Scenario - What would YOU do?
 

Ok, serious question, as this happened to me and I'm trying to learn from the experience:

R22, instructor + student.
Climbing out, on right x-wind, 6-700', over water
All drive to rotor system lost
Autorotation only option

Left turn gives you into-wind auto but into deep water
Right turn takes you very close to shore, shallow water (10') but downwind auto
Wind speed approx. 10kts

Which option do you take and why?

Thoughtful answers would be appreciated.

Thanks

Never flown R22 so not sure how much a downwind eol would be affected. BUT, close to shore works for me every time.....

I'd take the shoreline myself. Deep water is not my thing...

RH

to the right, towards the shallow water.

Looks like someone chose 'the into wind and wet' option on this one and got away with it. Personally I prefer to be on terra firma with a wreck than a perfect auto into the ocean.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXMLCZJI-Xc

At the end of the day, it's the Captains decision

F.
___________________
Free Beer - Tomorrow!

I would reckon a better question would be...."Why get over water to the extent you cannot make it to the sandy beach if the Donk dies?".

Please recall that if you jump into a well...the Good Lord ain't bound to fetch you out!:=

Knowing the R22 well, I'd carry on into wind, if the water is 10 feet or 100 feet deep it doesn’t matter - you are still swimming. Do you want to hit the water at speed (10 knots plus 30-40 at the bottom of the auto) or not (30 -40 minus 10 knots)?
I think that realistically by the time you reestablish RRPM (climbing out remember) and get things settled down, you are probably better off concentrating on getting to the water in one piece.
At least if you can enter the water without smashing things up you will be able to swim away. I would assume lifejackets are worn over the water and that you are at an airfield? A mayday call would be quickly responded to.
However without a lifejacket I would be keen to reduce the swimming distance, but not at the risk of hitting the water at high speed. :hmm:

And if you can judge a flare height over open water with no immediately available reference(the shore), good on ya. But with 10kts on the tail, the shoreline is where I'd go. However, SASless makes a good point, turn before going out over the water....

RH

SASless - I agree, but in this case there is no option. The airfield is on the waters edge and the circuit takes you over water.

You have 700 feet which would assume you probably have reasonable airspeed. Can you do a 270 degree auto and have your cake and eat it to? If not, given the height and airspeed, head for the beach and manage the kinetic energy knowing you have a downwind flare.

I also agree with SASless, but note the above. Would it not be possible to arrange with the airfield operator and/or other operators to facilitate a climbout with an early climb-out turn to keep you closer to terra firma?

Failing that, dietlhelm's 270 auto would be my preference. From 700 feet you should have enough height to do that. We used to do 360 autos from 1000 feet in the Bell 47.

I am not convinced that a 270 auto would work. Firstly the RRPM have to be recovered, then the height loss in the turn and any inbalance would add to the rate of descent.
I would stay on the x wind heading and accept the fact that I would have to flare across wind, but would be closer to the shore.
It does depend on the wind speed though. If the wind is strong then a slight turn towards the wind would give a better landing and the distance out would not have increased very much. In light winds it would be best to make it towards the shore.
Here is a thought...If you were autorotating downwind, you flare, and just as you were levelling for touchdown applied full pedal so that the landing on the water was in a backwards movement. Would this not, give you the best chance of survival?

Many factors
 

Many factors needs to be considered:
Water temperature
Swimming skills and physical condition of the occupants
Survival equipment and training
SAR assets in the area
etc
These factors can be used to determine the risk of not reaching the shore following a successful ditching. This risk must be evaluated against the increased risk of performing a ditching with slighty higher airspeed nearer land. I'm not familiar with the helicopter type, but normally is is possible to perform a (slight) turn into wind during the flare. A somewhat higher ROD is no crisis as water is substantially softer than the ground (at the impact speeds we are discussing).

Alternative thoughts.....
 

Turning should assist in the RRPM recovery due to disk loading etc. So provided the lever is dumped pretty quickly that should not be a major problem. As for any imbalance, surely that would only really be a problem if the student is alone and in the early stages of solo flying. Any competent instructor should be able to keep the aircraft in balance during the turn!

An alternative idea, again depending on the wind strength. Would it not be possible to perform a constant attitude auto or, better still, a zero speed auto - ie zero ground speed. In a reasonably strong wind you could even achieve a rearwards ground speed for the first part of the exercise!! This should minimise the distance travelled out to "sea".

Flying single-engine over water out of auto range of the shore without flot gear is criminal - full stop!

I think that most of us would agree with you there! But, given the scenario - what would you do?? (Not putting yourself in the situation is not an option, at least for the benefit of Wildwilly.

Perhaps the question should not be "what would you do?" rather "what should you be teaching your student to do?", as this seems to be a training environment we're discussing here.
As posted before - 10 feet of water will still drown you and wreck the aircraft. How many low time students can be relied upon to succesfuly identify an engine failure then enter autorotation, initiate a 180 deg turn, maintain airspeed whilst turning downwind then flare and cushion with a ten kt tailwind?
If it's an over water circuit then they should be wearing Life-jackets and the student should be briefed thoroughly on water escape, door jettison etc. That done i would have thought that yelling for help (use the radio if it helps!), holding your course into wind and carrying out a normal into wind flare is going to be the most survivable thing to teach a low time student.
If it's a licenced airfield that close to water then chances are it has a rescue boat. If you get out ok (more likley after an into wind ditching i think) and if you are still floating (Lifejackets!!!) then you should be picked up pretty promptly whether you are ten yards off the beach or half a mile out.
If there is no rescue facility then you have to be asking should i be training students here?
Safe flying (and dry landings!)

So what did you do Wildwilly?

I would bend forward, put my head between my legs and kiss my arse goodbye.

SB

So thanks to everyone who has posted replies so far.

As Farm Pilot has asked the obvious question I'll try to explain what I did and my thought process. I'm willing to accept that I may have made the incorrect decision if popular opinion disagrees with my actions. As I said in my original post, I'm trying to learn from this and hope that maybe this discussion will help someone else one day...

As Teefor Gage said, not putting yourself in the situation is not an option. Both ends of the airport head out into the ocean and there are houses all around. A bit of a buggar but that's what we have to deal with.

My option was to head for land, even though I knew I wouldn't quite make it and accept the downwind auto, given that the wind speed was no greater than 10kts. As we were already 90 degrees to the runway (x-wind remember) it only required a further 90 degree turn.

Just so you understand, this was a double vee-belt failure for reasons currently unknown and no warning light to indicate impending failure. I would never normally suggest that anyone should ever do an auto any way except into wind. However, in saying that what follows was the sequence of events plus my thoughts and actions as things happened:

Loud thud from engine bay area - ****, what was that? :confused:
Immediate left yaw, rotor rpm decay and engine overspeed - Holy crap :uhoh:
Enter autorotation :mad:
Immediate assessment of where we were
Any boats nearby? No - buggar :sad:
Into-wind auto into deep water or keep going right, towards shore? - Won't quite make it but shallow water and only a light tail wind.
Emergency radio call stating intentions
Manipulated throttle to see if any drive left at all - Nope, none, buggar again
Keep RRPM low'ish (90-95%) and extend glide as far as possible before flare
Instruction to student to open door before impact
Flare, flare, flare, holding until airspeed gone and groundspeed minimal
Deliberately let tail touch water first then levelled and raised collective simultaneously with gentle water contact
Helicopter immediately filled with water, rolled uncontrollably to the right, rotors hit and stopped, student exited and I climbed up over the now jammed collective as the helicopter sank.

Time from impact to completely submerged - approx 5-10 seconds.

Now, as far as I was concerned, having undergone Helicopter Underwater Evacuation Training and understanding how quickly a helicopter sinks and how easy it is to panic and get disoriented, as soon as the emergency was in progress my student stopped being a student and became a passenger who's life might depend upon my actions as PIC

I decided on the shallow water option because most people who die in a ditching do so as a result of drowning - not from the impact. Ok, you can be equally successful at drowning in 10' of water as you can be in 60' but I didn't want to be trying to dive down 60' to the wreckage to try and extricate my 'passenger' if for whatever reason they hadn't managed to get out.

So, any other comments anyone would like to make? Suggestions? By all means be critical but please be constructive at the same time. Thanks!

Wild....I would rate that account as being just about perfect and I would not have done much different probably. The one thing I do to prevent such a situation as that is by eating lots of Cheeseburgers and Fries (Giant sized),so I will not fit into the door of a Robinson product.

Real EOL's are just a tad different aren't they?

Some quick thinking about the door....that was part of my standard brief to a co-pilot. It is much easier to get out than waiting until the cabin fills up with water then trying to open the door or jettison it.

There are some that cling to dogma, SOP, Checklists, et al....that will try to tell you all about the dangers of the door going through the tail rotor. My view is at that point in time....in the flare....that is the least of your concerns.

If you were facing the beach and down wind...and got much closer to terra firma both in depth and distance....it makes swimming much easier than out in the deep water.

"...Real EOL's are a tad different..."

Hi SASless - yep, absolutely. All happens real fast and lots to think about. Had it been over land the outcome would have been totally different and there would be no way I would have done a downwind auto. Here's hoping I never have to find out though...

Hat off to you Wildwilly, I hope if I have to do it for real the outcome will be the same......

It sounds like you fly at this location regularly, and I would assume that you had a plan for the scenario, or one simliar, prior to the recent event as you said you were instructing at the time. It sounds as though you made the right decision, and who knows how it might have turned out if you chose the other. Did you have life jackets on at the time, and did you follow your pre-conceived plan or was it off the cuff at the time? Being that your options were a rock and a hard place, prior preperation to assist in the unfortunate event is probably the best thing you could do.

Having read your account of what happened I would say that you did the best thing under the circumstances. I know I would rather be closer to shore in shallow water than far out in deeper water.

If you fly regularly at the airport in question had you thought during the pattern, "If it quits now I'm going to do this and go there?". If so, did you do what you had planned?

C of G and vaqueroaero both make a good point about having a plan.

I always thought my plan would be to do an into-wind auto, regardless of the circumstances. This is one of the reasons for my post as I didn't do this. My boss says one should go to bed at night dreaming of what you would do in certain situations. In principle I agree wholeheartedly, however, I also believe that one cannot account for every situation as things tend to vary.

In this case, had the wind been stronger, or had there been a boat handy, or had I been on my own without anyone else to worry about I wouldn't have done things the same way and would undoubtedly have made a left turn into wind.

As I remarked to SASless, things do happen very quickly and there are a lot of things to do/consider. My actions at the time were, in hindsight, not what I thought I would have done, however a quick decision had to be made and I took what I (rightly or wrongly) believed to be the correct one given the set of circumstances. Once the decision has been made, don't start changing it.

In the final event, there were no injuries and the outcome was as good as I could have hoped for. Impact forces were so small that there was no damage except for some crumpling of the belly panels, a small dent on one tail rotor blade, a broken tail rotor driveshaft and a couple of damaged MR blades. Forward speed must have been virtually nil as nothing around the engine (fan scroll etc) has been pushed back and the mounts and firewall haven't suffered at all.

The only thing I was worried about immediately after the event was that I had somehow mis-read the situation, that drive to the rotor system might actually have still been there and that I had put a perfectly flyable helicopter into the drink. You know, the usual doubts one has. My fears were put to rest when it was salvaged and the obvious cause was discovered.

Firstly - to all you fools who are talking about a 270 degree turn, a 90 degree turn in the opposite direction will put you on the same heading in 3 times the speed and leave you a lot more time to sort out the machine for the landing.

Secondly - Go for the land with the knowlege you will need to conduct a harsher flare than you would into wind and if the ground speed is to high be ready to turn cross wind in the flare to reduce it as much as possible.
Advancing blade should enter water first.

I advise you engage an experenced pilot to practice down wind auto's.
Down wind operations will not kill you as long as you are aware of the wind direction, strength and effect it is going to have on your machine.
Down wind operations and emergencys happen in the real world every day.

The ultimate goal of all flights is to walk away from them and write about them on pprune, Choppergod says WELL DONE!

Choppergod has spoken!

Willy, I'm glad to hear you were both ok.

... rolled uncontrollably to the right, rotors hit and stopped, student exited and I climbed up over the now jammed collective as the helicopter sank...

So you were flying from the right hand seat?

Cron - thanks. Negative, I was left seat as instructor.

WildWilly,
Do not second guess yourself. All ended well so you made the correct choice.

As for the learning experience:

Is the double V failure something that may have been caught on the preflight?
Was this the first flight of the day or had the aircraft been flying previously?
Did the student preflight by himself or under supervision?

Regardless, All walked away to fly another day. Possibly we can learn from this and avoid the same situation.

I had a friend and fellow flight instructor performing a photo mission with a 300C. He had a power failure and was able to put it down in the back yard of a residential area. No serious injuries and no property damage (other than helicopter). The bushing from the throttle linkage cable pulled through and helicopter went to flight idle. One other item I now try to look at during inspections.

:ugh:

Keep into wind!
 

I would stay into wind. Its sounds like you are going into the water either way, 10ft of water is still water and will require a water evacuation same as 'deep' water. Dont worry about the depth worry about flying the aircraft, then worry about your drills to get out once your in the water.

Mate,

Good job, well done. While prior planning prevents piss poor performance (going against your plan of into wind), there's nothing wrong with what you did. I would hope that in the same circumstance (mind you I have vowed never to strap my ass in a Robbo), I would perform as admirably. Both alive at the end and that's what counts. You were lucky the student in RHS didn't climb over you on the way out.

Sunnywa.:) :) :D :D

OK, if you have to do it, you have to do it - still think flying out of auto range of Terra Firma is crazy. Any reason why you can't make the cct height higher and tighter to the airfield - just to give you a fighting chance?

I am not a pilot but a prospective student,

From my point of view i would be more then happy to be your student. If i were the student sitting beside you the helicopter loosing power (which i could probibly cope with, you turning and heading out to the ocean would scare the crap out of me.

Im a good swimmer but i dont think i could swim that far with the added stress of a first time engine failure and ditching in the ocean.

I would rather put my faith in you to do an auto away from the wind and have less chance of drowning.

Also, where this happend.. it doesnt happen to be florida or near does it?

Hi Wild Willy

I think you did a good job.:ok:

Did you have life jackets on? If not will you be wearing them in the future.
Far better to be floating in the water wearing a life jacket than not.

We also have a small personal ELT, I always carry mine flying over land or water.

Does the airport have a rescue boat or would they have to call the coastguard, how quick could the coast guard be on location?

How long is the strip could you arrange to lift from the start of the strip so you are higher when your over the water and land to the end of the strip.

All very good, constructive responses above. And I'll agree with everyone else: Job well done! You did the best you could under the circumstances, and it pretty much worked out okay (save for one soggy Robby).

Okay, since you asked, what would *I* have done?

Answer: Not worry about it after the fact, that's what. The two of you lived; screw the aircraft that had already violated its "contract" with you. The insurance company will pay for a new one...or not. Could you have turned into the wind? Yes. Could you have done what you did? Obviously. Would either have worked out "better"? Can't say now- but that ship was going in the water no matter what so who care?

Having said that, the accident raises some larger issues. Namely, is it absolutely imperative that there be a helicopter flight school operation at that airport? Aviation is all about managing risks, and perhaps that particular airport is simply too risky a place to be operating a flight school. (Unless, he says tongue-in-cheekily, you put the disclaimer in your brochure, "Students *may* be required to practice actual, unannounced water-ditching procedures.") Let's face it, just because there is a market for something doesn't mean that market must be serviced. Or maybe a Mariner would be a better choice of aircraft. Or maybe you could find a remote site to go practice traffic patterns.

It's not hard to imagine a resulting court case (at least, in the U.S.). You're on the witness stand, up against the aviation-smart lawyer for the deceased plaintiff's family (in this hypothetical case, the student did not make it out of the helicopter safely).

Plaintiff's Attorney: Soooooooo...Mr. Flight Instructor, please tell the court, what exactly happens to a Robinson R-22 helicopter in flight when the power to the main rotor stops.

You: <gulp> "Well, the helicopter descends and lands under full control."

Plaintiff's Attorney: Full control! That's interesting. Please tell the court, in your own words, just how steep and fast that "descent" is.

You: <gulp again> "Well, ah, I would say that it, ahhhhh, comes down like a, ahhhhhhhh, bank safe."

Plaintiff's Attorney: Bank safe?! Are you saying the "descent" would be nearly vertical?

You: "Well...ahhh...maybe not vertical. Maybe sixty...you know...degrees down. Not vertical. Depends on some things..."

Plaintiff's Attorney: So when operating at that airfield, and when turning crosswind at 600 feet in a normal traffic pattern, is there ANY way you can make it back to solid ground in your non-float-equipped helicopter occupied by your non-life-jacket-wearing passenger?

You (weakly): If I could have, I would have.

Plaintiff's Attorney: And you think that this is a prudent, reasonable, and safe manner in which to operate your helicopter? ...Especially with a passenger who...<voice booming now>...COULD NOT SWIM??

Your Attorney (whispered aside to legal assistant): We are so screwed.

Maybe I'm being overly paranoid. Maybe such a scenario would never happen. Maybe I've just been around aviation (and lawyers) for too long. (Chime in, Flying Lawyer. Honestly, how would *you* prosecute such a case?)

Wildwilly, it's silly to beat yourself up over this accident now (although probably every pilot would second-guess his decision for a long time). Even so, it doesn't even do any good when you know full well that the time to be asking the tough questions would have been *before* an accident occurred. "Hey, what happens...you know, REALLY happens when we get out there on downwind and the engine quits? ...And we can't make it back to shore? ...And we have no floats?"

Oh don't be silly, that never happens. Look, you want this job or not? I've got a stack of resumes "this high" from Robbie pilots just like you who want your job. NOW GET OUT THERE AND DO SOME OF THAT PILOT SH*T - that's what I'm paying you for.

Yep! And now you've got an accident on *your* record that you'll have to live with. Be glad the student didn't die. Be glad if the insurance company doesn't come after you for the hull value.

Life's a beach.

I think the most dangerous part is that you only had 1.7 seconds to make your decision in the climb out anyway, before Mr Robinson performed his magic trick and turned you into a stone !

On the other hand, great thinking and glad you're ok.

My pennies' worth:
Do what you've been trained for. If you've never done a downwind auto, go into the wind. Better to be able to land (splash) in a controlled situation than land hard out of control into the water. A downwind auto is just different.
If you're flying a lot in this circuit with this winddirection I would definitely train for downwind autos to the beach.
I would recommend lifevests to be worn in this situation though, you're going to swim, in the deep or shallow end. Even if you choose for the shallow part, keep the currents in mind. They can easily take you out to sea.
Basically you're too far from land (you cannot make an emergency landing on land with an engine failure), keep that in mind.
Regard,
Copter D

Hi mate,

all I can say is well done! Any landing you can walk away from is a good landing!

60kts, 1500fpm - 60 degrees hey, I realise it feels like a plummet but that's the brain for you, its really a 1 in 3. As has been said before, ask a student how fast he'll think he descended vertically and he'll come up with something like 60-100 mph.

So glad its only robbies that have one engine, and single points of failure, so the rest of the smartasses don't have to worry about such things. I accept its low inertia head - was this a problem in this case - don't think so, but don't let facts get in the way