This one happened right before my eyes a couple of months ago,

I was flying the blue 206L that you will see in the movie, I asked a friend if he could take some video of me, to which he instantly agreed, so there I was posing for the camera ship when all of the sudden he began to spin violently until he almost hit the ground, and all before my eyes!!

Note the big brown building in the back right before he begins to spin, he's a lot higher than that 42 level building when he begins to spin, and when he recovers he's only about 7 levels above the ground!

This helicopter operates daily at a TO WT that doesn't allow for OGE hover due to our altitude and the installed equipment, he allowed airspeed to decay and here is the result.

Turn up the audio and listen to the helicopter as it spins and recovers.

The video is about 3.4 MB

Download HERE

Blooming heck, what about the big brown trousers !!!!!

Nice recovery, when all is said and done

Excellent recovery! You can tell are real pilot when the chips are down, and you really have to fly the thing.

Thanks for sharing, very interesting.

Amazing footage!

Reminiscent of the Sydney City to Surf run back in the mid-80s. A 206 chartered by a TV channel was hovering over a sports field, just off South Head Road, to film the thousands of runners approaching. Then the camera shook a bit, then spun round and round and descended to crash onto its right side on the oval.

Cameraman kept tabbed on all the time and it made great viewing. All got out OK.

Another camera caught it from the ground as the brown-and-orange machine (known as The Jaffa, after the confectionery) spun out of sight.

The pilot went on to crash another time into the ocean, with less successful results. He had already crashed a chopper during training, when another pilot let him try to hover after a refuel, and he dynamically rolled it up after tripping over a 2" concrete slab. But that's another story...

Amazing video.
Hats off to the pilot for recovering safely. It could have been disastrous.

The B206 has always been less than powerful, I understand that it's certified to the minimum the FAA requires which is 17 kts. but since the engine is also not very powerful on the 206 Jet Rangers and the Long Ranger I, this has never been much of a problem.

On the L3 and L4, and especially at altitude there are many instances where you can be in a hover with only 75% of power applied and have the pedal all the way in, which means that if you apply power for take off, or the wind blows slightly from the wrong direction you are going to start spinning!

This means the TR doesn't even have enough authority to counter its own torque in certain situations.

Now Bell came up with what they call a "high altitude tail rotor kit" which consists of thicker blades and a sistem which measures density altitude and provides a sort of "fly by wire control" to the tail rotor which provides the the exact amount of blade pitch after calculating the density altitude and pilot input. The sistem works great, it seems as if you had a Mi26 tail rotor installed but it is expensive and not all 206 L3 and L4's have it.

Also worth remembering there is no requirement to have sufficient tail rotor to climb vertically at 100% torque and maintain heading...

Shawn....

I believe you meant to say....there is no legal requirement....or airworthiness regulations that require it....in the real world there is plenty of requirement to do so.

Yep, sorry - no legal requirement was what was intended. I live a sheltered life where quoting requirements is such an everyday part of life that it's easy to forget there is a difference between the certification requirement and the real world....

Just curious to know.....in the last few seconds before the spin you see the other helicopter move from left to right across the camera ship and a full 180 degree turn.

before assuming anything....Blender Pilot was this film camera using a gyro camera.

in the right hand turn before the spin starts was the helicopter hoovering?

Im just trying to work out in my own mind what may have cause the onset of the spin....obvoisly a loss of tail rotor authority but the events leading up to it have me thinking.

Apreciate your insight Blender

That was a tracking camera, trying to hold the target aircraft in the frame. The camera reference seems to swing left at the end of the controlled sequence because the camera is tracking the target aircraft but the camera ship has begun its right hand spinning. This confounds the photographer, I think, for a second or two. Remember, you are not looking at the aircraft's motion at first, it is a swinging camera. Thus the picture moves somewhat left, then is jerked to the right when the camera man stops actively filming, and the camera frame is dragged with the camera ship's motion.

It is sometimes confusing to realize that you are looking at the inside motion of a system with two references, one nested inside the other.

Thanks Nick,

Makes a bit more sense now!!

Cheers

Now that the LTE subject is back in fashion I thought it would be nice to re-live this moment in aviation, watch the video.

Great video Blender...compaired to an auto it looks like it dropped alot faster .... it's around 10sec in decent before he recovers. then maybe 4000-5000fpm decent rate....... that is one scary !!!!

how many ft. do you think he drop there approx? seem's to me 600-700ft at least

Blender I can't make it out - what was the recovey action taken ?

Thank god he was operating at a good height, nice recovery!

TFlyingSquirrel and Rotorrokie,

He must have dropped the equivalent of a 30 story building, when we started we were about 300 feet above the highest building, the big brown one in the back, when he came out he was at about the height of a 6 or 7 story building.

I don't think he really did anything to recover from LTE, he just fought the aircraft all the way to the ground, and from the audio tape he said it without saying a single word.

I have flown that very same ship a lot and I have had the same thing happen to me, but it never went past 20 or 30 degrees of yaw before I reduced power and put the nose down, whenever I operate at that weight I leave myself plenty of air down below and try to keep the airspeed as much as possible, that ship is used to relay microwave signals off the ground a lot and often the ground transmitter is located between high buildings which leaves you doing very small circles above, have to be extremely conservative doing that stuff.