R22 Down in Cairns

[heliduck]

I've heard through a pretty reliable wine-vine that an R22 rolled over around Trinity Inlet near Cairns yesterday with no injuries. No joy searching the news sites so I would appreciate any gossip!

[Arm out the window]

Don't know about any goss, but the front page of the Cairns post has got photos and articles. I guess it's fine to post names etc. as they're already published in the paper - R22 training sortie, apparently 'learning to hover', the Post says, rego looks like MRJ, with instructor Trevor Lewis and student Tim Box.
Minor injuries - says the instructor hurt his shoulder, but is recovering.
Rolled on its side, cabin & canopy intact, main rotor all bent up and smashed, tail rotor looks to be OK, bend in the boom where it joins the main body structure.
The Post seems to have done a fair job of reporting, although naturally they have dredged up 3 other helicopter crashes to talk about; no idea why they do this, as there's certainly no apparent links???? Standard media procedure, it seems!

One obvious error is the small picture of the instrument panel - caption says 'Ground zero - smashed instruments show negative altitude after the helicopter crash', when in fact all the instruments look fine, and the altimeter is on about minus 70ft, as you could well expect with a QNH change between the crash and when our intrepid reporter got on the scene.

[sprocket]

:O The paper should have headlined .....

"Chopper crashes Seventy Feet Below Sea Level "

Glad to see they got out fairly OK.

AOTW, I think the only links to previous crashes was the vicinity. I'm surprised they didnt drag up the BlackHawk collision for good measure. :rolleyes:

[RobboRider]

Arm out the window

The rego is as you thought VH MRJ. It is/was a nice little Beta 11 belonging to a friend of mine from Mossman north of Cairns who cross hires it to the flying school.

I haven't spoken to anyone yet but from the text and the photos I suspect it impacted right-side down cos the right skid is broken off. Then rolled back onto its left side. Apart from that and the spaghetti'd main rotors it is pretty intact so I didn't think it came down from a big height.

Was hoping to take it for a fly this weekend - maybe some other time


:{

RR

[Gerhardt]

The important thing is that they're both alright.

I'm working on adding a helicopter endorsement to my fixed-wing PPL and soloed in an R22 for the first time last weekend. If you don't think I wasn't nervous about this very thing....