Apache clips power lines
 

BBC News - Army helicopter makes emergency landing in Suffolk

Apache crash lands in field - News - Sudbury Mercury

I hear from a 'local' that Wherestead is close to a 'caravan park'......


They'd better get the airframe recovered pronto before someone nicks it and weighs in the aluminium :p

It wasn't HRH was it?:8

Can't see any damage to the main rotors, 2 separate tail rotors (!) or FCR from the photos. A bit left wing low is all...

Underwires crossing was not taught on CTR so can only assume that he drifted from a BP or bust his MSD over the pylons!!! :uhoh:

PP

re: It wasn't HRH was it?

If it was....the power line installer will be sacked... :)

re:it wasn't HRH was it?
Any rather large houses nearby containing some young filly likely to be impressed by someone showing off their chopper? Isn't there family history on that issue....?

How well do powerlines show up on NVGs?

wires clipped in decent to landing, all safe, aircraft has been, how shall we say.....supercharged.
Hence a low loader recovery.

Not as well as the pylons themselves and even they can be difficult to spot in poor light levels and precipitation.

Not sure if the apache crews are using NVG and the 'system' or just the 'system' which is IR and therefore susceptible to precipitation removing any thermal contrast.

The fact is that all the wires are marked on the maps that their FOB mandates they carry.

all depends on the thermal crossover at the time. ranges from excellent to invisible

What about GPS? Or is that too obvious?

Hope they missed the School, Hospital, Old People's home that miraculously sprung up in the 20 minutes before the incident :rolleyes:

Given media hyping on about GPS disruptors today please don't give them another story to rant on about as reason for the incident.

Seems a shame to write off those 5 main rotorblades and 7 tail rotorblades that were damaged in the incident and strike them from inventory. :E

Oh you cynic..............

No it can't be "Ginge" as he is a nose-gunner :p

Guessing the AH doesn't have a Wire Strike Protection System then?

The Apache has cable cutters on the upper and lower fuselage. I wonder which one, if either, operated in this case?

From the number of customers affected this would have, in all probability, been an 11,000V or 6,600 volt line on wood poles, these will have been below 45ft in height.
As the wires are all below about 15mm in diameter and down to 5mm they don't show on NVG apparatus (we have trialled it to find faults at night).

The sheer amount of lines at these voltages would make it too big a task to put them all on GPS.

As an example the area I work in is about 1300 square kilometers, we have about 1700km of lines of these voltages

Seems a bit bigger than a 15mm cable??
The pylon behind the engineer in the video doesn't look much like a wooden pole either!!