Anyone know what happened?

[Cyclic Hotline]

Helicopter crashes in Cape Town waterfront
Thu Apr 11,10:28 AM ET

CAPE TOWN, South Africa - Two helicopters crashed shortly after takeoff from their base in the Cape Town waterfront Thursday, officials said.

The two pilots were slightly injured, but the aircraft worth about 5 million rand (dlrs 446,000) each were damaged beyond repair.

"It appears they were preparing to do an exercise for a film shoot," said Gary van der Merwe, the managing director of Wellness International Network, which owns the helicopters. "Something went wrong and they flipped upside down."

The pilots were sent to a hospital to be evaluated.

The red and white helicopters crashed onto the company's helipad, one landing on its roof and the other on its side.

Eyewitness Robert Macdonald, who works for another air charter company based at the waterfront, told The Cape Argus newspaper the two Jet Ranger helicopters crashed about 30 meters (yards) from where he was standing, and he had to flee for his life.

The crash sent rotor blades and other parts 60 meters (yards) into the air, Macdonald said.

The helicopters, which are normally used for sea rescue, had been tied together by a thick red rope attached to their cargo hooks, he said.

"The one lifted off, followed seconds later by the other," Macdonald said. "The rope tightened and one hovered above the other .... and then suddenly there was a dynamic rollover, flipping the chopper at the bottom."

"Seconds later it crashed, blades-first into the ground ... simultaneously pulling the other helicopter down with it and sending it crashing meters (yards) away," he said. "We don't see how they could have tried such a dangerous stunt so close to a public area — luckily, there were not very many people around."

Geoff Whitehead, who works for the city's fire and rescue unit, said he was amazed the aircrafts' fuel tanks had not exploded.

Fire fighters were on the scene within minutes and sprayed foam over fuel that had leaked from the helicopters' tanks.

The Civil Aviation Authority had not received a request from company to perform any stunt and the accident was being investigated, said Trevor Davids, a spokesman for the regulatory body.

Pictures here. (http://www.news24.com/News24/NewNews24/News24ListGalleries/1,5235,,00.html?path=http://galleries.news24.co.za/news/choppercrash/)

[RW-1]

On JH another person stated these two were doing some sort of "Stunt" with the heli's actually TIED together.

(Edit: Sorry, didn't really read your news clipping, just answered it, hence the above.)

I hope that isn't true, for it sets such a terrible example to someone like myself, who is low time IMO.

Sounds like it is true, for the operator declines any comments.

Just a thought, if both had the ropes tied to their respective cargo hooks, then how would one expect one to hover over the other without the line hitting the rotor?

Gggggrrrrrr, kinda gets me mad that two heli's I'd love to get (and will, one of these days) to fly have been wrecked needlessly.

[t'aint natural]

A special round of applause, please, for the above-mentioned Geoff Whitehead, the journalist's friend, who was "amazed the aircraft's fuel tanks had not exploded."

[leading edge]

Whatever they were doing (and being tied together just defies belief) they were lucky to escape with injury.

It annoys me that operators can obtain operating licenses with people either employed by them or running them who would condone either aircraft being tied together OR formation sling loads without adequate clearance.

Just breaking the very idea of aircraft tied together OR formation sling loads would have broken the first link in this particualr accident chain.

LE :mad:

[RW-1]

Just breaking the very idea of aircraft tied together OR formation sling loads would have broken the first link in this particualr accident chain.

Think they watched too much of those Jap monster movies where 3-4 heli's carry nets, cargo, etc. ?

[200psi]

There must be an aerody guru out there who could present a great paper on stuff like ingestion of downdraft/vortices/ reticulation and the like in relation to this prang. Dare I ask.

[S-92]

Unbelievable...DUH!!!:eek:

[GIMPOSH]

Can’t find my copy (seems someone else needed it more!!), but if you look up “More helicopter aerodynamics” by Prouty (all hail the master) it has a beaut section on tandem external loading that you may find interesting!!

[Roofus]

Firstly I have to say my thoughts are with the pilots & their famillies.

Niceties over........what the hell were they doing!? :confused:

It defies belief....I'm gobsmacked!

Unbelievable! :eek:

[Nick Lappos]

We have done quite a bit of work on "twin lift" with good results, but the needs to engineer solutions to the obvious problems (Obvious, one would think, until reading the news report!).

Dynamic interactions between machines, controls issues as they both trim to 30 degrees of bank away from each other, control issues as to who is flying and who is monitoring, etc.

The solutions involve coupling both flight control systems via electronic link, use of a rigid beam between the aircraft, making one aircraft the master and one the slave, and reducing maneuvers to the basics.

Done otherwise, such operations cause "massive noise complaints."
The Piasecki "Helistat" destroyed itself with dynamic interactions (like a low frequency flutter). It was a composite of 4 helicopters and a gas bag.

[aspinwing]

This has to come under the heading of "Hey STUPID; which part of NO do you not understand ??

:mad:

[B Sousa]

I think Aspinwing says it best.
Nick......it dont take no Test Pilot nor Lu Zuckerman( with one N) fan to realize these boys were playing with trouble. Im a bettin there was little engineering backround between the two pilots and the management in this mess........."hot dam, lets buy a couple more 206s, these are lookin mighty tired..."
In all seriouness, Im glad no injuries, but as for lack of smarts, these two guys deserve lifetime tickets to the front row of a WWF match.

[Gainesy]

Looking at the pix ( bottom row, second from right pic) there does appear to be a long red rope/strop attached to one of the wrecks.

[Lu Zuckerman]

In 1964 while working on the Saturn Program Douglas Aircraft ran a skills retrieval search and came up with me having a background in helicopters. I was removed from my position and assigned to a group that was proposing a helicopter-based system that would be used to retrieve falling film and data packs as they came out of orbit. After looking at the design concept I could see many potential problems some of which were discussed by Nick in his post above. The concept consisted of an eight-sided framework that had a transmission and rotorhead from an H-34 but with auto pilot capabilities along with an interconnected power supply mounted at each corner. I offered so many negative comments that the project was scrapped and the job was eventually performed by a C-130 with a special capture device on the nose and the film / data packs were eventually winched into the back end of the cargo compartment.

[t'aint natural]

About eight years ago, Flying Pictures helped produce a commercial for British Airways which included shots of multiple helicopters (four or five?) towing the same enormous flag. I was assured at the time that computer animation played no part in this. One of the pilots was Marc Wolff. Can anyone who was involved in this tell me how it was accomplished safely?

[Steve76]

I was really concerned when I read this as a very good friend is heavily involved in filming in the Capetown area.

An immediate phonecall yesterday to accertain his health followed and I am pleased to say it was not him or his company involved.
However, he is now involved with a court case on this incident.

The long and the short is the company wanting the filming done approached him and he told them to take a running jump. They persisted and finally found another Capetown company to do the job. This was the result of the practice for the event.

The idea was to have a line connecting two machines so that a contestant could shimmy from one aircraft to the other.
The line was attached to the hook and ran under each aircrafts skid to the opposite helo. Can anyone see the problem here???

The LH machine took off into the hover and stabilised. The RH machine did the same but decided to traverse to the right and subsequently took up the slack, pulling over the LH machine. The resultant tension also did the same to his machine.

Thus ends the Boks submission for syncronised helicopters to be a demonstration sport at the Athens Olympics.

[212man]

I was amused by the advert on one of the a/c: "pick and pay, we're on your side"

Perhaps it should have said " Pick up and pray, (oops) we're on our side"?

Nice day for it though, by the look of things. (Glad to hear no-one hurt. One could say apart from professional pride, but perhaps slightly oxymoronic in this case?).

[Grainger]

I've spent the last 24 hours trying to wrap my brain around this but I haven't, yet.

The mind boggles at the stupidity of this stunt - in fact mine's boggling on both cylinders.

Glad that no-one was seriously hurt. I guess it's lucky :rolleyes: that this idea was so monumentally stupid that both aircraft crashed almost immediately, thus not from a very great height.

What an appalling waste of two JetRangers though. Like RW-1, I'd have loved to have one of these machines if the operators didn't want them. :(

[heedm]

Okay, this wasn't a good idea from the start. What mystifies me even more is how poorly it was executed.

Why didn't they use a weak link for the practice?
Why did they set it up so tension in the rope created a huge rolling moment?
Does the cargo hook even release when it is side loaded that much?


I'm not condoning this type of flying, but even those who take such risks (ie stuntmen) enter it with professionalism and caution to avoid the loss of lives and millions of dollars of equipment.

Darwin was right.