then the low fuel light came on. There were pylons everywhere but I managed to land and after 5hrs get enough 100ll back into it to make it home.
Didn't do that again.

The other event. Having upgraded to the R44 and having been in too much of a rush to depart to Snowdon for the w/e I rushed the checks. No problems but something really niggled during the whole journey, I just couldn't put my fnger on it. Having gone over Snowdon, it was time to descend into the Seoint Manor. Pull carb heat before lowering lever except that it wasn't the carb heat and I hadn't caged the mixture. Then I knew what was nagging me..the toggle still on the dash. Luckily I slammed the mixture back in so quickly the engine kept running. Sure changed the colour of my pants and didn't help the heartbeat of the Instructor who had taken control and was wondering where he was going to put it down.
I learnt never to rush the checks and what a full stoppage in a Robbo feels like. :eek: :eek: :eek:

[4HolerPoler]

Here's one for the "scariest moments outside a helicopter" list - Landed a 105 in the top of a really pretty (aren't they all) waterfall - tail over the drop and skids were under the water; I bounced it a few times and it felt good so I gave the OK for the pax to deplane and waited for the rundown. Joining the happy campers, just as I stepped off the skid she rotated on the aft of the skids, going tail first over the waterfall. :eek: In a flash of self-preservation I leaped back onto the front of the tube and she slowly came back down. It was the last waterfall I ever landed in.

[BigThumper]

Good one, 4HolerPoler. That reminds me of a somewhat similar incident I had with a 105 offshore Holland in the early 70’s – not a scary moment as I wasn’t with the helicopter when it happened.

Landed on the Lay Barge LB27 for a shutdown and lunch. This thing had two huge cranes that ran up and down each side of the barge on a kind of railway track, but the helideck was hinged on both sides so it could be lowered and the cranes could pass.

Well, I never thought anyone would be daft enough to lower the helideck away from underneath the 105 whilst we were at lunch, but they sure did. Came back on deck to find the rear third of one of the skids with air underneath it. Nearly wet myself. An early lesson in Never, Ever, Just Never Assume!

[CTD]

Ahhhhh Thumper. Assumption, ain't it grand.

1987. Northern Peninsula, Newfoundland, Canada. We had a fuel cache at a gas station with several drums of rocket fuel stashed there. Had fuelled there dozens of times in the past, so I ASSUMED I could fuel there again.

Well, this time I was flying a Hughes 500D on fixed floats, with three Dept of Fisheries enforcement types aboard. Fresh snow on the ground, so I approached to a high hover to blow it away while I used the corner of the building for reference. Descending slowly, I noticed a weird white line working its way up the windshield so I halted the descent to focus on what it was. It was a wire. A white one. Turns out, the hardware store next door was owned by the same guys, and they had just installed an intercom to chat back and forth. The wire ran directly overhead our fuel cache.

I just realized, I have far too many stupid stories, hence my new signature.

[StevieTerrier]

Pleasure flying duties at an air display in N. Yorkshire RAF base. The agreement (and also published in the Pilots notes) was that the area to the east of the main runway would be "protected" for the PF operations, which would take place all day long whilst the air show was in progress. The weather was foul, and all the air show participants everybody were putting on their "flat" performances. I was happily trudging off out to the east a couple of miles, turning round and returning, hour after hour, all very mundane. Until a Tornado four-ship departed, turned right instead of left, and passed me two in front, two behind with a separation I still have nightmares about. Being a conscientious sort, I reported this to the controller, who replied "Standby". That was the last I heard from him.

[sling load]

Thankyou to all the contributors to this thread, all of us have learned a great deal.

Im still shaking my head about the towing plane between the two helis, now that is scary.........

[fishboy]

Flying a Hughes 500 from a tuna boat in the Pacific. 45 miles from the boat in "not so nice weather" I had a Mr transmission chip light! nothing to do but fly back to the boat. There's no search and rescue out there!

Another Hughes 500, flying straight and level at around 400 feet over dense forest. A sudden, and very loud bang, accompanied by a strong vibration and smoke in the cockpit. I put out a mayday call on our HF radio, again, another remote location. Fortunately found clearing to put the machine into, and landed without further damage. It turned out to be a drain tube falling into the oil cooler blower fan. I really thought the helicopter was going to fall apart. That was the first time I have ever been in the air wishing I was on the ground.

[Check 6]

This took place in the summer of 1999. I was conducting a law enforcement search in an MD500D down a narrow river canyon in Northern California. I was PIC but another pilot was flying while I was looking for a cabin cruiser on the river.

We were cruising at approximately 60 KIAS. While looking out the left side I observed a powerline tower on the left river bank with powerlines crossing the canyon immediately ahead of us. I fortunately reacted by yelling "wires" and rapidly lowered my collective with the heel of my left hand while changing my view to the front.

The powerlines passed within ten feet above the main rotor.

My partner is still buying me dinners for that one.

[Fool on the Hill]

Whatsarunway.
your not familiar with the sound of grinding skids on government tarmac by any chance. :p :p

[Heliport]

While searching for something else I came across this old thread. We've got many more members now than in 2001 so I thought it might be worth bringing it to the top.

TC
Now you've got the hang of posting pics, what were you going to post? (Third post)


Let the stories roll ......... http://www.click-smilies.de/sammlung/aktion/action-smiley-085.gif

[rotorusa]

My first ever solo cross-country flight took me down the beach from Fort Lauderdale to Watson Island, Miami (a garbage strewn grass field posing as a heliport).

At the time, there was a small helicopter tour company operating out of a quonset hut there, with two six foot grass mounds in front for helipads. Never having been there before, I nervously hovered over and onto one of the mounds, assuming that this was the local FBO where I would be promptly provided with fuel and refreshments.

Shortly a person appeared, gestured to me and then walked up to the helicopter. I uncupped my right ear in happy anticipation of the cordial exchange that was sure to follow, pilot to service person. His words, after leaning into the aircraft to get as close to my ear as possible: "GET... THE... F%&#*... OFF... MY... PAD!". I nearly crapped my pants.

[Lowlevldevl]

I'd just finished a days mustering in a H-300 at a remote Quennsland cattle station on Cape York Peninsula. After re-fuelling and packing my swag, etc; into the machine, I departed to the south. While climbing to 500 AGL I called flight service with my details. No sooner had I got my acknowledgement from Cairns FS than the sky went dark. I looked up to see a B-52 from Guam directly overhead about 200 feet above screaming away on exactly my heading. Talk about 'aluminium overcast'! Australia had agreed to allow the Yanks to conduct low level long range navigation exercises over northern Australia at the time. They didn't monitor our frequencies and wouldn't give any more than vague details about where they would be and when to the Australian authorities. I hate to think what would have happened if I'd departed just one minute earlier. Somebody later told me that the purpose of the nav-ex's was to practice 'radiation runs'. The pilots would fly with lead shutters over the windscreen. Sole reference to the outside world via closed circuit television. Scary.

[Lowlevldevl]

Mr Selfish

That is of course good advice. Trouble is, that particular incident happened prior to transponders being required for ops in CTA in Oz. The majority of GA a/c here simply didn't have them. Especially those operating 99% of the time in the bush where these nav exercises were conducted. Today it would be different.

[Steve76]

First jolly in Canada as boss of said S76.
Called out at 10pm back at about 12...Fly past beautifully clear airport. Land at hospital. Hour later climbing out vertically, hear controller reporting fog? Eh!? Look to left and sure enough plenty of fog submerging the airport 5 miles away. Hmmm, that wasn't reported. Land, call controller and asked him to call us when it clears or vis becomes really good (note to self: Fog never clears in Canada at night)

45 mins later phone call..."3.5miles vis here, good to go!" SWEET, home to comfy sofa, TV etc.....
Launch over to airport with increasing suspicion that the controller has forgotten his glasses this evening. Sure enough it isn't pretty...scan instruments...**** only 400lbs...oh well back to the helipad.
Can you guess what happens when you lift off into saturated air with a 10000lb helo...? It mixes a lot of fog...

Two approaches to helipad...No vis...no good. Quick decision and a race back to the airport. Try there...No good. DAMN.

Rock:ME:Hard place.

Cojoe starting to show signs of concern now....

Time for fast command decision... Righto, get me the nearest approach now.. time to break minimums or end up practicing IFR auto technique.

Line up for nearest approach (LOC/VOR) and trying to figure out what the hell is going on with the navaid. Cojoe has selected wrong freq. Sort that out. T
ell cojoe to get **** togther and call out ROD and Radalt...tis time for offshore IFR technique time...

Decend into fog more focused on ROD/airspeed than ever before, seconds pass and the lead in lights (on full bore...) materialise. Check ROD, thanks to GOD, focus and land.

Ground taxied for about 400 metres cause I really didn't have the energy to hover.

[rwm]

Had tq limiting problem. So go for a flight to see. Pilot is about 50ft agl. Pulls collective and rotor drops drasticaly. He keeps pulling to show me how much it will droop. At 85%rrpm I grab onto the seat for the hard landing, he finaly drops collective we fall a bit and then recover. Go back, change tcu and this time load heli with ballast. Same pilot lets his cojo fly this time. Rotor droops to 79%rrpm about 10ft agl as I'm enthusiasticaly telling the pilot that he can put it down, then the heli settles on the ground with a bit of a thump and a small dance.

Was doing flour bombing in a 172. We come in about 10ft above the lake, pull up to clear the trees, and fly tree top to a small clearing were the pilot had succesively dropped a wing 10+ times for the passenger to open the window and drop the bag of flour onto the circle. Well This time I have the window open, ready, when he drops the wing too soon, and we smack a wing. We managed to land back at the field, and inspect the plane. Big dent and some tearing to the l/e of the right wing. Still has a large branch sticking out.

Flying in a glider as a young kid, when the bimbo who was flying decided that she didn't like her approach and decided to go around. She banked so hard that the wing was a few feet off the ground. We made a 180, before we ran out of air and landed hard.

Flying in a 412 we finish the test flight, and pilot decieds it is a good time to hot dog. We chase this fox on the ground until copilot says trees! Pilot pulls up hard, copilot yells DUCKS! Pilot banks hard, and then levels out and flys home calmly. We land and spent many hours removing green from the blade tips.

[Flytest]

I was in Navy Sea King 5 years ago, at Lorient in France. We were computer trimming, so we did some auto's. ATC cleared us from 3500' to ground over the active runway... Naturally we questioned the instruction, 3 times, but were assured we were clear on the active, so from 95kts and 111% Tq, we dumped the lever and sat back to enjoy the descent... only to be rudely interrupted by a howling banshee, who was in fact our radar operator in the back, screaming "Break right". Needless to say, our P1 and hero, grabbed an armfull of collective, a shedload of right cyclic garnished with a hefty helping from his boot and we duly banked high hard and handsomely to the right, thus avoiding an "Atlantique" which ATC had cleared for take off while we were in auto's, and was blazing a course straight up our vertically descending chuff.

I remember looking out over Lorient and thinking "this is a dumb place to die"

Thankfully our observer that night felt the need to mess about with the radar and spotted the impending doom, so here's to you wherever you are Jules:ok:

PS French ATC were a trifle sheepish about the incident:mad:

[Winnie]

Jepp, been there too...

When doing first supervised solo with my student from Nigeria (in Calif), I asked multiple times if the student was ready for solo, and having convinced me through abilities I let him go (with about 30 hours). The student did his circuit and ended up in an extremely unstable hover, about 200' AGL, before he did a go around. On the next pass hedid a quasi normal approach about 500' further down than the pad we were working from. Had to change my pants after.

Or when teaching hovering here in Canada, over a bog/swamp when the student decides it is time to push the cyclic all the way forward. I swear the tips weren't more than a quarter inch from the ground! I had to shout "LET GO OF THE CONTROLS":oh: for him to release, and when I finally got controls, I calmly said "I have controls" and we went home to change underwear again!:suspect:

[the wizard of auz]

Being a newbie rotorhead but a well seasoned fixed wing pilot I decided it was time to have a bash at these whirlymagig thingys, after all, it cant be that hard for a 4500hr mustering pilot with plenty of machine operating experiance. after chastizing the instructor for talking to me like I was a abinitio idiot (a point that was later proved beyond all doubt) and telling him how rediculess it was for me to have to do all these hours for a licence conversion coz I have read .all the books and have all the theory on why it flys sorted and I can work the rest out myself, we wandered all out to the choppa. well I managed to get it starrted and yoinked a big handfull of collective in, cause thats what the book said made it go up and it all turned to sh1t from there. we did about 720deg and managed to climb and then decend a few feet before the instructor decided I had learned my lesson and showed me I really knew frig all about whirlymagiging after all. after about ten or so hours they kindly reconected the cyclic ( or so it seemed) and I can tame the little beasty now. well it doesnt sound all that hair raising but for a bloke that can operate almost any sort of earth moving equiptment and flys "hands on, seat of the pants" all day, it was a big eye opener. :O Thanks Dave and Derick for putting up with me whilst I learned how to drive that tricky lil bugga. :ok:
Oh, for a fixed wing pilot , 0 airspeed is pretty hard to get used to and that very first auto.......... well you would be suprised how long you can yell the word sh11111111t.

[Marc Tower]

Wiz:

I know the feeling! While at Ft. Rucker, trying to hover a TH-55, my instructor said "I want you to remember how you just did that."

I, of course, asked "why?"

"Because when you learn to fly, you won't be able to!" he said, as he continued to enjoy the 20 acre whirling tour we were on.

:O

[SASless]

A couple of memorable events....

In thick cloud...enroute to the Ninian Field from Sumbrugh...Co doing the nav board....me keeping the biggish markings aligned...... looked up and out.....in time to see a BAH 61 whiz by in the opposite direction....guy in left seat wearing a wooly pully ....the other guy with a white shirt and necktie pulled loose, and a ball cap....neither one looking out. Later thought I must have been hallucinating.....was the only one of the four that saw it happen. Co asked me if I was okay...seemed my control touch had gone....hard to say you are ok....with your stomach in your throat! I must have turned blue before I got my breathing restarted.

Ferrying a Hughes 500 to Lafayette, Louisana from Deadhorse, Alaska.....at the end of a summer flying season. Landed at Cedar City, Utah for some quick maintenance. Headed south towards the airport at the Grand Canyon.....very...very...very hazy day. No attitude indicator...no airspeed indicator....maintenance stop had been wasted.....thus cruising at the extreme altitude of maybe 300 feet....maybe. Map on my knee...trying to make things fit the map....wondering just where the heck is this thing called the Grand Canyon. Needing two hands to re-fold the map...cyclic between my knees...head in the cockpit...map up in front me....pulled the map down as I got it folded....looked out and .........Nothing! I had flown off the north side of the canyon and went from 2-300' to 4-5000' in a flash.....

Was able to keep a glimpse of the north rim....panic turn to get back maintaining reference....landed....and took a long time to get over my mild case of jitters. It took an hour for my knees to quit shaking.

:uhoh:

[HeliMark]

Flying a 500 in the Mojave desert, attempting to go over the mountains to a request for us. It was cloudy, some light rain, but no thunderstorms or anything that looked worse then I have seen numerous times before. First attempt at the direct route failed due to turbulance, so I went for my favorite canyon pass that I normally use for this type of situation. I just get into the canyon and find myself in a great updraft. VSI is pegged at over 3K' a minute and I have the collective on the floor. Now I am worried as that cloud above is getting really close, and fast, the helicopter is not really responding well, and about the only thing reliable on the instrument panel is the engine instruments. Was able to do a 180 and get out of it just as I was punching into the cloud deck. We went back to the hangar and set down for awhile after that.

[B222]

Hanging out the door of a 206L with a genius trying to pick up 2 survivors of a heli crash on the skids, in 60 kt wind, in a mean sea !!

[sikhorsey]

8 ship Blackhawk form in trail, landing in long thin valley. All aircraft touching down at pretty much same time. Me in #4, with tailwheel on ground knowing #5 about 1 rotor behind, when #3 decides he wants to come backwards, so begins to fill my windscreen with nothing but rotor blades. Now I know what a fish in a blender must feel like.

[NickLappos]

Doing the snow trials in the S-76 at Des Moins Iowa, flying 2 hours with ceiling 100 feet obscured, vis 1/8 mile in snow, blowing snow and fog, doing continuous ILS approaches with missed approaches, so I can keep close in case an engine quits. We have a TV strapped to the center console to show if snow is building up on either engine firewall. 99% of each circuit is hard white IMC, broken up only by 10 seconds of the approach light display at the bottom of each circuit.

Controllers change shift at 4 pm, and new controller asks our intentions on this next approach. With 450 pounds of gas (50 minutes) I tell him we'll make this a full stop. He says nocando, the airport is closed, there are 15 inches of snow on all runways and taxiways, and the plows are everywhere. Unsafe, you know.

My cross check gets somewhat sticky while I picture a twilight auto into the winter wonderland below. I say that I cleared this with the tower chief 4 hours ago, we are experimental and its ok. He says airport manager owns the airport, and we must go somewhere else. I say there is nowhere else I can get to, I am coming in. He reads FARs to me. I say that is too bad, I'm coming in, do I have to declare an emergency to get him to understand?

One more very quiet ILS then he says the tower chief (at home by now with pipe and slippers) forgot about us up there, but he agrees I am owed a full stop.

(Wasn't it George Carlin who said "Never get on a non-stop flight? You want it to stop somewhere!")

The new landing clearance says "pilot discretion" six times in one sentence, and warns of plows and obstructions. I make the next one at 50 knots, end up in a running hover. Out of the fuzzy world come 4 snow plows abreast coming at me on the main runway. They stop, I land. Where are the taxiways? I look at airport diagram, realize I am lost, call on ground freq and ask for a follow-me truck. He gets lost. My crew finds me with the truck they are driving, we slowly taxi back to the ramp, takes about 1 hour.

When I shut down, I could not get out, my knees were still shaking. Piece of cake.

[Lu Zuckerman]

My scariest moment actually was not in a helicopter but getting into the helicopter. It was in Traverse City, Michigan in the middle of the winter. The tarmac was covered in ice. We had just wheeled our HO4-S out to take off position and placed “ice chocks” around both main landing gear. The pilot had warmed the engine up and was ready to lift off. I was crawling up the side of the helicopter to get into the left-hand seat when the pilot lifted off. The pilot saw my hand on the windowsill and he set the helicopter down. One of the main wheels set down on an ice chock and it did not move. By this time the helicopter was in a tilted position and the pilot lifted off again. My hand or should I say my wedding ring got caught on the window sill as the helicopter started to rise and I was hanging by my wedding ring. It took a lot of strength to get my right hand on the windowsill in order to pull myself up in order to get into the seat. That was the only time I was glad I was married.

In another instance we were practicing hoist pickups in an HO3-S and it was my turn in the horse collar. The pilot picked me up until I was about fifty feet over the tarmac and instead of winching me up, he started to move. He was traveling at a high rate with me hanging from the hoist and heading for a stand of pine trees. He eventually winched me in as he dropped the helicopter to the ground. My feet and the wheels hit the ground at the same time.

[Jcooper]

Nick,
Having been born and raised in Des Moines, I can say with much confidence that your instance is probably the most exciting thing ever to hit Des Moines. :)

Im a young lad with few hours so my scariest moment so far has been switching in a matter of a day from the moron that is allowed to screw up cause the guy next to me will fix it to the guy that has to fix whatever the moron does.

Cooper

[SASless]

Old Man Lappos was not at the controls while you rode the horse collar was he LU? Might explain why young Mr. Lappos takes such delight in stringing you along!

[Agaricus bisporus]

Helping a scary, raddled old trollop in a miniskirt out of a B206 at a posh horserace, she was/had been married (?) to a Rolling Stone. Couldn't help but notice she wasn't wearing knickers, terrified she'd notice what I'd seen.

terrifying...hideous!

ugh!

[MPT]

G'day All,

Hmmm, where to start?? With my training I guess!!

First flight after gaining my shiny new GFPT and permitted to carry passengers. The weather in the training area was a trifle on the poo side so my mate was happy just to do circuits on the airport. Everything went really well, I was so professional and didn't show off at all (probably didn't have the mental capacity left to show off, such was the stress of just doing it right). Time to head back to the main pad on the other side of the airport, just turning onto final at 500' and the R22's clutch light starts flickering. "Please go out, please, please!!" Hmmm, instead of going out as requested, it comes on and stays on. About 0.00001 microseconds before the collective goes down and I get to practice my autorotational technique, it flickers and goes out. My worst landing of the day is then achieved in front of the hanger. As we went inside, my friend remarked how smooth it all was and how much he enjoyed it. After a change of underwear, I told the maintenance people, who informed me that they were changing the belts that afternoon after my flight anyway.

A couple of weeks later, on another "passenger" flight, again on final approach, the machine started shaking violently and it felt like the main rotor was about to depart from the aircraft. The collective went down and instantly the shaking stopped. Not really wanting to do a real auto landing and as all the instruments were OK, I pulled pitch (gingerly) and all was well. What had happened was that we had picked up a plastic supermarket bag on the main rotor and unbalanced it (the guys in the tower called and let us know). This time my passenger was a bit more subdued until all was explained and he has flown with me many times over the years since, but always likes to remind me of his first flight.

After two emergency changes of underwear in a couple of weeks, I had to wait a few years for the next.

Cheers,

MPT

(probably a fair bit of nodding going on amongst you at present!!!)

[Crashondeck]

I was a new AFI doing autos with a very competent student. He had done 2 previous sorties doing autos with colleague, even to the stage of closing the throttle himself. We fully briefed it, completed checks etc. What I forgot was he was a plank driver. So when I called "practice engine failure - go" he reacted naturally (for a plank driver) and closed the throttle and hung onto the lever. The R22 RRPM needle reacted naturally in that configuration and fell like a stone. Fortunately I reacted naturally - pushed the collective neatly through the floor and I still have the cyclic grip imprinted on my belly.

I remember seeing the RRPM needle at 82%. By the time we had recovered we had zero airspeed but plenty of RRPM - almost too much and heart rates of 200. Learnt alot that day.

[ShyTorque]

Once got held south of Kai Tak airport, waiting for multiple landing airliners. We were orbitting at about 60 kts. I was waiting to cross to the helicopter dispersal on the north side. The heaviest rain I have ever seen in almost 30 years of flying began to fall, with lightning flashes all around and strong gusty winds.

Everyone was trying to land to escape the weather, some airliner aircraft then began going around, we could hear them. The downpour suddenly increased in intensity and I began losing visual reference so I was obliged to come to the hover by the south shore of Victoria Harbour, using a concrete support for the elevated roadway adjacent to the water as my sole hover reference. I would have preferred to hover further out over the water but as usual there were a lot of ships passing and it would have been too risky. I could see NOTHING but that piece of concrete, about 5 metres outside the disk, for about ten minutes. ATC then asked if I could cross immediate, I said negative and explained our predicament and where we were.

After about the ten minutes of this, the rain eased slightly and I got ATC crossing clearance. I had to get the crewman to clear behind for ships so I could turn round and transition away. As soon as we approached the runway, the rain increased again so the vis was only about 10 metres or so! I saw the runway go underneath us at 90 degrees and briefly saw grass, but then lost all forward vis. I told ATC I could not hover taxi any further and landed on the next piece of tarmac immediately beneath us. We then became completely IMC on the ground. ATC asked our location and we had to admit we weren't sure but knew we were down the southeast end of the taxiway and certain we were clear of the runway on the north side (they still had a stream of inbound traffic).

We had to sit there for about another ten minutes until the storm went through. We radioed ops to look out of the window to see if they could see us across the "nullah" but they couldn't. ATC spoke to a taxying 747 and asked if he could see us but he couldn't either, very worrying. At one point I considered shutting down and running away!

When the rain eased, we were about 10 metres outside the fire section doors, but we hadn't seen the building at all. Good job they weren't called out, they would have hit us! It then took us only about 10 seconds to fly across to our dispersal.

The worst concern was that we were either going to get hit from behind by a ship whilst hovering over the harbour, or run over by a Jumbo once on the ground. They were still able to taxy, but we were generating our own IMC from the torrential rain hitting the rotor disc. :(

[Chimbu chuckles]

While I'm a plank driver myself I have had the need to ride in fling wings a few times.

When a Cessna 185 that I owned was crashed north of Port Moresby I rode in a MD500E into the crash site, in a tiny valley, to check for survivors, and the only way to get close was to hover down into a creek. My fearless flingwingdriva asked me to watch for branches thicker than my thumb while he hacked his way down to the creekbed with the main rotor:ooh:

He then hovered with one skid on a rock and the other over white water while I gingerly crawled out and walked up to the wreck...no survivors...we then left several villagers there to cut a bush helipad for extraction of the bodies the next morning as it was getting very late. How they felt spending the night with a bunch a dead people I know not.

The next morning dawned clear and I again rode out to the crash valley this time in a Long Ranger and a different flingwingdriva. As we circled over the crash sight a very good looking bush helipad greeted us down a very deep 'wood tube' of cleared trees. I'd reckon about 150' and about two rotor disks in diameter. As we hovered vertically down a HUGE tree next to us seemed to be rocking more than a 150' tall tree should...I looked down toward the base and saw it was cut over half way through and a chainsaw jammed in the cut...."F*CKING CLIMB!!!"

To his credit he did so without so much as a "Huh?". When we were clear I explained what was going on and he hovered over for a look...he then 'leant' on the tree with his downwash and it fell straight across the helipad....and I mean a perfect bisection :mad:

We came back some hours later to see the mess cleared and a serviceable bush pad so landed...lifting 9 bodies, including children, out over the course of that day is a seperate horror story.

Chuck.

[Blue Rotor Ronin]

First time my Ma got in a helo with me......:ok:

[RDRickster]

I hesitate to post this for two reasons:

1) It is NOTHING compared to what you guys have experienced

2) It happened in a Robbie (so please don't turn this into a "let's bash Robinson" thread)

Last month, I was practicing a few quick-stops in an R22 Beta. During the second quick-stop the engine rpm dropped - dramatically! In fact, this startled me somewhat and I aborted the procedure and immediately leveled the ship - preparing to do an auto/running landing.

I was only going about 40 KIAS into the wind, and I don't think my quick-stop was very aggressive (i.e. I didn't slam the collective down and yank the cyclic during the flare). When I heard the engine rpm drop like that, my heart probably skipped two beats and I actually thought the engine was going to stall on me in the middle of my flare. Consequently, I didn't take the time to look at the gauges - I just reacted. The RRPM horn did NOT sound; nevertheless, I concentrated on getting the ship into a level attitude for auto/running landing, if needed.

Fortunately, the engine power came back up and everything was fine. It was about 80 degrees F that morning. Winds were 7 knotts. Field elevation was 303 MSL. During my last approach, I was using carb heat until about 100 AGL and then closed the carb heat. It's hard to say what happened, but I think the most likely cause was that we briefly entered autorotation (we were heavy that day - passenger weighed 238) and the engine rpm pulsed lower than what I was used to.

Not exactly "hair raising," but it scared the hell out of ME.

[Heliport]

RD
How about a story from your time in the military.
You must have had a scary moment or three in helicopters then?

[RDRickster]

Well... okay. I was a kid in the 82nd ABN. We just completed a combat parachute assault into Panama (jumping from 450' AGL @ 130 knots will give you one hell of a jolt). We were taking a little fire, and one of our guys got hit in the door before we could jump. The pilot comes on the intercom and says, "Hang on boys, it's a little hot down there so we're going to go around for another pass." The Jump Master says, "F*** THAT! Green light, Go, Go, Go!" Of course, the Candy-A$$ Air Force pilot adds more throttle and begins a hard left bank - we all jumped out anyway (more like stumbled out because of the roll). Let me fast forward to the helicopter stuff...

After we completed the airfield seizure, our Company prepared for an Air Assault into Panama Vieho (old Panama - the ruins on the edge of the city). Task Force 160 came in with more Blackhawks than I had ever seen in my entire life (to this day). The entire Batallion was conducting some kind of Air Assault to several key locations in the region. It was a pretty cool sight (gave me a stiffy). Well, we loaded 20 troopers to a bird... no seats, no belts, and no safety strap across the cargo area. They did have the Kevlar floors put in to stop small arms ground fire (thank God).

SIDE NOTE: My pack weighed exactly 110 pounds. I also carried 3000 rounds of linked ammunition, two grenages, signal flare, protective (gas) mask, water, one mortor round (each trooper had to carry one), and a Claymore mine. Some of the other guys carried a lot more crap (M60 has a tripod, Mortor has a base plate and computer, etc). There were 20 of us in each bird! How the hell did that thing get off the ground?

Even though the AC-130 gun ships were blowing up anything that remotely looked like a threat, I was already a little punchy because we received a fair amount of fire when we jumped in. By the way, an AC-130 firing at night looks like a laser beam from the plane to the ground and every FIFTH round is a tracer (awesome firepower)! But, it was morning by the time we secured the airfield and got going in the Blackhawks.

Anyway, I had a light machine gun (M249 - slightly smaller than the M60 you see on TV, but it has a much faster rate of fire). I got a choice seat on the edge. We were supposed to take down the Panamanian Defense Force Anti-terrorist Unit and barracks next to Panama Vieho. So, we start hauling a$$ in a low-level flight across the jungle and then along the coast of the Canal. I was supposed to lay down surpressive fire when we reached our objective.

About half way there, the pilot performs a very gentle quick-stop and brings us to an OGE hover. I didn't know what was going on. Suddenly, two Apache helicopters raise up from the jungle. I NEVER even saw them - they came out of nowhere! They criss-crossed in front of our stick and then began to escort us to the LZ (they must have had a stiffy, too).

Well, the LZ looked good and we were about to make our approach. Of course, all hell broke loose! We started receiving sniper fire from civilian buildings, and we couldn't get a fix on the little ba$tards because they were using loop holes (small holes in wall - no silouette to target). Just as we were about to touch down, the pilot got shot in the head (messy).

At about 5 feet off the deck, we got the hell out of the bird and returned fire. The co-pilot kept the aircraft STEADY AND AT A LOW HOVER ON THE LZ!!! I don't know if I could grab the stick and stay on mission after my friend's skull was scattered all over the instrument panel. That pilot has cast iron balls the size of watermellons! I wish I knew who that guy was, because he kept a lot of troopers from getting seriously hurt or killed. After it was all over, we received reports that our bird had 23 bullet holes in the fuselage!

To Mr. Task Force 160 Co-Pilot: Thanks for keeping the faith, Brother!

[Head Turner]

This probable qualifies for the most stupid student as well.

On a bright and sunny day two people enter the reception of the helicopter training company that I worked for as the Chief Pilot.
We are fixed wing pilots and would like to have a trial lesson on a helicopter to see wheather we do a helicopter course said the man. My girl friend and I would like to fly today if that's possible?
The receptionist introduced this pair to me.
There was a free slot in the flying program and I duly carried out a comprehensive briefing on the sortie which was to be two half hour flights.
Asking who was to be the first to fly, the girl was given the priviledge.
After a short walk round the S300 we climbed aboard and proceeded with the start, eventually I hovered to the helicopter training area from where I departed the airfield. I thought it wise to start the introduction to helicopter flight by way of some upper air work to show the differences in the handling and control inputs of the helicopter. During all phases of the flight the girl was follwing through on all controls.
After a demonstration of using the cyclic to level off after a gentle climb I handed over cyclic control to the girl.
A short period of straight and level which was flown adequately was fo;;owed by a slight climb. This situation was very similar to one which I had showed her previously. I intimated that she should level the helicopter to the cruise attitude which we had briefed and flown a few moments earlier.
Suddenly we were in a fully nose down attitude, as the girl had pushed the cyclic fully forward. Immediately I took control with the sound of my heart beat in my ears. I recovered to S/L and calmly explained that what I was asking her to perform was a Small Gentle Tiny movement of the cyclic. I demonstrated what I wanted her to do. I questioned her and she confirmed that she understood what I was asking her to do upon handing over control. Same situation and unbelievably she did the same stupid thing. I told her that that was not correct and asked her to follow through on another demonstration of the use of the cyclic that I wanted her to perform. 'Do you understand' that I want you to use the cyclic just a tiny tiny bit to gently control the attitude, Yes wa sher answer. Well the sane thing happened by which time I had had enough of ths and without another word flew back to base, closed down and went to the office where her boyfriend was waiting.
'How did she get on' he asked
'I've never flown with such a stupid person in all my life' I said. And I dont believe either of you are pilots and I am not going to fly with you' I told him
'So good day, and good bye'

On reflection I am alive because the 300 coped well with that situation. Had it been a Robbo I perhaps would not be typing this.

Stupid and very scarry.

[RDRickster]

One more (to humor Helistop)...

I was in Air Assault School at Ft. Campbell, and it was the last couple of days of training (10 day course). So, we were practicing tactical rappells from UH-60's that morning from about 60 feet (not too high, but a bit scary when hanging over the edge by your toes). I had just gotten into a good "L" shape and was waiting for the Rappell Master's "Go."

Suddenly, there was a flash fire that swept though the cargo area and made it's way into the cockpit! (Don't ask me what or how - I have no clue). Anyway, the Rappell Master yelled at me, "One break to the ground and get your a$$ off my line - GO!" So, I did - and because of the fast decent and only one brake close to the ground, the line streched too far and I smacked the ground with a TERRIBLE "Whump!"

Immediately, the pilot decended under power to a controlled landing. Good thing he didn't go too far, because I was in so much pain - I just laid there for a while (had the wind knocked out of me). I was still attached to the line. Well, he shut down, and everybody that was remaining ran from the helicopter. The Crew Chief put out the fire with extinguishers and that was that.

That wasn't exactly a confidence builder for me, and I've kinda been afraid of heights ever since. :O Sorry I don't have any "pilot" stories. I didn't start flying until several years after I got out of the military... I'll shut up, now.

[ShyTorque]

RD,

They should have briefed you better.

Don't ever, ever, eat baked beans before flying and if you do, don't ever, ever, open the door near the exhaust....... :p

[Lu Zuckerman]

I have already posted my experiences outside of the helicopter so I feel that this story might be piling on. This took place not in a helicopter but in a flying boat (PBY). We were called out early one morning to search for a tugboat that had exploded and sunk not too far from Buffalo, New York. We checked out our P Boat and my aircrew assignment was as flight engineer. We were to be accompanied by an USAF B-17 at the search scene. The weather was miserable. It was cold and foggy and visibility was almost zero in the search area. About 7 hours into the search the B-17 returned to base but our pilots elected to keep up the search. When we landed at Buffalo to refuel and return to base I had been on the engineers panel for 14 hours and I had gotten out of the sack about four hour hours prior to takeoff.

Once we had taken off, I hit the sack (We had four bunks on the plane). While I was sleeping the pilots encountered icing and they were running the anti ice alcohol pump to get the ice off the props. They also turned on the gasoline heater for the tail but it wasn’t putting out the required heat. The wing warmers, which used exhaust heat didn’t fair much better. Then it happened. The alcohol pump caught fire and the fire was encroaching on the fuel tank for the APU. All of this was going on about five feet from my head and I was totally oblivious to what was going on. The bail out bell had been rung two times and with the third we would have to bail out and I didn’t hear a thing. With no alcohol on the props they began to ice up and the props would go out of balance and throw the ice in big chunks. Several chunks of ice hit the window in the navigators’ hatch and broke the Plexiglas and the rest peppered the left and right sides of the aircraft. With the window broken it got real cold inside the aircraft and I was still totally oblivious to what was happening.

When we landed I was awakened and told to open up the hangar doors and the aircraft would taxi in instead of being towed in backwards. When I got out and turned on the ramp lights I was absolutely amazed. Both primary antennas were broken away and were hanging over the tail. The aircraft was coated in ice and the sides of the aircraft had been pock marked by the ice coming off the props. Later the pilot told me that if they had to fly another 20-30 miles to get to the base the aircraft would have crashed.

:zzz:

[Jcooper]

Anyone know if the guys at the national guard just screw with civilians? Under a week ago I was doing some work under the hood for my CFII and I saw a shadow out of the corner of my eye followed within a second by my instructor saying I have the controls, followed by me looking up, followed by a rushing sound, followed by seeing two f16 pass under 700' in front of us. After some cussing and thanking god, I realized what i just saw was pretty cool considering they were at our altitude of 500' AGL but going atleast 4 times our speed.

Anyways, I realized they have TCAS and probably knew about us 10 minutes before we knew about them, so my only thought is that they decided just to give a nice 300 kts welcome flyby :)

Cooper

[Bladestrike]

In over twenty years of flying, I can only recall being REALLY scared once, when the thought "I guess my wife and daughter are doing the rest on their own" flashed vividly through my head.

Recently checked out on a new twin, I had very little second-in-command time under my belt, all my time being PIC on singles and twins. The Captain was very high time and I have the utmost respect for his skills, but it was not a pleasant experience not being in control.

Anyway, we found ourselves trying to maintain visual reference along a rugged mountaineous coastline with ice laden seas heaving heavily below us, heavy icing in the clouds above us, 4000 foot rock face on one side, 45 knot winds, and less than 1/4 vis in snow, with an engine out, and low on fuel. The aircraft in question falls out of the sky on one can below 35 knots, yet we had to turn downwind to get to the nearest airfield, the only place to land in a hundred plus miles. The turn was made at 100 feet on the rad alt and as the airspeed hit zero, I just braced for the seas coming through the windshield and the aforementioned thought flashed through my head.

Somehow airspeed was regained (me yelling "airspeed zero" repeatedly hopefully helped more than hindered), we never fell out of the sky but crawled along the surf at 80 knots groundspeed. When the LOC/BC needle came alive a 90 degree turn was made inland and as the numbers flashed through the chin bubble the aircraft was planted downwind in reported 1/8 mile vis. When we got her stopped we couldn't find the taxiway to clear the runway.

Yea, I was scared.

[RW-1]

I've only had two "scary" moments, and they really were not comparible to most here IMHO.

First was doing a normal approach with gov off, and three birds decided they liked to cruise thermals right in my approach path, 2 of them waved off but the third thought it would be nice to keep coming closer ... made "a movement" and the next thing I knew I was at a 30-35 deg down angle and the RPM horn going off, likely due to my pushing fwd.

Now, as no light feeling was in my seat, and discussion with my CFI determined I didnt go low G, I think I banked and went fwd on it, but ended up with a yelp, and then recovered, he flipped on the gov, and I lowered and added power. but the close call left me a little shaken.


Second one was a fuel issue, the classic trap, and I'll leave it that way. I won't fall into that again.

[moggie]

Not rotary but..........

Co-pilot on a VC10 (with 38 pax on board) a tyre exploded in the wheel well at top of descent into Brize Norton from Leuchars.

This blew off the undercarriage door, ruptured the pressure hull (damage was in the main spar area!), took out the fuel lines to the port engines (both shut themselves down, of course), and caused all the fuel in the port wing to vent overboard.

As a result we ended up double asymmetric, port hydraulics down (emergency gear lowering required), below minimum landing fuel and committed to landing on a damaged main gear (extent of damage unknown) with structural damage (extent unknown). Oh yes, it was dark, too!

Initially we were busy but after completing all the drills we had a few quiet moments during the latter part of the descent during which a certain amount of nerves set in (my knees literally started to knock!). Once the approach began we were too busy to worry.

After landing we had to evacuate down the slides because we had fuel dripping onto hot brakes.

The root cause? A sticky brake unit caused the wheel to lock up on takeoff and 25 minutes later (at the point of maximum heating) it blew!

Not to mention the time when just past the point of no return on an atlantic crossing (heading for Canada) EVERY airport within range suddenly closed due to an unexpected snowstorm across eastern Canada and north eastern USA. I do mean EVERY airport in range.

It gives you a tense moment or two when you have to find the airport which is least below the minima (if that makes sense) and also know that you have nowhere else to go if that does not work out. It is also worse if you have time to think about it (see first tale) than if you just have to get on and do it.

[wub]

My experience lies in the 'outside the helicopter' arena.

I was learning to skydive in Cyprus in the mid 1970s, we dropped from a Beaver near Kingsfield airstrip, close to Dhekalia, where the Army Air Corps operated Bell 47s.

I was on my second descent of the day, at about 2000' when I heard a chopper and deduced it was below me. In those days we had round chutes which were not very manoeuverable and try as I might I couldn't turn the thing to look for the chopper, the noise of which was growing louder and louder. I was sure I was about to drop throught the rotors of this thing when the noise started to recede, I never saw it but I sometimes still hear it...

[Vfrpilotpb]

Whilst building up hours prior to passing my GFT, I was comming in to land, but I was not really focused on the job in hand, as I approached the outskirts of the field I was too high to come into the hover, I was wrong with the wind and for some reason my legs refused to do what I asked them too, in fact they operated in the wrong order, so there I was, nearly at a halt , 500ft from the ground and kicking the wrong pedals to stop this strange rotation that had started ever so slowly, I saw a panorama or trees, builings , coast line and horizons, but to my horror it started to go faster and faster what was descernable now became a kalidascope of coloured lines, yellow and blue of far off sand and sky was rapidly exchanged for green and brown lines now focused only in the middle of the screen, I suddenly thought " Oh ******" instinct and instant recall came back extremly very quickly, my feet found the right way to work again, I pushed forwards with the cyclic at the same time as dumping the collective, counted three out loud pulled back on the stick and fed in the power all the way to the top of its travel , and lo, it came to pass, the Lord didn't want me this time and I found myself comming into a gently flaring hover some 15 to 20 ft from the area that had seconds before been a green and brown blurred set of lines in my vision. I set the heli down, rested and trembled and sweated for the next 10 minutes, then lifted and hover taxied back to base.
This incident was my fault, I had not been fully focused on what I should have been doing, I feel very lucky to have had such an escape, I have flown many hours since that day, but I will always remember what it tastes like when you have completely ballsed it up! :ouch:

[motionlotion]

Late 80's polling Aloutte2's around Cyprus (doors off). Had front and rear seat pax in support of a Brigade exercise on the Akamus ranges (western most end of the Island). This is a long thin peninsula type landscape where the troops can only exercise along a steep ridge running north / south.

During this particular exercise (late September), the local "hunters" were out in their hoards and literally shooting at anything that moved - sparrows, finches, small unsuspecting creatures. They would then parade their catch on the bonnets / radio aerials of their cars. I believe it's a Mediterranean macho thing!

But I digress, back to the office. Scene then is self with two pax legging it tactically over the ridge west to east before nipping up the Turkish side to support the "enemy" company on the northern peninsula. Slow left hand turn over some rocks, lowered the lever and nosed down towards the sea when rear-talking ballast exclaimed, "I've been hit". Looked left and rear wards to see a small group of "hunters" hiding in some rocks just as the whole portside of the cockpit filled with buckshot.

There was buckshot everywhere - it had come in hitting everything, consul, and instruments, inside Perspex and ended up on the floor. My saving grace was my clear visor but my pax got most of what came in through the open space left by the missing door. There was nowhere to land either, I could see the black mass of buckshot on the cabin floor and expected the bits to end up in and under the floor. I had visions of control seizure at any moment, the Col. in the front had his face in his hands and the Adj in the back was beginning to moan a little louder. But there was still no where to put her down, there were only rocks, trees and cliffs. I had no option but to fly back over the ridge, back to the exercise LS and just pray the cyclic seals held.

It was the longest 2 1/2 minutes of my life (so far) but land we did and safely back at the LS.

What happened after is another story altogether.

[Droopy]

About 20 years ago offshore Sarawak in an SA330 Puma, FL50 nice and cool, smell of smoke; we both looked at each other then back to see the cabin already full of smoke with only the front few passengers visible, eyes like the South Park kids:uhoh: and what was worse there was a dull orange glow from the rear of the cabin.

Into auto, strangely all the training fell into place... after about 3000ft the lights came on to show both MGB fan belts gone, so a fan seizure.... MGB temp visibly climbed off scale as the oil boiled but we got on to a barge a few miles off; if we'd been below 3000 we'd have been in the water. The funny thing in hindsight was that all the pax were clutching every single one of their belongings [including an umbrella which nearly ended my eyesight tests] as they piled out.

The fiery glow was the sunlight through the rear windows on the passengers' orange ear defenders....

The barge we landed on was called the Charley Graves so at least when we returned with newly fitted MGB we could say we were back from the Graves;)

[aclark79]

edit

[RW-1]

aclark79,

I hate that, have had that happen to me a couple of times too, you would swear it was on ... of course better to treat it as an actual then to assume it is just lighting.

Has anyone else ever had something get caught on the mains?

I remember now a flight for my solo checkout with the chief pilot, and whilst coming into the flare, all of a sudden there was a racket like one had never heard before from the aircraft, rpm and other gauges were ok, no lights, I set down normally. we shut off the gov, and rolled down throttle.

We had picked up a Lays potato chip bag, a .5 pounder, funny how it was wrapped around the blade, not sliced, I suppose they really make 'em tough lately ...

[RDRickster]

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).

[Thomas coupling]

Same sort of thing:

RAF sea king doing a hi line to a fishing trawler on fire.
The helo was drifting into and out of heavy smoke from the fwd end of the rolling boat. Bottom line: winch cable snapped (because the silly ******s onboard had tied the end of the hi line to the railings) and shot up into the rotors and wrapped itself round the rotor head:ooh:
Pilot recovered the situation and they all survived!


I used to teach in a seaking simulator for a while for my sins. One of our lessons was on tail rotor problems.
A Norwegian SAR crew told me during one of their contract visits to the sim, that they were flying along one of their fjords at approx 600' once, and hit a hawser cables which was strung from side to side across the fjord.
It sliced clean thru their tail mast and took about 4 feet of airframe and the TR with it. In fact immediately after the bang, they started spinning and remembered seeing the tail rotor spinning as it went past them at the same height :\
They couldn't chop the throttles because of the G loading in the spin. Their only recollection was of dumping the lever and watching the world go round. The helo hit the water upright and they had enough time to get out before it sank!!

[SASless]

Seeing your own tail rotor whiz by....must be an indicator your day has taken a turn for the worst.....but at least it will memorable!

[HeloTeacher]

As requested.

While conducting training on a new hire just prior to letting him loose on the customers I elected to give him one last surprise engine failure just at the limit of our range to reach the runway, so a max-range full-down in an R22. Unfortunately, at dusk.

As he drooped the rotor to '90' to extend the range everything looked good, then started sinking low. I looked across and he had all parameters perfect, so I let him continue. It was getting darkish, late dusk, so it was a little tough to see precisely the gauges on his side of the cockpit.

We were no longer going to make the runway so I took control to overshoot and figure out what he did wrong. I was still quite comfortable until I rolled on throttle and the engine only growled with insignificant acceleration. A little panicked I leaned over to look at the RRPM and saw he had been at 80 not 90! A sharp flare allowed the RRpm to increase sufficiently to get the engine back and I recovered in ground effect.

No more late in the day training flights where eyesight gets weak and fatigue dulls the senses. No more casual glances to confirm the students actions.

[DynamicallyUnstable]

Just saw this thread and was wondering if there are any others that didn't see it?:ok:

[Tokoloshe]

April 2000 in a Jet-Banger flying through a narrow gorge on an overcast day with approx 1500' cloudbase. Aircraft in the cruise when the input shaft to the MR gearbox failed. Sudden yaw with loud noises and engine overspeed, even though the engine out warning (audio & light ) were on. Luckily saw the needles had split the "wrong" way and kept the throttle wide open.
Managed to put the helo down on a tiny bit of sand on the riverbank. All happened in a matter of seconds; felt like a lifetime.!
Only damage to the machine was a minor nick in the T/R driveshaft cover and one blade. Four on board and we all walked away.
Slung the machine out the next day with a Mil8
Verdict; All four bolts holding the gear that runs inside the splined shaft of the coupling had sheared due to heat fatigue. 9 hours since maintenance had worked on it and replaced the seal and allegedly re-greased it. My own eyes could see there was no grease in it and have the photos to prove it, however, and here's the scary part, the AMO concerned were like lawyers and bank managers....untouchable.
Another hard lesson learned:mad:

[VeeAny]

Tokoloshe

Well done for getting it down, but..

If the engines not driving the gearbox, what good will keeping the throttle wide open do apart from trashing a perfectly serviceable engine ?

Apologies if this is a dumb question but, beats me !

Cheers

V.

[BlenderPilot]

Nothing fancy (just stupid) . . . .

I almost hit a 400 thousand volt set of powerlines going at about 115 KTS, there were diagonal to a highway that I was overflying looking for a stolen truck, when I saw the wires out of the corner of my eye they were very close, (3 seconds away) I pulled back on the cyclic so fast and far back that the 206L4 went past vertical, and I just kept pulling the cyclic.

That was my scariest moment so far, and the sad thing was it was completely avoidable.

[407 Driver]

VeeAny, the answer to your question " why did Tokoloshe leave the engine running" is quite simple. ....TailRotor Drive ! Without the Main Engine to Transmission Driveshaft, there is no other way to power the T/R than to leave the engine running. shutting down the engine in that situation would cause a T/R drive failure.

Well done Tokoloshe !!

[bigruss]

I heard a tale about an instructional sortie at VRD in a Robbie. Apparently upon entering auto the student bottomed the left pedal and the Robbie done some sort of a roll. They say there was oil on the under side of the blades.
I dare say there was sh*t on the seats as well.
Heard another one happened like that in NZ but it supposedly broke off the droop stops and on rundown the blades contacted the boom.
I was told of these in good faith that they really did happen so perhaps the Robbies don't nip the mast as readily as we believe.

[Ascend Charlie]

407 Driver:

The engine drives into the main Xmsn via the driveshaft that failed.

The Xmsn drives the tail rotor via a separate shaft that runs below the engine. The engine does not drive the tail rotor directly, or else every engine failure or practice auto is a tail rotor failure.

So, i agree with V-any : why leave it running?

[407 Driver]

Ascend, you are very wrong.
We're talking a Jet-Banger, which I assume is a JetRanger or Bell 206. The engine to Transmission driveshaft drives forward to the Transmission, but also links rearward through the engine to the T/R drive. On a 206, there IS NO T/R drive output below the input like on a Bell medium.
I have about 10,000 hrs on 206's and I am a licenced AME M1. believe me, I am correct on this point!

Now if we're talking a 204/205/212, then there is no benifit to leaving the engine running in this situation, as the T/R output drive DOES come directly off of the transmission (lower).

In the case of a 206 practice autorotation, the Transmission (M/R)drives the T/R shaft rearward via the main driveshaft (now disconnected from the engine via the freewheel assy), directly to the T/R driveshaft.
In the case of his failure, the Autoratational energy of the M/R system could not power the T/R, because this fixed link (Txmsn to T/R ) was broken at the Main Driveshaft. The engine powered the T/R via positive power to the freewheel.

I stand by my word, He did the correct procedure, and did it well. Check with your maintenance department tomorrow 'ol boy

[VeeAny]

407 Driver

Thanks, you learn something new every day !

Sorry to go off thread, but in this circumstance how well will the governor control the RPM, will it prevent an overspeed or will engine require a serious looking at ?

Cheers

V.

[Tokoloshe]

Thanks guys!

For those of you who haven't been there, believe me it is very easy to discuss this scenario in the classroom but impossible to simulate in the aircraft. Also, the teletemps on the preflight showed no signs of overheating.
407 and others are quite correct that once the drive btw the mrgb and the engine fails then the only thing driving the tail is the engine, albeit at about idle rpm (when it eventually came back down).
For those of you wondering about the governor controlling the rpm; forget it, by the time I looked the rpm was going down through 120%. Bear in mind that at the time of failure the engine was sitting at a constant torque setting of about 70% in the cruise.
I stand corrected but in this case the Main rotor uses about 80% of the power; if you suddenly take that away the engine is going to overspeed even though the topping governor will try and limit it to 106% ?? . Remember the engine will have accelerated from 70% up at a fairly rapid rate and I assume the inertia will bunt it way past the limit. I don't know what the max rpm was that it attained.
It felt just like an engine failure with the yaw etc and the only clue I had was the needles having split the wrong way.
I had a fair bit of luck on my side but all credit must go to one of the check pilots who had exactly one week before done a base check on me where we had discussed this exact scenario.
I can still remeber his words " In 30 years of flying helos it has never happened to me and chances are it won't to you either":uhoh:
Just proves again that training is the best safety device.
I can't remember who said it ; " Try to fly the aircraft as far into the crash as possible".
:ok: :ok: :ok: :ok:

[Heliport]

Bob Hoover

[407 Driver]

VeeAny, we're all here to learn, and as Tokoloshe says, this is a difficult one. Without the training and/or good mechanical knowlege of the aircraft, it would be tough to know what to do in that instant when the rpm's start going wild, Nr's going south, noise from the flailing shaft, engine horns, etc, etc.
I don't know of any governing systems that could control an engine through this failure, certainly not the FADEC in my 407, and not the old Bendix (or Ceco) system in the 206.

Well posted Tokoloshe, and flown with excellence!

[IHL]

Blender Pilot you said "I pulled back on the cyclic so fast and far back that the 206L4 went past vertical, and I just kept pulling the cyclic."

When you went past vertical how did you recover ?Did you complete a 360 about the lateral axis(loop)?

[BlenderPilot]

IHL . . .

No loop here, have you seen those little ribbons people pin on themselves to show support for something? That's what it looked like.

I pulled the cyclic aft and and a little to the right, so when the nose went past vertical the nose was also about 30 degrees to to the right, I just kept the aft pressure until the nose dropped again and kept the back pressure as the airspeed built up quickly and I pulled out now going to the left of my original track, I had indeed a vertical 270 turn to the left I will never forget.

A loop would have been if I had ended up on the same heading, I started the turn to the right and ended up 90 deg. left of my original heading. I remember after it pulling out I was flying parallel to the wires which were now on my left side as I had passed them already.

[Power Up]

Every time I get behind the controls!!:eek:

[KENNYR]

In 1979, just out of Middle Wallop and on my first flying tour in Germany, myself, crewman and 2 Pax (Honourable Artillery Company) were carrying out a recce in the Mosel Valley. I totally ignored all that had been drummed into me about flying down valleys and flew down the middle of the valley above the Mosel River. I was distracted by the Pax and was looking away when my crewman shouted "Wires". I did the normal thing and hauled back on the cyclic to just about 90 degrees nose up when he shouted "Down", as I was apparently climbing into the wires. You can imagine the chaos inside the Gazelle going from 90 deg nose up to 90 deg nose down in a nano-second. We missed the wires and very sheepishly returned to the field location. I learned a lot from that incident.

Thankyou Tom for saving my life that day.

[Felix Lighter]

IMHO most emergencies/frights in helos happen so quickly that you only have time to be scared to death after the event........nr misses, nr wirestrikes etc.

I had jammed T/R pedals at the end of a flying display and even that didnt worry me 'til afterwards (I was too busy trying to afford a static display C130)

Scariest moment unsurprisingly was the one that took the longest to recover from:

2500ft AGL, NE Bosnia, Serbian search radar sweeping us...... the firecontrol radar then locked us up, code 'SA2' with associated waring bells and whistles.
Suddenly 2500ft was way too high and despite pumping out chaff through the null (every 180deg) we only broke lock for .5sec or so.
Odds were that they were very unlikely to launch at us..... just trying to p!ss us off, but for 45secs it was like someone holding a loaded gun to your head.

Concur with SASless.......having watched my T/R, vertical fin and about 3 feet of tail-boom pass in front of me I remember thinking "******".
Somehow like a car crash you always think you'll get away without too much damage..........Never the case in reality!

[bellfest]

Casual day fishing in a OH58, on approach to confined area just below the tree line at 40% TQ, go to pull in more pitch to find a spot to land on the rocks and collective jammed, there's a bit of flex in those collective levers, wasn't until I lowered the lever and pulled it up again that it came free and resumed a normal landing with the exception of a higher than normal heart rate.
Military seat belt anchor jammed between the knurled nut on the copilot collective and the seat back.
One of those things to make you feel like an idiot and realize the elements when you think you're on top of things.
Make sure your pax lap belt is tight when you've got the duals in a kiowa with military seat belts.
BF

[The Nr Fairy]

Early start - wx crap, so find a cup of coffee, read the paper. Look at the wx, decide it's improved enough to have a go. Take off - it's actually pants - so land again at departure point. Hobbs hasn't moved.

An hour later - decide it's improved enough. Get far enough away from the airfield to be unable to see it, down to 300' AGL, in and (mostly, thankfully) out of the bottoms of cloud. Go head up after looking inside at something - GPS, I think (!) - and think "****, I know there are wires round here somewhere".

Find wires - fly over the top of a pylon, and thinking "This is really silly". A few minutes later I'm in a field, safe and sound if a bit shaken, ringing the boss to say I'm going to be late.

Made the decision to land FAR too late - should have waited the 40 minutes it took for the weather to clear through and do it in one hop.

[Delta Julliet Golf]

Sim Training @ West Palm Beach, FL. Everytime you get "airborne", you just wait until something goes wrong.........



:p

[Hilico]

(This is nothing, I know.) First flight in a 206. First flight at the controls of any helo at all, in fact - like a learner driver taking lesson #1 in a 911 rather than a Ford Escort. It's SAS-equipped as well, so even the hovering is flattering; then we go for a circuit. Gentle pressures forward on the cyclic and up on the collective, ground plummets away. 3-400 ft, the gearbox noise changes a little, as though it's settling on its bearings. Instinctively I looked up and back toward the MRGB - and the instructor did as well.

It was nothing. That's what both of us said, anyway. Afterwards.

[Gaseous]

While my own aircraft was in for it's annual, I rented a rather knackered replacement and took a rather plump relative for a quick jolly around my local area. Hot day. Lots of fuel on board. My usual landing site is a rather confined area over a fence and up a slope. My usual technique is to establish a hover at the bottom of the slope, check the Ts & Ps and power in reserve and hop up the slope and land. On this occasion there was not quite enough power and as I hopped up the slope with the throttle wide open the RPM gradually, slowly drooped. The descent was stopped as the skids came to rest on top of the fence which took enough weight to allow the RPM to recover for attempt 2, which was successful.

'You make that look so easy' said the passenger.


:uhoh:

[Oracle]

Augusta Bell 205 (Huey) deployment flight, 5000 feet, 48 degree summer, Saudi/Oman border (80's). Plonker Squadron Boss thinks it great idea to use old green military parachutes instead of cam nets (save money etc) to conceal aircraft on border ops.
Only me and one engineer in the aircraft, full of deployment stores in the main cabin. [Engineer in the LHS, he needed the practice!]. Happy Huey does its usual trick - cabin door unlatches with the vibes in flight and slides back slowly onto it's locking lug, fully open. Engineering spares dribble out of door bit by bit.
Suddenly 110 KIAS becomes 35 KIAS with large sinking/deceleration feeling, both of us hanging on our straps! Look out right door to see huge horrible green bleeding parachute FULLY SET under the rotor disc, harness conveniently attached to the cabin door locking lug!
Remedy: Quick spiral descent at 35 Knots (to right, of course), followed by most impressive run-on landing alongside a convenient 5-foot thorn tree, which removed offending item as we passed [and still retains it to this day]!
Subsequent actions:Squadron Boss told he was a complete and utter w****r and parachute use for camouflage netting thereby abandoned forever and ever, Amen!
The moral of this tale is: Don't carry bloody parachutes unless they are either strapped to someone or are in a sealed, secure container, whatever anyone else thinks is a 'good idea'!!!
(And I didn't even have my brown corduroy trousers on!).:ok:

[Sgtfrog]

Not as good as the rest of these - great thread by the way!
During solo Nav ex as part of PPL, yours truley is beginning to relax and stop worrying. Approaching second stop (airfield in north east kent) from the south, call up on frequency, give postion - south of airfield - and get given reply, .."join downwind LH for 34". With the benefit of now having completed the Advanced Hindsight course it is obvious I should have asked for a "straight in" However, being very green brain could not compute what was required so did the next best thing! Ending up joining down wind RH!:ugh: Much cursing from the airfield but fortunately no one else in the circuit.... what a :mad: !

[albatross]

Ferry flight of a Bell 205 in 1985 to Burbank CA from Montreal – the chief pilot was going to do it but Xmas was fast approaching and the weather in the USA was awful so yours truly and an engineer get nominated for the job.
No xponder so the avionics guy makes up a portable one battery powered. The only other navaid is an ADF
After fighting wx we make it to Syracuse NY and do the customs thing.
Filed a flight plan to Youngstown Ohio and pressed on in good VFR.
While still a considerable distance from Youngstown it starts to get dark as I had screwed up the calculation for sunset in Youngstown. Time zone change ECT ECT.
Not to worry – even though I do not have a helicopter night rating nor a helicopter IFR rating. Got a fixed wing night rating and the mandatory20 hrs of IFR training FW in 1973 so what is to worry about.
Just after it gets too dark to land anywhere but an airport Youngstown tells me that the WX has just gone to 2 miles in snow then to ½ mile in snow showers. He then states that he is starting to lose my transponder (batteries are low). He asks me my intentions.
I tell him that I will continue inbound. The only ther choice being to find a place to land out in the booonies and a quick check with the landing light reveals nothing but big snowflakes.
At this very moment my ADI decides to crap out so I have to fly using the one on the co-pilot’s side.
Just as things look dynamic the controller calls and says: “There is an Ohio National Guard unit here on the field and there are here doing training this evening. Would you like to do a practice GCA for them?”
“Why I would love to! Anything to help the boys!” Says I.
What follows is the scariest 15 minutes of my career.
When the GCA controller calls mins and asks if I have the airfield in sight I got nothing- just big white snowflakes and a pressing need for a bathroom.
He then just says “For practice purposes continue your approach” and keeps calling heading changes and rates of descent.
Finally a joyful scream from the engineer and there are the approach lights.
I land on the button.
The controller asks if I can see the terminal. All I can see is 3 runway lights. They send a Follow Me truck to get us.
I paid a lot of drinks for both the National Guard and that controller that evening.

[Saint Evil]

Trying to fly back at 200' from a SAROP in Scotland. Whilst dodging around the catspaws and general turbulence the aircraft was spun through 60 degrees or so to starboard. Believing the tail rotor had gone I dumped the lever and prepared to ditch and meet a local monster. I realised a few seconds later that we still had some control so I gently apllied a little power and as we didn't spin dramatically I flew us away from the water(about 50' or so).

Me and the other pilot couldn't answer the Raercrew who were demanding to know what the hell had happened.....

[thecontroller]

scariest moment? when i realised how much time/money i've spent on training

[Boslandew]

Many, many years ago I was tasked to take a Saunders Roe Skeeter - who remembers those - from an exercise location in North Germany to Division Workshops to collect some spares. I climbed out of the clearing in the woods in which we were based using full power. The Skeeter was so under-powered that if you didn't pull full power, you didn't go anywhere. It was not unusual to smell fuel as you did that - quirk of the system.

On this occasion the smell got rapidly stronger and as I passed about 400 ft I looked down to find Avgas pouring over my feet and disappearing into the well from which the electrical cables led to the cyclic. Realising that I was a spark away from becoming an airborne fire-ball I made the quickest circuit in the history of circuits to find my clearing. I landed, shut-down as the undercarriage oleos were still compressing and covered 100 yards in about three strides.

Turned out that the metal filter used to re-fuel the aircraft from jerri-cans had fractured the fuel filler neck, situated just behind the pilots door. As I lowered the nose to accelerate the single fuel tank began to empty into the cockpit. I was too dumb in those days to be worried for long but it was scarier than anything that happened in the next thirty-five years

[jon s gull]

Not my story but a mates heard over drinks

Deer hunting in a south pacific island ? the hunters board the chopper and one smacks the butt of his rifle on the deck , there is a bang and a new vent is created in the panel over the pilots head.

I'm surprised this has not come up earlier, does it happen often?

[wheatbix]

Deer hunting in a south pacific island ? the hunters board the chopper and one smacks the butt of his rifle on the deck , there is a bang and a new vent is created in the panel over the pilots head.

I'm surprised this has not come up earlier, does it happen often?

I think you'd hope that in most cases when people get into a helicopter with a rifle the pilot would atleast brief them to make sure its unloaded and 100% safe.

Having said that it sounds like that guys trigger weight was way too light - there are certain safety restrictions on trigger pressure to ensure things like that don't happen.

[mustering guru]

my scariest moment ever was when i was sharing airspace with steve 76

[Brian Abraham]

my scariest moment ever was when i was sharing a cockpit with steve 76.

Just kiddin Steve, I didnt need any help :E

[Steve76]

Hahaha....
Nice one Brian - my scariest moment was driving home from work while skids4kids practiced his rally driving...
Hang on - that was my funniest moment :}

[MINself]

FWIW my scariest moment (which even now sends shivers down my spine) was being the co-pilot in a Lynx AH7, number 2 in a pair making a pairs night PAR, (GCA to those unaware) to a US airfield in a well known sand pit that at the time was 8/8ths fog with no other references apart from the NVG station keeping lights of the lead aircraft 30m slightly lower and to the side in front of us.

As we descended through 200' agl in the latter stages of the PAR, still not being visual with the ground or anything at this stage! as it was a moonless night which was making the NVG work really hard and losing sight cross cockpit of the lead aircraft.

Just as I could feel the leans coming on and the fear gripping my guts, hearing the rear crew calling visual then seeing for myself a taxi-way and then seeing some other parked aircraft through the murk and feeling that "thank god sensation" I'm sure we've all felt at some time.

We finished our approach and taxied in with use of a guide dog, feel and every light on the aircraft after landing thinking that the last 100kgs of fuel had lasted a long time as the low fuel lights had been on the last 10 mins, thankfully not all the guages read right! and then being mobbed by a surprised ground staff and hearing of numerous cancelled sorties.

there for but the grace of god and all that.

moral of the story don't push it just to get home, especially when you've passed gass en-route and opted not to stop and you don't know the weather at your destination, operational or not I'm sure our friends and relatives wouldn't have appreciated not getting us back.

Fly safe....mmm yes

[Panther06]

Around 1973/74 Ft. Stewart, Georgia on a FTX (Field Training Exercise). Flying an AH-1G Cobra and doing a simulated gun run on a convoy. Rolled the Snake over into a wing over at about 3000 ft. and proceeded to do an almost vertical dive on the convoy. At about 800-900 ft (just pulling out of the dive) caught a glimpse of an OH-58A (Military jet ranger) level and on a collison course. No time to react and passed the OH-58 tail rotor with just enough distance for our main rotor to clear his tail. On the ground after the incident my legs were so wobbly I could hardly stand. The G model snake was a beautiful machine to fly and the front seat had a small side stick controller which reminds me of the A330 side stick I fly now.

[uncle ian]

As already said its afterwards you get really scared, no time for it during the emergency unless..........some one has a gun to your head for a while. 1988, flying from Stansted to Leicester except my passenger decided he wanted to land at a high security prison en route to get his mates "out of jail". I literally had a gun to my head for 15 minutes or so. Even then, and despite threats of "one in the leg if you don't do as your told", the brain is working so hard to find a way out that fear takes a back seat.

After they'd gone and I tried to call the police my mouth was so dry I couldn't talk straight away.

I've had loads of other scares in 35 years of this game but I think believing I was about to be shot as soon as landed takes the biscuit. My only strategy was to continue flying for as long as possible until a way out presented itself thus prolonging the pain. And, of course, the flow of adrenalin slows time down to a crawl............I promise you that 15 minutes felt like hours.

[VeeAny]

I wasn't going to post thiis, but as it was so recent and is still fresh in my mind and a couple of fellow pilots have suggested it may be useful here goes.

En route to maintenance for a SAS computer replacement, under 8/8s white at 500ft just off the coast. Arrive within 2 miles of base and turn inland, base surrounded by hills trying to maintain VMC and fly over the valley top and let down to the hangar.
Can’t maintain VMC, wheels up caution activates (which it does sometimes spuriously). Pull up into IMC and climb like a bat out of hell. to MSA.

Pop out the top @ 2000’ into 8/8s blue and hear one the other pilots calling on the radio, I guess he must have heard me go around and straight over the top of the site. Brief chat to discuss ways to let down. I am considering my options when out of the blue the aircraft starts yawing left and right and sounds like I imagine a p**ssed off rhinoceros would. My first reaction is what did I hit, or whats fallen off, so I look over my shoulder, nothing appears to be hanging off. As I look back at the panel I see ‘2 engine N2 and Tq bouncing around the 75% mark (instruments difficult to read due to vibration). Lowering the lever, I look at the panel to confirm which engine, it must be #2 the TOT has fallen to zero, oh no it hasn’t its hard against the stop from the other side so way above 1000 degrees. I reach and grasp #2 Fuel control lever and retard it towards idle, the yawing stops. I try and tell the guy on the ground, but he’s just gone off the radio as he walks back to the hangar, back to the last frequency for ATC, the call goes something like ‘Approach this GXXXX back with you 2000’ over base, I’ve had an engine failure on #2, tell St. Mawgan I am on the way, this is a Mayday’ Apparently it came out rather hurried and in a slightly concerned tone. At this point a complete calm descends upon me as I head off for my intended landing site. ‘GXXX squawk emergency, heading 270 and St. Mawgan 128xx they are expecting you’

I change frequency and speak to one of the best controllers I’ve ever spoken to. I tell him of my problem, and he gives me vectors for their ILS.I am now very interested in the good engine and set it well below what I am allowed to pull and accept a slightly lower than achievable speed en route. He offers me the wx, I don’t really want it, but listen intently, overcast at 200’ and 1000ish m viz gets my attention. I set up the procedure from the plate on my knee and confirm that this is correct. The procedure had just changed (within days) and my updates were very helpfully just being delivered to my house that morning. Slightly disconcerted we discuss the finer points of the procedure (it hasn’t changed that much). The DME fails, I inform the controller, and remind him I am single crew, so working quite hard. He calls radar ranges every mile for the next 15 minutes. I notice on the GPS I am almost over my house (how ironic).

‘Would you like a slighty closer vector say 7miles, you are being vectored towards a 10 mile ILS at the moment’ I am asked’ I accept.

I spend the next 10ish miles thinking about the good engine, the procedure I am about to fly and what to do with the bad one, I keep it a t ground Idle, but am ready to kill it at a moments notice. The wheels up caution activates again.

A local helicopter is established on the ILS and he says (probably for my benefit that he is visual at 620ft), procedure minimum is 590 and threshold is 390.

Can you climb, says the controller, ‘No says I’, I am thinking I want on the ground, and don’t want to overtax the good engine.

After what seems like an eternity , I establish on the localiser, then with the glide.
The previously mentioned helicopter stays out talking to tower giving them constant cloudbase reports.’Mayday GXX is cleared to land’. Now at about 3 miles I get ranges every ½ miles at 1 mile to go still solid IMC, then at about half a mile the lead in lights appear faintly through the clag, I am going to make it. At 590’ now visual, I check wheels down, brakes off and nosewheel pin in is in (for the 5th time). I inform them I am going to land long, I float along the runway bleeding off what speed I have, not moving the lever at all , just slowing to Max Landing Speed, I call for a wind check 90 degrees off at 17kts. The best run on landing I’ve ever done on type follows, as soon as the weight is on the wheels I reach up and shutdown #2, close the fuel valves and taxi onto the north side of the airfield. It is at this point that apparently that my calm tone changes and the controllers now realise how human I am feeling. An uneventful taxi off and park follows on one engine.

After many phone calls (owners, maintenance, family) I eventually get to visit the man to whom I will always be grateful, the controller who talked me in. What an absolute professional. A man without whom I would have had a much more difficult afternoon. I am then very kindly driven home by one of the other ATCers, who had just come off duty.

The engine is still in the airframe as of this afternoon, but a visual inspection down the intake seems to show the compressor in a very sorry state of repair.

[benq]

Well Done VeeAny WELL DONE

you would have had a couple of stiff drinks after that no doubt:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D

[170']

Well done G man !...I love a happy ending ;)

[CofG]

Just wanted to thank all the members who share their stories on this thread, as a helicopter pilot of still limited experience it is really helpful to be able to learn from people who are prepared to talk about some of their mistakes. Cheers :ok:

[MightyGem]

170, if your still doing that job, I think it's time you moved on before we start a condolences thread for you!! :eek: :uhoh:

[Colonal Mustard]

Opening my first payslip whilst in flight................could`nt believe how little i got.....could have been nasty:E

[Gomer Pylot]

I haven't really had many scary moments, fortunately. Perhaps I'm just too dumb to be scared. But one night we dropped out of the clouds in a HEDA, heading for a drillship all alone way, way out. I checked the cojo, stable at 500' on a downwind, and looked down and chaged the selector switch to company flight following, called local at the ship, looked back up, and we were passing through 200', in a 900'/min descent. I grabbed the controls, leveled off, and climbed back up, and then the cojo realized what had happened. He had been trying to fly visually with absolutely no outside reference. I made a slow pattern and approach to the ship, because it took a little while to let the adrenaline levels subside.

[topendtorque]

Thought about putting something here for a while but which of the many to include?
Certainly the first emerg was a gem, chaffing faults on the harness of both mags resulted in two on one side of three not firing and totally blurred vision. I couldn’t see any of the instruments and little outside, at 300 hours total time it was lucky that I remembered an old gravel pit not far in front of me.

Another where the damper clamp bolts all parted company in a ‘ 47 definitely frightened me, it turned super sensitive and it was from about 300 feet straight ahead into a dry waterhole with several large rocks that I very luckily arrived in after nearly inverting it three times. I remember saying as I sat there muscles still locked up on the ground, good boy- good boy and taking my first very deep breath.
A fractured main pressure xmon oil line on a 3B1 which then decided to spurt all over the turbo also got me going big time when first I spotted the massive plume of smoke behind. Down very quickly and in my excitement grabbed the fire-ex, pulled the pin and squirt, yah biggest face full, bloody nozzle back to front eh. But the fire would not go out until some time later after many handfuls of dry dirt. That was when I noticed my legs were shaking like jelly.

I think the worst was in fixed wing. A night search for an overdue company pilot in a ’47. The night was as black as the inside of a dogs guts. We embarked with the duty IFR driver in a baron which had a really beaut flight director in it. Well that’s what the boss said every time we talked about it, his pride and joy it was, could almost skin cats this device, I’m sure - according to him.
So I jump in the front with the driver mainly because I don’t trust anyone else to do a proper radio search. Procedure is, fly the track at 6,000 feet and radio search, xmit – listen carefully, use all likely frqs continuously, big time- full time concentration. Goddamm I think I heard something, this is years before GPS. There’s bloody cloud cover the driver informs me. “Can we go under so we can do a search for afire?” Says I. This is very much the easiest way to find someone at night.
“I’ll try,” he says. Minima’s at 1100 feet, we break through at 900. We both knew the area intimately.

Doing a fire and radio search just as I heard another faint squawk we spotted a fire. OK – now; track and distance from nearest location, notify the local FSU who were close enough for VHF contact and stand by, - ever heard that before?
No worries. Later, ‘Can we fly a racetrack pattern to site from locator as they have a vehicle which will drive out?’
“ Sure.” We reckoned. Time is now around 9.30pm.
We observe the vehicles very slow progress across half boggy deeply gilgaed country that was infested with turpentine bush. A thick brush about eight foot tall and a real killer on tyres. Ground Vis would be about fifty yards; they were to follow our lights each time we turned. They had about 25 klms to run.
It was very boring, I’m starting to get sleepy, all of a sudden I feel something VERY wrong, big ROD I thought, s*** gauge says 2200fpm; compass was spinning, ASI climbing rapidly. I felt the two blokes in the back become very alert, the driver sussed it real quick and recovered. None of us will ever know at what height.
Turns out the boss’s real flash Flight Director had locked one of the bugs and stayed inclined at the standard 30 degrees from the turn. An hour later one of the local Air-Med planes took over. At two thirty am we get a phone call, can we go out again the vehicle isn’t far away now and the other plane has another job to do. Our two observers were in the land of zzedd; I says, “Yep I’ll go with you if you want to,” to the driver. Well what else could we say, one of ours and we still didn’t know whether the pilot was OK or not.
We stayed on station with this idiot locked up bug looking at us for another two hours, checking each other more than the flight profile. I don’t remember many times being more tired
Finally back to the town of the local FSU and get one hours’ sleep. They had squared away with the motel a feed for us at daylight; someone forgot to tell the cook. We go and see the cook in the motel kitchen; ‘can we get a feed mate?’ saya I. He had been on a bender and responded by telling us all to get F***** and chased me around the kitchen with a very long butchers knife.
We left, and flew back another two hours home, took it in fifteen minute turns to fly, with the two blokes in back watching that we didn’t go to sleep, did about fifteen checks for wheels down on finals. Slept all day and spent many sleepless night after that, wondering just how close did we come and what would the investigation have revealed had we? We reckoned it would be everything except a locked up bug.

Before that they all used to reckon that IFR driver was a wan***, I reckon he was proper all right after that, eh. BTW I told the boss what I thought of his flash flight director.

[kjw57]

Tree planting on the west coast of Canada. Only machine a HU500D and around 12 crew. Very busy all toe in's, & hover exits, no reliable pads mostly rotten or gone from the winter snows.

Near the end of the project and starting to pull garbage & gear off the hill using a 200' line I'm constantly reminding the crew to make sure they load the nets with something other than cardboard (empty tree boxes). We've been together a week and I'm actually starting to trust these guy's they've all been very good around the helicopter. Then it happens I'm off the hill around 5,000' heading for the landing, a float at sea level, with a net load on the line. After I'm away from the hill, head inside quick check of the gauges, nose over, turn my head for one last look at the load before the bottom and it's not there...following the line the load has flown itself to a position slightly aft, port side and above the a/c, BIG climbing turn away from the line while bleeding off A/S to set things right.

Complacent? you bet the only time I didn't ask if the net was weighted and it caught me. Those words from an instructor many hours ago "remember everyones trying to kill you" are running through my head while being totally thankful I'm not the cause of a salvage operation from the bottom of the fjord below me.

[HeloCaptain]

170 - You should write a book!

Fantastic read - I thouroughly your post.

[I am serious about the book - you are a very talented writer!]

[OverTq]

Mid 80's flying a Puma over the jungles of Belize. Hell of a bang from the back end and a tad of vibration set in (this 'tad' was strong enough that I couldn't read the instruments and the scene outside was just a blur). decided it might be prudent to land but, dark green everywhere I looked apart from a lighter green blob. Decided to land there. Crewman pushed out a Mayday on all freqs (he decided to become a pilot after this incident). Made an approach to the green blob - turned out to be a swamp with 10ft reeds. no choice, so shut down. Aircraft settled into the swamp and rolled about 10degrees. Sigh of relief. Bigger sigh when I looked at the tail rotor to see the pockets on one blade had all departed. Not impressed by the crack all the way down one side of the tail boom just in front of the intermediate box. Engineers subsequently reckoned that another 45secs of flight and the whole tail assembly would have come off. Battle damage repaired and flew it out 10 days later. What really made me think was that the day before I had been 100mls out to sea, with no comms with anyone , flying the same aircraft. Hey ho!

[Thomas coupling]

Climbing out of the helo in March this year, knowing I'll never fly a helo again!!!

[BRASSEMUP]

Flying into a snow storm whilst solo NVG in Bosnia!:ooh:

[MEON VALLEY FLYER]

Seriously

having never been in anything smaller than a Gazelle then going for a buzz in a friends R22. You could find more technology in a machano kit. Hell they dont even give you your own cyclic.:ooh:

[Fred Bound]

This thread has prompted me to add my worst moments, not as a pilot but as a useful (IMHO) addition to the payload.

Flying in a 355 in mountains in deteriorating weather (unknown before t/o - departure airfield and destination loud and clear). Past PNR (it was a part of the world with few places to get fuel) in a valley that would be pretty any other day, following a rushing river and a railway line that kept disappearing into holes in the hill. Either side the tops are in cloud and it's raining.
We're down to about 30kts, wipers going fit to melt the screen, our eyeballs touching the inside of it. Him - the driver - and me looking out for just about anything that might make the day that little bit worse.
Then I see three cables about 300 yards ahead and above us, describing a graceful arc out of the cloud and disappearing back into it, I can see about a quarter of a mile of them but they are (relatively) safely above us - about 50 feet. So I keep quiet. When we are safely past them, I asked if he saw them - he hadn't; and at the same time wondering how many others we had passed without seeing them. It bothered ME.


Flying - in different mountains - as rear crew in a 205A-1 with a new pilot that I didn't know and had maybe fibbed a bit about his command of English. It was a lovely sunny day with no wx problems at all, and we were loaded with steel scaffolding tubes sticking out of both doors en-route to a mountain top.
We were approaching an area known to be the favourite of the hang gliding mob on a day such as this. I dutifully told the pilot of the likelihood a few miles in advance, he nodded and said "Yes".
After a few minutes, I could see quite a few of said lunatics fluttering about and I pointed them out to him and suggested that he might like to turn left a bit to give them some room. "Yes" he said, and carried on.
I am now standing - as much as you can in a 205 - between the crew seats, speaking loudly enough to not need intercom, tapping my intrepid aviator firmly on the shoulder and alternately shouting "HANG GLIDERS", pointing at the now very visible brightly coloured flock of, and I would imagine, slightly apprehensive bird-men and a suggested course some 90 degrees left of our present heading.
Now obviously pi$$ed off with my back-seat driving, he said "YES, YES, YES.." - and flew straight through the middle of them.
Having managed to be avoided by them - we didn't take ANY avoiding action, we clattered on to the drop-off point for our load.
The drop site was on a gently rounded summit strewn with beach-ball size boulders. An HLS had been cleared on the flattest part of the summit - a circle about 15 feet round - but God's Gift to Aviation decided to land "Nearer the construction site". "NO, NO" I said, "land on the 'H'" - did he? Did he buggery. I pleaded with him to land on the HLS but he insisted that "ISSOKAY" to land elsewhere.
We did.
After the aircraft had un-ceremoneously fallen over backwards until its tail skid had found something hard to hit did he move it to the prepared spot.
After much humping and carrying of the load - at 9000ft - we returned to base.
I was not impressed and told EVERYONE including the CP not to fly with our new friend and to fire him NOW.

Didn't see him after that. But the worry is, somebody probably did.

Fred

Edited for typos.

[John R81]

Girlfriend asked me to marry her :eek:

Almost stuffed it into the ground!

[Colibri49]

John R81 tells my favourite kind of story; romantic. However I can't match that and wish that I could recount my worst experiences, particularly one featuring the enemy doing their damndest to kill me. Unfortunately that would reveal my identity to some colleagues, so schtum I must stay.

Close encounters with cables come to mind, particularly when I was flying along a river at the base of a cliff and cables unmarked on my chart flashed a couple of feet above my rotor disk. A farmer had built an electric water pump station next to the river and hung cables from the nearest grid source near the cliff top down into the valley.

Another scare with HT lines happened when flying low under heavy cloud one evening in poor forward vis with thunderstorms around. In a flash of lightning I saw huge pylons carrying many cables not very far ahead.

A different kind of cable which scared the hell out of me was the one I saw the base of almost too late on a misty day, as it angled upwards invisibly into the low cloud to connect with the TV mast 800' above.

All these frissons of fun occurred while on active military ops, not training, where we were encouraged to operate at around 50' agl.

Once I landed with several helicopters which proceeded to shut down. I got out of my machine and followed another pilot towards a village. Shortly bullets cracked through the long grass between him and me, which we didn't understand for a couple of seconds. Suddenly all helicopter crews were running to restart and get out of range of a serious fire-fight which we'd dropped in on accidentally. No-one got hit.

[SASless]

In a land faraway...many...many...many years ago....flying a Chinook with a slingload of bullets and water to a US Army unit atop a high hill in Cambodia...in ratty weather...in and out of cloud (mostly in) tracking out using GCA vectors....a loud "BANG" was heard in the cockpit area. Next was seen "fire"....lots of FIRE!

Beiing very close to the origin of the both the bang and fire....a .51 caliber machinegun bullet had removed the left pedal from under my foot...severed hydraulic lines...and started a fire....I was quick to notice something was not quite right.

As I was playing the "Weeny Roast Scene"...as the "Weenie"....it struck me I really would preferrred to have been someplace else....like anywhere else almost.

We were able to recover the aircraft to our takeoff point....doing a GCA approach back down....and upon landing....did an inventory confirming all important bits of crew were still as they should have been...although a bit burnt and leaking from some new openings...we called it a day.

Sitting in a roaring fire....in cloud....over some very hostile country filled with some equally hostile folks....will give you a wee scare. I know...I wee whenever I remember it.

That has been my greatest claim to flame in my flying career.

[TRC]

......insrtucting the Qatari Air Force


Rather like nailing custard to the ceiling.

[fijdor]

Thanks for a good laugh there john R81

JD

[birrddog]

First solo cross country nav-ex; learning not to lean forward to look at the chart on your knee, the hard way.

From then on I picked it up, or paid attention not to move my cyclic arm forward with my body!

[rogerk]

Any Army pilot flying in the North German low link routes in the early 70's who heard his observer shout "Starfighter 3 o'clock"
... and remember the buggers came in pairs !!

In the 15 years that the Luftwaffe had been flying the F-104s, 178 had crashed, claiming the lives of 85 pilots.

[JTobias]

Easy

Sitting in the pilot seat of the Jet Ranger I was buying and the current owner saying "thanks, for the deposit cheque, I trust the balance will be wired into my account this afternoon!"

Joel :ok:

[Bullethead]

I was flying Iroquois at the time for the Aussie Airforce and doing some freefall parachute drops with the Army display team, the Red Berets. I had just reached the drop altitude of 12,000' when I became aware of a very urgent personal call of nature, and I do mean urgent. Get on the ground now or fill my pants!

Out with the jumpers and into a spiral max rate descent and head for the edge of the drop zone and into the bush do take care of things.

Lucky I had a two piece flying suit on that day!

Scary, nearly didn't make it!

Regards,
BH.

[BobbyBolkow]

I've had many 'moments' over the years, but 3 stick in my mind as really scary!

1) 6 monthly check ride in an Army Gazelle with QHI LHS. Final auto to the ground (thank God! nearly finished). Smooth (I thought) touchdown for running landing, when we both heard loud 'crack'! Both looked at each other in a 'what was that?' sort of way, when world started to tilt. Front U/C crosstube had snapped and the skids were splaying out from the front. We came to a stop with the A/C 30deg tilt to Stbd and the blade tips 6" from the ground. :eek:

2) Inbound to ABZ from East Shetland Basin flying CoJo in 332L. 225Nm out when 3 distinct 'bumps' felt through airframe. Again, that what was that look to each other when vibration level shot up in a nanosecond. Couldn't see Capt sitting only 3ft to my right! Put out mayday call convinced we were ditching (also remember being convinced that we would break up before hitting the water). Superb flying by PIC deduced drag link failure, 3 blades behaving themselves in lead & lag, 1 doing it's own thing. Kept airbourne & diverted to Sumburgh for safe landing. But longest, rattliest (& scariest) 25 mins of my flying career. Many thanks for getting me home Hugh.

3) Flying HEMS in a 105DBS. Located incident (RTC car on roof) and set up for field landing. Well documented incident, but my fault! Got the drift wrong, division of attention etc, etc. First indication of summat wrong was pull of tail to the left, followed by.......nothing. Knew almost instantly that tail rotor had been ripped off by contact with the tree that should have been 30' away! Dumped lever and we hit the ground....HARD. U/C did it's job and folded up and we stopped belly on the ground, skids flat, but upright. 3 of us walked away battered and bruised, and a huge dent in my ego :ugh:

Keep safe out there guys!

[AdamFrisch]

Many years ago, back in the days training for my PPL (H) in Sweden:

One late autumn day in 1995 my instructor calls me up and ask me if I want to fly an older 269 to its operator across the pond free of charge. It had been borrowed to cover for the schools tech ship. It's about a 45 min ride and of course I jump at this.

We pre-flight and take-off, chit chat and whatnot. Haven't flown that particular ship before, and it feels less 'firm' and responsive than the one I'm used to. Anyway, the route takes us over the archipelago in Stockholm and I'm doing my best at flying a straight line. Instructor says I should try to keep within autorotational distance of the all the litle islets we pass, in case something would go wrong. I think he is being overly cautious, but I do as he suggests. So we start to zig-zag between all the little islets, cobs and islands.

Obviously, the second after we've passed out over a stretch of open water after just having left a small island, the engine starts to sound really strange. We look at eachother and I can see my instructors hands coming up from their restful position on his laps and starting to grab the cyclic.. BANG! Motor quits violently (seized up - as we later got to know - due to valve lodging into cylinder), aircraft yaws heavily to the right. We're at 1500ft and my instructor yells to me that he's got control and that I should call mayday on the radio. I'm probably calling a mayday on every radio frequency there is but the right one. He's managed to turn the aircraft around towards the little island. We narrowly miss a power line (I recall screaming "Do you see it? Do you see the line??!!" to which he responds "got it!"). We settle in a horse field - hard, but alive.

I remember just sitting there for the longest period of time in complete silence. Finally the horses start to come up to the heli and throw curious glances at the strange arrivals. It was rather surreal. We finally start to make our way to the nearest house on shaky legs.

Would I have managed if I've been on my own? Who knows - I had done lots of autorotation training, flown solo, but I doubt I'd have gotten all of it right in such a short time. But it's impossible to tell. All I can say is that I am very grateful that he was with me that particular day.

Anyway, after this I took one more helicopter lesson and then quit. I was afraid, I'm man enough to say. I was also broke and thought that the only way to continue was on turbines. And I simply couldn't afford that at the time.

Fast forward to 15 years later. Today I can afford it again (just barely). And two weeks ago I had 2 hours in a H300CB at Van Nuys airport. I wouldn't say it all came back to me, but I could still hover on the first try!

[waragee]

I backed into some small branches once in an R22, one blade struck a stick about ½’ dia. about ¾’ in from the blade tip causing the shape forming plug in the end of the blade to dislodge. I had felt the strike and poled forward to go and land about 50ft straight ahead. The unbalanced rotor set up a vibration that was so severe (it didn’t feel severe) that from the time I recognized the strike and the onset of the vibration and poled forward it took about a count of 1 and 2 and the tail end cracked off somewhere around the tail boom end casting. I don’t remember a lot more but the really scary moment was being inverted, rotating and hanging out the door. I was an experienced mustering pilot with around 16,000 hrs experience. I guess I should have chopped the throttle immediately but at that stage I had all my T/R control and the landing spot was 50ft straight ahead.While I was the mug who hit the tree I do wish that Frank's little machine could handle a bit more battle damage.

[JimL]

Apropos scary (not for me) and the previous post, look at this account taken from a paper by Christine Negroni in the ISASI Forum (July-Sept 2010):

“I arrived at work for a shift change. After parking the car, I heard one of our hospital helicopters turning on the hospital helipad. I ran to the pad so I could relieve the night pilot and take the flight…. We were responding to a multiple car accident with serious injuries…. I remember glancing at my instrument gauges before liftoff. Everything looked good. I made the appropriate calls and began the takeoff process…. As we moved forward, my warning lights and horns for low rotor rpm came on. My rotor rpm’s began to drop, and the aircraft slowly began to settle…. I turned and was able to settle back on the pad and appeared to land without incident. I looked at the gauges and around the cockpit. Everything was normal again, except I noticed that my engine throttles were not full forward. I assumed that was the problem. I pushed the throttles forward completely, lifted off again, and flew the flight to the accident scene as if everything was normal. Upon landing and shutting down at the scene, I discovered that approximately 2-3 inches of each tail rotor blade (2) were chopped off. I gave the remaining rotors a detailed inspection and checked the drive train from the engines to the rotors and found everything in place. The patient was brought to the aircraft, dying, and placed inside. I made the decision that I could make the 5-minute flight back to the hospital safely.” The flight went back without incident.

For me the most scary part of this were the actions of the pilot(s).

Jim

[TRC]

For me the most scary part of this were the actions of the pilot(s).


Agreed, but this makes it even more ridiculous.....


The patient was brought to the aircraft, dying, and placed inside.

[Epiphany]

TRC - was that one of your ex-sudents from the Qatari Air Force?

My scariest moments were flying with pilots from that bastion of democracy too. No matter what they did - it always seemed to be my fault!

[TRC]

...was that one of your ex-sudents from the Qatari Air Force?


Pilot and back-seater Load-lifting training...

Billy Smart would have made a million out of it.

I still wake up screaming at the thought of it.

[fijdor]

For me, it would be more like "the scariest week I had in a helicopter" were I was collecting scary moments one after the next for 4 or 5 days.

My story is, I was sent down to South America to do a "Bird Towing" job, (Magnetic survey),the Aircraft was single hydraulic Bell 205 with a T53-17 and regular 205 blades.

What I did was survey the Top of the Andes Mountains from East to West and back, Straight across doing lines with no more than 50 meters to play with on each side of the line.

The whole thing was flown at a calculated D.A of in between 20,000 ft and 25,500 ft and for almost 4 months that is all I did (with time off in there of course).

Now the scary part, the first week, where I had to deal with phenomenons found mostly in books and some which did not even exist in books at all but still had to deal with, where I tried to understand what was happening and figure out a recovery procedures before hitting anything solid and when you fly at 200 ft above ground there isn't much time for that.
Example of this would be retreating blade stall that happens when you reach the VNE at about 55 to 60kts, it is scary to see the aircraft start pitching up and roll upside down and all that with longline and bird attached underneath the machine at 200 ft above ground, your mind races to find a way out that.

Other things like LTE can also be a scary thing, when the slowest you can go is maybe 10/15kts before you lose control of the tail rotor, still at 200 ft and still with the darn longline and bird and you are simply falling down the mountain spinning trying to figure a way out of it before the next ridge gets too close. Because you got to start climbing well in advance of the slope, Another scary one is the "Huey tuck" you know you get stuck in whatever attitude your in and no response from the controls, you don't want to be in that one I can tell you right now. Also couple more not in books. All these scary situations, I had to deal with them many times before finding out where the limits where and finding out little clues telling me I was close to whatever limits I was reaching. It took me 3 to 4 days to masters the flying techniques needed up there.
After that it was ok, since we could do it, they kept adding lines and new jobs. I was told it was two world altitude records (unofficial) for bird towing, we used 2 different systems. Learned a lot out of that. Found out where the actual, real limits of the aircraft where and it ain't quite was it is in the book

Those were my scariest moments.

JD

[AdamFrisch]

Interesting.

Fijdor - re you saying that retreating blade stalls comes at actual lower airspeeds up there, or was it just because the IAS was so much lower?

I didn't know tail rotor authority deteriorated that much up there, but it makes sense.

I do recall how sloppy the controls got when we climbed high in the 269 years ago - to the point where I thought it was uncomfortable - so I can barely imagine how hard it must have been up at your altitudes.

[RVDT]

Black Jacques Shellacque - Tabernak!

Youtube is your friend - check out the N1!

Rt58oNweAOo


QTeALdDWNkg

[fijdor]

VNE for a B205 is 120 kts if you follow the manual you are suppose to decrease speed 3 kts per 1000 of altitude which will give you a VNE of 57 KTS at 21,000 ft add temperature to this, it was in the Atacama desert in Northern Chile, and you will have a blade that will stop flying at one point and it is right there

You loose tail rotor authority at just about sea level so imagine up there, daily occurrence. If you notice in the video posted earlier I am going trough 18,000 and climbing when the master caution light comes on, I kind of put my attention on the problem and forgot to keep the speed up, you can see the airspeed indicator going down to zero and not long after that we are gone spinning just too bad the operator stop filming (got scared )you would have seen a nice recovery technique. Takes time and patience even if there urgency in the maneuver

As for the controls being sloppy is not even the word for it. You have to be sitting half a kilometer in front of the aircraft, meaning I want to go up over there so I pull cyclic and collective over here half a click before to get the response over there. It was a constant calculation.

The N1 limits are from the T53 -17 of course NOT a -13

In my first post I forgot to mention some other scary moments like "settling with power", Compressor stalls, Out of this world wind and mechanical problems.

JD

Thanks RVDT for posting the video.

[rod scott]

Scariest moment??????????? When the engine stopped over high canopy trees.
85 knots at 300 agl. I LIVED.

[pasptoo]

write a book?
P:ok:

[Hell Man]

Fijdor - your South American adventure sounds interesting and I admire (I think) your courage in persevering in a task which continually exposed you to such risk. I am aware of the pressures some operators feel to 'get the job' and to 'complete the job' and perhaps this was a factor in your bird-towing exercise.

However, and without wishing to take away from the courage you displayed, I have to say (as someone with over 6,000 hrs on different versions of the UH1) that, on a non-critical mission such as a magnetic survey, I doubt that I would have done what you did.

In fact, it would seem that you were continually operating outside of the aircraft's normal performance range and I found myself asking why? There are helicopters which would have been better suited to this task, the Astar B3 and Bell 214B among them as well as less popular helos such as the Ka32 any of which would have provided better margins of safety.

Sincerely speaking I believe you are lucky to to be able to tell this tale but, in order that you can be around to tell the next one, you might pass up such jobs where you are operating with nil reserves of power or control on every flight!

HM

[fijdor]

Hell Man I have read your comment and I understand what you are saying. It would be nice to sit somewhere in front of a coffee and talk about this adventure but here, is not the place.
One thing I will say though, I was never pressured to do this job or pressured to keep going, never.
There was a misunderstanding at the beginning in between the Company and the customer as far as the altitude of the job was concerned, the numbers written on the maps, 5,500, 6,000's and the 6,500's thousands on the grid maps were believed to be feet, once I got there and studied the maps, somethings weren't right and I superposed them to a aviation map to confirm the location and that is when I find out those were actually meters not feet. There was a lot of talking happening after that let me tell you. Decision to give it a try was mine.

As for the aircraft well, I simply used what the company I was working for, had available over there at the time. The 205 was OK it would have been easier with dual hydraulics and 212 blades though.

I could talk about this job for days, there is a lot more to this than what I wrote, it went for 14/15 weeks if I recall properly.

Simondlh The Master caution light came on to indicate a boots pump failure, can't remember which one it was, could have been the left one (the usual one) and the procedure for that is to reduce altitude due to possible fuel starvation, The airspeed went to zero because I forgot to do the basic thing in Aviation, which is "fly the aircraft" my mind was on the problem, I was thinking about simply quiting the line and heading straight back to staging or keep going and Finnish the line, I was heading in that general direction anyway but in both situations I could not reduce the altitude, I still had to climb to 20,000 ft PA to get back home before I could start going down to our staging. After recovering from the LTE I simply said to the operator "fu.. it" lets go home I need a coffee anyway. Did that line next time we came back.

JD

[BRead]

Hi Ian,

I'm working with a production company called Raw TV, who I believe were in touch with you a while back. The number we have for you is out of use, but we'd really like to get in touch once again about the programme they discussed with you.

It would be great if you were interested in having another chat - you can email me [email protected] or I'll check this forum again soon.

Best wishes,

Becky

[tyto]

my scariest moment is when im flying an ASW check mission with my Commanding Officer......he is the scariest being alive for me :p

[Madbob]

My most scary moment happened not whilst inside a helicopter but whilst being dangled on a winch cable from a big yellow Sea King in 1980. :yuk::yuk:.

It was after a survival exerciuse when doing my BFT at Linton and being made to survive on some barren piece of Pennine Moor, near Malham Tarn for 24 hours. The scary part was being on the cable maybe 20 feet off the ground as the pilot(s) transitioned into forward flight, leaving me skimming the ground flying nap-of-the-earth whilst following a fire break between two conifer plantations! As the cable came in the helo flew lower and lower so that the fuselage was in the gap between the trees and the rotor disk was perhaps 10 feet clear of the pine tops.

It felt like we were flying at 150 kts but the max was probably no more than 60 and the reeling-in part felt like it took a very long time but can't have been more than 60 seconds even though the maximum cable let out was probably no more than 100-120 ft.

One moment there was total elation at being found and "rescued". Popping of the smoke part of a day/night flare etc. and then the complete helpless fear thinking that one was about to be wiped out by a tree trunk. The worst part was not being control either of the helo or of the winch and being totally helpless.:eek: