Here's a google maps link which shows the situation.
https://goo.gl/maps/rlDlK
It's not the middle of nowhere, it's a very popular spot. Note the parking lots. Note the paved roads. The spot they chose to land is at bottom center, between the two trails. The boy fell off the cliff at bottom center.

Diginagain, love that quote:
"Heavy fog forced the helicopter to land on a slope during the rescue "

Um... no. How does fog force one to land on a slope? As opposed to a parking lot 300 yds/meters away? Critics, no problem. Thankfully, I'm never going to fly with you. This is a "controlled flight into terrain" situation, completely avoidable.

Here's another local war story, where the pilot took two nurses with him:
Untitled Page

With great power comes great responsibility. And a man has to know his limitations.

Perhaps you are assuming that they could see the parking lot. Or perhaps I'm assuming that the vis was dropping so rapidly that they took the decision to land where they did, while they could.

Yes, I'm quite relieved too.

Great quote. So why won't you accept that, on the day, someone did, and put the cab down where he judged to be safe?

John,

I am solidly on the side of the Crew in this. They landed safely. The Aircraft is fine. They are fine. The Casualty is in Hospital.

It all worked out in the end with no harm done.

It could very easily have gone horribly wrong but they made the right decision and parked the machine.

Bravo Zulu!

I'm assuming that the crew had a gps at least as good as the $99 gps I have, which would show the terrain and roads in the vicinity of the accident. That 4 yr old boy had a compound fracture, among other severe injuries, and received a blood transfusion as soon as he got to the hospital- by road. Because the helicopter couldn't fly. What part of that is it that you don't understand? It wasn't a trivial mistake.

As pointed out....the flight crew exercised great judgement in landing the aircraft...nobody hurt, aircraft not damaged....kudos to the crew for a job well done. :D

Prvtpltradartech, I'm curious. Would you have preferred that the crew pushed on, so that the flight report turned out like the other one you posted, where the pilot took two nurses with him in the accident?

At least that way the poor kid wouldn't be in a coma. Instead he would be DEAD! :ugh:

And if that is what you call a CFIT situation, then I'm guilty of it, quite regularly, most days. I control my flight all the way down into the terrain, then I shut down. It's CFIT accidents that we are concerned about, not CFIT situations.

Prvtpltradartech - I am guessing you have never been a commercial or professional pilot as you don't seem to understand the responsibilities of the captain of the aircraft - they start with the safety of his crew, then his aircraft and then completing the mission.

This captain made exactly the right decision - hover taxying in fog is fraught with dangers, not least the wires that most definitely are NOT marked on your GPS.

Private Pilot is cut out to be a genuine rooting tooting US Helicopter EMS Pilot of the Old School.....the kind that forgets there was a time (and still is actually) that Injured People ride Ground Ambulances to the Trauma Center before there were Helicopters and the Attached Gods.

Experience?
 

Crab and BB, does it seem like the pilots who have been thru experiences akin to this are the ones who ( as I do as well ) agree that the Coasties made the smart call? I will admit to being a little influenced by contact with that group over 39 years off and on. Before even reading about the weather in play here, my inclination would have been that if a USCG pilot called it off, thats all one needed to judge the conditions.

Supportive Anecdote:

Got a call from a pilot who was in a country south of the border with a brand new S-76 sold into a head of state operation. he was doing some transition training and wound up doing a mission with the President aboard. Getting close to the destination, they ran into a situation wherein there was a really large rainstorm that had enveloped the destination and wasn't moving. No navaids or the like and it was beside a large mountain. Rather than hovering up the road in the storm, he put the machine down beside the road and called for ground transport.

I submitted this action for a safety award ( a reasonable, but spendable one ) which the pilot received and which we used at the next Safety Stand Down to emphasize the principle that several others have proposed here: when the PIC makes a decision that the circumstances do not warrant further flight, that decision ought to, and will be supported.

Some may know the pilot involved, as he has had a long and respected career. Art Tobey came to SA having been the Ch Pilot at SF Airways in their S-61 operation. Not an amateur instrument pilot either. His word and opinion were always listened to. Certainly one of SA's finest.

There is another possibility here, which may have been in play. The original news story mentioned the machine being on an angle not safe for takeoff, or words to that effect. Have no idea what the slope limits are for the 365, but if the pilot put it down, let it settle on the gear at flat pitch, and noticed that the attitude indicator showed a roll attitude a degree or two over their published limit, that may have complicated things. Does not change my assessment of their decision one whit.

What a naive thing to post. Since when does a GPS allow the pilot to hover taxi around in fog? :ugh:

Armchair quarterbacks know all don't they.....:rolleyes:

Art Tobey is a true Gentleman and very much a "real" helicopter pilot!:D

Here's another Bravo Zulu to the crew for not pushing on and thereby exercising true airmanship. Hopefully PrivtPilotRadarTech will take on board and learn from the posts of professional pilots who unlike him have been there and done that.

Art Tobey - super guy! I was on my honeymoon in Florida back in 1982 and he and I got mightily pissed one night, much to the displeasure of my now ex-wife!

Art did have a knack for leading in the occasional "Drunk Front".....sadly I was always easily led!:E

Back when flying the orange machines, had a similar situation landing on some poor grazing land in light fog on a moonless night. We were following a beacon from a light airplane crash.

I defy any pilot over rural and rocky land (such as N. California) to determine from the air the slope of any wee bit of terrain + / - 10º for those points where the landing gear will contact the surface at night, in fog. $99 must go a long way for a GPS in any part of the world that will spit out that kind of data.

The terrain in our case was dusty hardpan, and it was a volcanic island, so it tended to be higher in the middle than on the edges. We could see the crashed airplane, and we concluded (rightly, as it turned out) that they had flown into the upsloping terrain. We had no Doppler, so the landing was visual and on NVGs. Flew a no-hover approach to a spot the crew agreed looked "pretty flat" and monitored the attitude until the collective was full down. We were lucky, as it all came in below 10º, though if memory serves, not much below, and we didn't shut down.

We had a plan to pull pitch and do the approach again had it turned out to be steeper than we hoped (based upon what the attitude was as we lowered the collective), as hovering around in scrub & hardpan in dark, dusty fog on an island on NVGs is as good a way to crash a helicopter as any other I've heard.

At least during my USCG days, it was considered appallingly poor form to criticize the actions of a crew when that crew wasn't handy to defend those actions.

Did we do ours correctly? No idea, and there was some lively and beery debate in the wardroom about it (and in which we joined in), but in the end we got one fellow to a proper trauma unit (the other fellow died on impact or shortly thereafter) and didn't bend the airframe so I lose no sleep about it either way.

Oh, and why did the airplane crash occur in the first place? CFII and student out on a night IFR training flight. Planned an approach to a private airport that was closed at night, so couldn't do the approach. We assume (but do not know) that they lost situational awareness while figuring out what to do next and flew into terrain. The fellow who died was the student. So far as I know, the CFII chose to take up another line of work.

This is very entertaining, and occasionally educational. I thank the poster who answered my question, explaining that the problem keeping the CG Dolphin from taking off was excessive slope. Regarding the "dense fog", here's a photo from the scene.
http://www.pressdemocrat.com/csp/med...YPE=image/jpeg
See any dense fog? Maybe the hot air from the Rotorheads forum dissipated it, and dried the "mud" the Dolphin was stuck in. Now I was quite interested in learning something new about flying. I thought Rotorheads would share some wisdom. I learned that they are mostly blowhards with little technical knowledge, incapable of simply calling a spade a spade. Not a problem, in the field of electronics we call spades spades, and strive to learn from mistakes. So I learned about the Four Ws: Wind, Wires, Way In, Way Out, and the Four Ss: Size, Shape, Slope, Surface. So the CG crew failed two of those, Way Out and Slope. I will leave you with some words of wisdom from James McCollough, Test Pilot for Bell.
"The limiting factor to any slope landing is cyclic control margin. If the pilot determines that he is approaching the limit of lateral cyclic control margin prior to being firmly planted on the slope with collective reduced to low power it is his responsibility to abort the landing attempt."
None of you mentioned that. Now you know. I feel like I may have saved some lives today.

Since you are quite the all knowing of all things to do with helicopters....care to enlighten us about other limitations that apply to Slope Landings? There are more than a few that apply and they vary by which direction one lands on a Slope you know.

There are different limitations imposed by the design of the aircraft as well too....but then I am so sure you know all that anyway....but just left them out for brevity sakes!

If one lands with the nose pointed uphill...where does Lateral Cyclic enter into the equation?

If you are going to play the "Troll"....at least be a reasonably educated Troll will you?

Actually, I did.

In the world of electronics, one usually has an opportunity to remove the component and reinstall it while seated comfortably at the bench, unless one is not versed in one's craft and goes around installing components into energized circuits.

In the world of night helicopter SAR (of which I only have a couple decades of experience) the do-over is frequently not an option.

I suspect that Mr. McCollough of Bell (since you're bandying his name about so freely) might even concede that a laden SAR aircraft alighting upon a slope of unknown pitch just might exceed its slope limitations settling upon the struts at night, upon which the prudent course of action would be to remain in place.

I have 4000 hours of experience in the very type (and indeed probably a few hundred hours in the very airframe) these pilots were flying and yet I don't feel sufficiently informed to second-guess any of their actions.

But yet you do? :ugh:

BS Bob- I'm not a BS'er. I put it right in my handle, I'm just a private pilot. But the basic concept of landing is the same: look for a good place to land. If you realize it's a bad place to land, abort. I've done that. That's what this CG pilot should have done. James McCollough had the cojones to say "it is [the pilot's] responsibility to abort the landing attempt" in this circumstance and so do I. You should grow a pair.

Um Lifting,
I apologize, you DID reference the correct procedure for landing on a slope: "We had a plan to pull pitch and do the approach again had it turned out to be steeper than we hoped (based upon what the attitude was as we lowered the collective)"

That is exactly what the CG pilot should have done. Why can't you bring yourself to speak that truth?

But then you proceed to blow it:
"I suspect that Mr. McCollough of Bell (since you're bandying his name about so freely) might even concede that a laden SAR aircraft alighting upon a slope of unknown pitch just might exceed its slope limitations settling upon the struts at night."

That's why Mr. McCollough is an authority, and you're not. He chose his words well: "If the pilot determines that he is APPROACHING the limit of lateral cyclic control margin... it is his responsibilityto abort the landing attempt." That was the safe thing to do, and no big deal to try again nearby. But they proceeded with an unsafe landing and it resulted in mission failure, and a SAR helicopter that was out of service for 48 hrs. Those are facts. If the slope had been steeper they could have had a dynamic rollover. It was completely unnecessary, as there were many safe, flat areas to land nearby and firefighters already on scene to point them out.
You have 4000 hrs in type? This fellow SAR pilot had 12,858 hours in rotorcraft. I'm not impressed with his judgment, or yours.

So I have over 21,000 hours rotorcraft....big deal. Does that make me an expert, hardly. The learning curve as a pilot continues to the day one hangs up the helmet (or headset). I actually feel sorry for you pprt .....your condescending attitude with what you consider your superior knowledge is a dangerous attitude when it comes to airmanship.....I wish you safe flying, because your naive enough to get yourself into some serious trouble without knowing it if you actually do fly....mind you, your probably a sunny Sunday plank driver anyways.

Helilog56- I have zero hours in rotorcraft. Does that mean I don't have common sense, hardly. Maybe you haven't been following along, but learning is what I've been doing, and safety is what I'm advocating. I feel sorry for YOU, I'll soon depart this blizzard of BS and you'll still be up to your neck.

It's very simple. They picked an unsafe place to land when there were safe places nearby. Having picked and unsafe place they should have aborted the landing and tried elsewhere. You don't need 20,000 hours in rotorcraft to see the truth in that.

I've obviously broken a taboo by criticizing this landing, but I see that as your problem, not mine. Professionals? Not as I define professional. Now this guy is professional.

What!! You have zero hours in rotorcraft and yet you seem to think your opinions based on zero experience are more valid than the professional pilots on here who, as I have said before, have been there and done that.

Your criticisms of the manner in which the Coast Guard pilots concerned were doing their job is as valid as me using 'common sense' and criticising the manner in which a brain surgeon carries out his profession. Zero validity!

I flew helicopters for just under 40 years, both military and civil. I was still learning about my profession until the day I retired. As I didn't have enough time to make all the possible mistakes myself I tried to learn from the mistakes of others and to recognise when things were being done well. These Coast Guard guys didn't make a error, they made the correct decisions. One thing I never did is to take advice from an armchair troll like you, PrivtPilotRadarTech, about how to do my job.

Guys, haven't we fed this troll enough? He's never going to accept anything we say and we are achieving nothing. This thread is dead as far as I am concerned so I'm off to the next one.

PrivPil:

the landing was definitely safe, the only injured person has fallen off the verge of a cliff…

In this case the airframe is not broken, apparently not even a scratch.
Why? Perhaps because the crew tried to avoid unsafe actions, either aborting the landing or taking off from an unsafe position in marginal weather conditions? The decision is always with the pilot(s) and need to be respected.
The aircraft and crew are required for the next rescue as well.

If you doubt then don't. Every pilot, either professional or not, has the very own skills and limitation, on that day in that moment and situation, which he or she needs to understand and respect.

Please tell everybody again what you believe is common sense.

How It Is Done
 

PPRT referenced the Jim McCullough article:

" If the pilot determines that he is approaching the limit of lateral cyclic control margin prior to being firmly planted on the slope with collective reduced to low power it is his responsibility to abort the landing attempt."

Certainly conservative and safe advice, but there is some official guidance at odds with his writing as promulgated by the US Army for the UTTAS design which I will paraphrase. The Army required those competing aircraft to land at 12 degree slopes from any angle and 15 degree slopes laterally. Full control was allowed to be used. Full control was in fact required for the left wheel upslope condition. I believe we used full aft control for the nose down slope ( at most forward CG ) as well.

Guess we were being absolutely unprofessional. Didn't know any better. Shucks.

Fortunately Pprune provides for the ultimate Safety Device when it comes to Trolls. Done....not to hear from this guy again. :roll eyes:

In Radar Tech terms....I just turned the Gain Control to eliminate bogus returns.

Operational Experience vs Manual Limits
 

PVTPLT,

Something to consider while you're learning: We weren't there.

If the fog was blamed, I have to assume they couldn't see the better landing options. Likewise, I assume they knew they were right at the limit for their slope limitations and chose to continue the landing. All that makes me think they were concerned that the fog was getting worse and were at risk of losing control of the aircraft. What I don't know is the particular avionics fit on that aircraft or the maintenance status, I also don't know if the pilot was already starting to experience spatial disorientation; all of which would play into the a decision to land vice perform an ITO, declare an emergency and fly home IFR.

For you to dig up a flight manual quote without asking about all the factors that actually affect in flight decisions shows your inexperience. In any event like this there is rarely black and white, things are mostly grey. At the end of the day, this worked out good. That doesn't mean there isn't learning to be had or things to do different next time, but hand wringing about unprofessional behavior based on what your non-flight approved GPS shows is not helpful for anyone.

I suggest you learn to listen more, speak less and ask questions from those more experienced than you before passing judgement. You may be on to something despite others experience, but you need to do the due diligence to make sure you're right before telling the emperor he's naked. When you don't, you get what you have here; the experienced folks ignore you.

Busdriver

PrivtPilotRadarTech

Do you work for Sonoma County SO?

Gordy- good question. No, I have nothing to do with the sheriff, don't know any of them, etc. The helicopter crew seems very effective, they do a lot with what they have. Perhaps you read this article, which I linked previously:
Sonoma County helicopter pilot honored for daring rescue | The Press Democrat
They flew 250 miles to do a rescue the Coasties refused to complete, and now the pilot has been named "Pilot of the Year". It was a stranded SAR team he rescued; imagine how that played out in the SAR community.

Here are some photos showing the lay of the land at the Bodega Bay incident. The first one shows where the Coasties landed and took off, the people in the background are at the cliff edge. The sheriff happened to fly by, the photo was taken beside a paved rd. (you have to copy and paste those links, they don't seem to work when clicked)

http://1drv.ms/1vuyE7z
The next one shows the flat ground to the right of the first photo. I could have landed my Cessna there. You can see the tracks the firefighters left.

http://1drv.ms/1vuA9mi
You boys take a good look at that. Good news- the 4 yr old boy has regained consciousness. Astounding.

http://1drv.ms/1vuyE7z

I read the article about the SCSO and disagree with their decision to attempt the rescue even though this time it worked out. I believe their risk assessment was flawed or they did not do one. I believe they may have been driven by other factors.

Ass to the Coast Guard Landing---You still don't get it---you were NOT on the aircraft when it landed and are basing your views on a photo taken after the landing. The pilot in command made a decision to land and, stuck by it and no harm was done. He may not have seen the flat field. I will tell you that it is extremely difficult to find flat ground sometimes.

The fog moves quickly in that area....we do NOT know the exact conditions when he landed.

And before you say that I know not of what I speak---I flew in the Bay Area for 8 years full time. I was a pilot with the Contra Costa County Sheriff Department and actually flew the Sonoma guys on a ride along in our 407 BEFORE they bought theirs. I applied for a job with them and chose not to pursue it further after visiting and getting an idea of their "culture". (Admittedly this was 15 years ago--things may have changed).

privat pilot, why don't you go out to that place in the middle of a foggy windy night, turn off your car lights, turn the flash off on your camera, then take some photos and see how good they turn out. that is pretty much what you can see out of a helicopter at night.

better still, once you are there, keep your lights off, turn your GPS on, windows up, get someone in the car to point a torch at your eyes flick it on and off occasionally, and squirt the windscreen washer occasionally. now while all that is happening, slowly cruise around that area at a slow helicopter speed of about 40-60 kts. thats about 45-70 miles an hour, after you have done that, come back on here and tell us all how easy it was and that those useless pilots should have killed themselves trying to move a helicopter that HAD ALREADY LANDED SAFELY!!!

Forget it people, that guy is hopeless. 0 hours rotorcraft but knows all about it, despite a couple hundred thousand hours of combined experience on here all violently disagreeing. This sort of ignorance is beyond all discussion, that's just a case for the ignore function.

For a guy that said "I'm going to depart this blizzard of BS", you still can't help yourself. For a self professed intellect pprt, your broadcasting "moron"....

You have to thank the guy tho. He's done something that I haven't seen happen in all the time I've been reading these forums. He's got almost every pilot on here to agree! We've got the Brits, Europeans, Americans, Canadians, Ozzies and Kiwis all agreeing on something.:D

PrivtPilotRadarTech
 

I've never been able to really understand where these people come from or indeed, why they get hooked on a particular story and get so wound up about it.

There's a few names on here that clearly state themselves as non-pilots or non-experts, yet have this furiously aggressive adamancy in certain controversial incidents. These 'names' all seem to be relatively newly registered. Maybe they're all the same person? Who knows.

What I do know, is that these people exhibit classic signs of being the exact kind of person I would never wish to fly with.

To me, this bloke lost his argument when he said:

In the world of aviation, one has to have humility and bags of humbleness to truly learn and live. The arrogant and prideful tend to hurt themselves at some point or another. Or worse; hurt somebody else.

Relax, guys. Don't get yourselves wound up. This person is either simply a troll having a lot of weird fun winding people up, or actually has more knowledge on this incident than is letting on. After all, who in their right sane mind, could possibly have an opinion so strong about how events unfolded when they were not there to see them!? I'm no rocket scientist, but I know that things quite often didn't happen the way one assumes they did. In fact, if you really truly found out how the holes in the swiss cheese did line up, you may be completely surprised!

To make judgements based on no first hand knowledge is folly.

Be nice to each other. It really does make the world a nicer place :ok:

perhaps Priv Pil comments should be analyzed in depth with all respect to his personality.

How many crashes have to do with ignorance and lack of situational awareness, just recently with some very experienced professional pilots? How often have unexperienced pilots crashes because they have just done what they have been told to do or expected to do, or put themselves under pressure because others did something they wanted to do as well?

I remember a great article by an fw airline pilot . He counted all crashes and incidents where the superior judgement by HUMANS and their very individual skills saved their lives and hundreds of others - in most cases based on long experience but thats not everything one needs to be a safe pilot :hmm:

If pilots (and all other people) are not allowed to trust their individual judgement? I think we, really we altogether as humans, have lost completely.

btw, Super F, if you split between Brits and Europeans please separate the Austrians as well..:E

I thought you had a little corporal with a dodgy moustache for that back in the 1930s;););)

oh yes the little corporal and all the flies following the brown **** ... a good example for a responsible, sane and solid decision making process within some sort of a cooperate culture.. but surely it wasn't a crash what happened the following decade..:roll eyes:

Final post
 

Helilog56, yes, I'm reminded of that Al Pacino line:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPw-3e_pzqU

But this is it, last post here. I've put it simply, I've posted links and photos, I've backed up my opinions by quoting an expert. I get a few glimmers of comprehension, but mostly a blizzard of BS. "You need special jacks!" "There was dense fog!" "It was stuck in mud!" "You can't criticize the pilot's judgment, it's not done!" None of that was true, and of course most of the drivel was ad hominem insults with no attempt to address the facts. Boring and unprofessional.

Why am I interested in this incident? It's local, in a very popular place that I've hiked and photographed many times, so I know it better than any of you. I wondered why an undamaged $10 million airframe was sitting there on a broad, treeless, grassy slope. I learned the key word was "slope" and read a tutorial about landing a rotorcraft on a slope. It was quite interesting, I enjoy technical explanations and the science of flight.

I saw the photos and videos shot at the scene, which showed it lit up like a Christmas tree by the firefighters, and good visibility at ground level. I also knew it was parched out there, and later verified it: no mud whatsoever. There were lots of flat places to land, even paved roads and two gravel parking lots 300 yds/meters away, so there was no need to do a slope landing, or even land in a field.

So why was that airframe stuck there? PILOT ERROR. Why was it stuck there for 2 days? That's on the commander. My commander would have had that asset back in service ASAP.

So it's dark, there's a fog layer, wind out of the NW. Your mission is to transport a severely injured 4 yr old boy to the hospital. What do you do? Well heck, I'd land in the friggin' parking lot.
https://www.google.com/maps/@38.3029...!3m1!1e3?hl=en

This being 2014, I've no doubt the CG has gps with terrain and surely bird's eye view. Just punch those numbers in, it's a clear shot in from the NE. No terrain, trees, or wires, 130' elevation. There's even a privy there, in case my PILOT ERROR comment caused someone to have a bowel movement.

Mission accomplished.

You just don't get it!