Have you been saved by a PreFlight?
 

I mean, today i saw something out of the ordinary, nothing serious, although alarming, it was difficult to get the mechanics to put seriousness into the matter, as if i was the stupid one!

Doing a pre-flight on my Jet-Ranger, i saw one of the shaft yellow templates or tele-temps, go black on me on on the side of the engine, so i stopped there and looked for a mechanic, and finally i got a hold of one, who's not a company mechanic... I pointed out the problem and what does this guy says to me :

NO PROBLEM! That happens a lot....

And i say.... AND THEN WHAT?

Well, you can complete the flight and we keep monitoring the RED ONE....

And i say... WELL I DON'T THINK THAT's THE ANSWER I WANT...

I saw another old timer pilot friend and asked him, and he said to me... Hmm That might be dirt....

And i say... AND IF IT ISN'T?

And he says.... Well if it isn't it might be that someone while cleaning poured a chemical there and made the template react...

And i say... Thanks, BUT NO THANKS!

I even thought for a second that i was the paranoid one, until i remember who's ass is going flying and who's ass is going to fall from the sky....

So i go and call one of my friends who happened to be a great mechanic while i got in touch with one of the company's mechanics, and he says :

Well.. did you saw some grease leaking from the shaft?
I say no....

He says... well that's the first symptom of a shaft getting hotter than it should.

What about the other side of the shaft...
I say No.....

He says, Ok...

That usually happens when the template gets old. I guess the best thing to do is put another template in that shaft and see what it says in the next 10 hours (offcours checking it every flight), if it goes black again, or the reds start to go black then you need to remove the shaft and re-pack it....

Well that sounded a bit more thoughtful..

The morale of this post, is that sometimes even we as pilots do our pre-flight and sometimes even get pushed to do by the expert "Mechanics" to do things that we don't feel are right.... So Are we paranoid or are we doing our job?

Even though i don't feel i got saved by pre-flight, some of you old timers might have a story to share where you actually got saved by pre-flight.

Great title to the thread. I thought it was something to do with beans at first. Lots of horror stories from walkrounds pre-flight. What about a big military helicopter that had the tail rotor blades fitted the wrong way around?? Or the Jet Provost pilot at Cranwell who didnt walk around and got airborne with the pitot cover still on at night. He couldnt figure why there was no airspeed and had to yank back when the red lights appeared in front of him.

Or
 

When the mechanics did a run up of a missed assembled rotor head on the 206B jesus bolt came off and the rotor when't flying without the helicopter and landed in a house backyard :)

True story...

After having work on the TR including dynamic balance up to full RPM.
Engineering inspection and duplicate inspection carried out.

I had done the walk around and it looked OK. Got in, started engine, did full and free checks before engaging clutch. While looking out at TR noticed there seemed to be reverse pitch on blades with right pedal and no pitch with left pedal. Shut down and phoned engineer. He said I was mistaken so I insisted he came to check. All looked OK but after close examination we found the pitch horns had been put on reversed.:eek:

Kiko,
I wouldnt worry too much about a single dot on a teletemp.. watch it, replace it, take your friends advice. Now if the whole tele temp discolored, that would be a different story.

Just a few things I have found over my career - not from my present employer
Torn hyd belt, about to break
Siezed t/r pitch links
Worn out P/C links
busted/cracked hoses
Damaged Starflex ( very scary)
oil filler caps left off
unsafteyed wired bolts, etc
major leaks
powdering rivits
sheet metal crack
Ding in a blade ( not my handy work)
Dual controls installed but not bolted in
Tools left where they shoudlnt be
rags in the eng compartment

I could continue, but I will leave some for the rest;)
Always double check after any maintence. I always want to know exactly what was done or removed. There are very few people I trust with my saftey, besides my self. Never allow your self to be pushed. I am lucky that I work for someone who will back me 110% if I feel flying something is unsafe. They may not pay the most but knowing hat there is never any pressure to fly something that is not right, is worth making less money.

rb

RotorBoy.
 

You are right, in the robies is quite often normal to find a teletemp darked. In a jet ranger there are 6 or 8 dots per color of teletemp or template.
The yellow indicates a warning and the red teletemp indicates something is friting...
The only place where you find teletemps on older 206's are in the main shaft from the turbine engine to the main transmission (actually from the accesory gearbox to the engine)... It has 2 strips of teletemps, each strip of different color... One yellow and one red, each has different sensibilities, so a whole strip of teletemp dots going nuts, means more than one dot on a robie, which in a single sticker you have different temperature scales..... Here you have several dots sensitive to the same temp.
Thanks for the msg... And i sure wish to hear more stories where pre-flight had saved the day!

R22
 

Away to do a track and balance flight on a R22, got to the aircraft and found the engineer sitting in it ready to go. Luckily I never trust anybody elses pre-flight and always insist I do my own. When I got up top to the head I found that the pitch link jam nuts on the blade horn had the bolts on about 2 threads and were rattling about. A very grateful engineer got out the aircraft and thanked me for doing a thourgh pre-flight.
As the thread starter said, it's our asses that will be up there...
TiP:ouch:

-Loose (as in rattling loose) alternator - 300CB :bored:
-Buckled tailboom from hard landing (not mine) - R22 :ooh:
-Mis-assembled main rotor pitch links to pitch horns - 300CBi :hmm:
-Oil drain plug not safty wired AND on the way out - 300CBi :eek:
Most likely, only the last one would have caused trouble on that flight, the other three, well, sometime, somewhere, someone.

On an AS350, maintenance had put a clear plastic bag on the pitot tube, held in place by a rubber band. The bag was just wide enough to fit over the tube. My preflight in the dark didn't catch it, and I discovered that I had no airspeed after flying about 10 miles. Oh well, we don't need no steenkin' airspeed indications. Landed on my destination platform, shut down, and removed the bag.

Most of the problems I've found on preflight have been b1rd debris. Starlings left chicken bones inside the intake of an AS350D, and a mockingbird kept trying to build a nest inside the intake of a B206, using pieces of safety wire and sticks. The occasional red rag has been found, but not lately. Other than that, over the past 30+ years I've found very little to worry about on preflights.

All I can say about this thread is :eek: Holy crap!

Gomer Pylot:Well they say that confession is good for the soul, but umm, you finally figured out you had no ASI ten miles down the road?! So I guess you're not one of those OCD/anal-repressive pilots who likes to climb out at BROC, huh? Just pick an attitude and go? Man, I wish I were that good! I mean, I am "pretty" good at nailing the right climb attitude, but I do double-check the panel (torque, t's & p's) and other assorted cockpit stuff once levelled off and take-off power is reduced. Which usually happens before the 10-mile mark is reached... YMMV.

And rotorboy, if I were you I'd find another employer! Good God, man! Those helicopters are accidents looking for a place to happen, and I'd hate it to be you at the controls when one does.

Me, well in over 25 years of flying I must have been extremely lucky. My preflight "catches" have been thankfully few. Once I found a mallet lying on the trans deck of a 206L, just inside and forward of the access door. Maybe it would have caused problems, maybe not. Secondly, while preflighting on an offshore platform I found a ratchet wrench and an open-end wrench lying on the top of the left-hand (tailrotor side!) horizontal stab. Don't know how or why I caught that one, being that I'm short and the ship was up on pop-outs, but from then on my preflight included a peek at the tops of those little tool-rest platforms.

One simple event as an example...

Came on shift, Bell 212, write-up showing Tail Rotor change done, signed off, test flown and found satisfactory.

Grabs my Ass Jack (usually called a Step ladder)...climbed up to check the tail rotor. Immediately climbed down and fetched my camera....took a full roll of photos from every angle possible including witnesses and bystanders known by name.

One tail rotor pitch change link dangling loose at one end, no bolt, nut, split pin or anything. The other one was done up almost finger tight with no split pins.

Called the Chief Pilot and suggested some manpower realignment. Response was "What's the problem....you found it okay? No harm done." No one got fired, fined, or reprimanded or shifted to another operation.

I finished the season then went elsewhere without a second thought. The Salmon fishing on the other side of Cook Inlet was great.

Rotorboy - you've shot your foot big time with that confession.

How on earth does one takeoff (commercially) and AT NIGHT and NOT notice the airspeed (Vy Vtoss etc etc). Where was your scan mate????

God help the industry you're in:ugh:

I was preflighting a 300CBi that had just come back from a 100hr and found one of the mechanics had left a mirror used to check the timing stuck in between the fan scroll and firewall.

Another time I was checking the oleo dampers on a 300CBi and I thought the oleo dampers were too weak to fly. Normally, I would have waited till I could get another machine to fly, but it was for a commercial checkride and the examiner had to catch a flight home. So I got a mechanic to check them out for me and got the ok. Luckily nothing happened while I was flying it, but the poor bastard who flew it after me got ground resonance!:eek:

As a bit of twist to the thread, how many of you guys have made an error and either not said anything :oh: or embelished the truth slightly? As a couple of examples:

The S76 pilot who whilst taxi-ing clipped the side of a hangar. When confronted he point blank denied it despite 30+ engineers hearing it happen, and the evidence of 4 damaged main rotor blades and damage to the hangar at the perfect height!!! := := :=

OR:

The pilot who on returning to base found a panel missing from his aircraft, but swore blind that it was certainly there on his pre-flight. It was later discovered on a panel rack in the hangar, and had mistakenly not been re-fitted after an inspection!!!! :} :} :}

Just thought I'd ask.

HeliEng, well put. I'd also like to ask how many pilots would work 11 hour shifts 6 days per week performing maintenance on helicopters, and expect to get absolutely everything right the first time. Yes mechanics do make the occasional mistake, usually because they are tired from being overworked to the point of exhaustion. Pilots have a lovely thing called Duty Time. Mechanics have a lovely thing called Boot Up the Arse.
Not condoning sloppiness with work, but don't blame the Mechanic all the time, sometimes the problem is the people who run the company and see good maintenance and good mechanics as a cost that they don't need to be burdened with.
Tonight (I am at work now) is a classic example. 5 Helicopters. All offshore IFR. 3 Mechanics on duty. Last helicopter finishes just before midnight. When it gets back, it has enough inspections due for us to be working for 4 hours just on that machine. That would give me a 13 hour day, just so that it can be online again tomorrow. At 2am, as I am finishing off, at the end of a 13 hour shift, after pulling bits of engine off for inspections, could you guarantee that I will be alert enough to put it all back together properly, and that anybody else on the shift is alert enough to pick up any mistakes??
Food for thought. Must run, another machine has just landed and needs my attention. No smoko again tonight by the look of it.
Pay attention to your Pre-flights, they are there as a safety net.

noooby

Hehe.. couldn´t help grinning. Who hasn´t been there. Or wondering why ATC doesn´t answer your calls and you forgot to turn it on :)

Anyway you guy´s know that any tools found in the wrong places on pre-flight become automatically the pilots property and should never be returned to the owner..

Nooby, of course pilots have duty limits. It's 14 hours for us. Landing in the dark, 1/4 mile vis, 100 ft ceiling, after 10 hours of flying crew changes in 13.5 hours elapsed time, tired, back hurting from the sorry-assed seat they put in these things, needing to pee an hour ago, we have to get everything right every time. I've spent a lot of time helping mechanics, and respect them greatly, but whether they make a mistake or I do, it's my butt on the line, and their job is no harder than mine.

I have to confess that I never spent much time watching the airspeed or AI while flying small helicopters at 500'. What's the point? We just pulled max cruise power and took whatever airspeed we got. The attitude indicator, small and tired as it was, might or might not indicate the correct attitude, and wouldn't be replaced if it didn't, so it's worthless. Small ships are flown by outside attitude reference, and the only instruments of any importance are those for the engine and RPM. When I started flying IFR mediums, the other instruments started becoming more important, and now I use them all the time, and will see airspeed anomalies during the takeoff run, or else the copilot, calling DP and other airspeeds, will.

Aesir, I have a small collection to tools I acquired over the years, but I generally give them back. The mechanics have to pay a small fortune for them, and returning them, along with an explanation of where I found them, is good insurance against it happening again. Embarrassment is always very obvious, and an effective teacher. It's rare to find one nowadays, because they all have to do a complete tool inventory after every job.

Leatherman in an intake, scrub brush in an intake compartment, disconnected antiflap cam springs (after a very frequent little 10 hour inspection that was checked by a tech insp), and best of all some contractors put a laser tag kit on and I found the detector in front of the intake was not bolted on, AND they had removed one of the pegs on my seat to put in their sensor rack which was improperly installed on its own.

"I'd also like to ask how many pilots would work 11 hour shifts 6 days per week performing maintenance on helicopters, and expect to get absolutely everything right the first time."

-- I agree 100%. We were doing 20 hour workdays at the beginning of our last deployment while I was ground-mechanicing, and our bitching and moaning was going nowhere (2 guys taking care of 4 aircraft flying 6-8 hours a day) until a 1AM torque check got some torques confused and broke a bolt head off. They still wondered why it happened... then came total exhaustion a week later and my co-worker and I refused to start a big inspection without proper rest. They finally relented after much resistance and spread the workload out a bit more.

Great thread.

-Mike

206 Update.
 

So today i walked into the hangar to see the stats of the mechanic working on the 206, this guy removed the shaft and opened the ends of its to check the grease.. He showed it to me and it all looked fairly nice inside, no loquated grease due to temp, no leaks, nice and even on all sides, no signs of cracks or dirtiness in the grease or inside the tube.

He degrease it.. Regrease it with new grease and replaced the seals and offcourse ALL the templates.... Or tele temps.. Men i love this guy!

We'l keep a close eye on those temp-plates..... However the guy did mentioned that they looked very old and out of shape...

So... I;l be up and running tomorrow!!!

THis was nothing serious... Its good to catch things on pre-flight, and although i know this pre-flight probably did not saved me... I think i learned from the experience and work harder on my preflights form now on..

Thanks for sharing your experiences!

What would you do?
 

As I too suffer from "Sometimerz" I will relate the last fun time I had. Following a maintenance inspection on a 206 I was asked to complete a flight and power check. During my diligent use of the checklist (well most of the time) I carried out the flight controls full freedom of movement and was extreamly suprised to find that when the collective was raised it remained jammed in that position!
First check was for my coffee cup under the collective, any other rubbish followed by any serious tools. Nothing.
I decided at this point that help was in order and I requested maintence to follow through, after a short while it was found that during the inspection the Collective arm that is attached to the swash plate had been installed upside down even though it clearly is stamped with "TOP" on it. When I had put impute in the collective it in turn had placed the upside down arm over center and therefore locked the collective.
This happened because of a series of events, the mechanic was working under supervision (new to the company), the mechanic removed the offending arm by mistake as it was not part of the required inspection, replaced it upside down, the supervisor checked his work but failed to check this installation as he was not aware it had been removed.
No blame being levied here just pointing out the series of events.
The company the next day gave me a hefty cash bonus which for them was better that paying out my widow, I in turn have a very healthly respect for Checklists.
A Sidebar to this is: Had I not completed the control check and pulled 80% or better on takeoff thereby jamming the collect in the up position how would I have safely got the helicopter back on the ground. Discuss over tea or coffee.
Fly safe