Hughes 500 at a New Zealand airshow giving a spirited display of live deer capture, deer portrayed none-too-convincingly by a 44gal drum towed by a quad bike. Very sharp manouevring by the 500 at very low level (including a quickstop where it almost looks like the tailskid touched the grass every so slightly) chasing the drum up and down the crowdline. After the netguns - one skid-mounted, one held by the shooter - had blatted onto the vicious drum the chopper pulled up close and the shooter stepped off the skid to "restrain" the target. Pilot obligingly backs off to give shooter more room, perhaps forgetting he's not on a hillside and has less clearance than he was expecting...tail feathers and tail rotor fly away, a couple of pirouettes and the world is one 500 poorer. Shooter stands back up wondering what just happened!


As seen in the first video below (uploaded by yours truly, watched endlessly as a child) there were no injuries worse than a couple of scratches on the PIC.

https://youtu.be/U8U6qUEoscc



Another angle:

https://youtu.be/ATkwlYN-aIo

Well the emergency response could not have been any quicker !! Thats a good point.

That's a pretty famous prang in NZ...
There is a series of photos in Rex Forrester's book, "The Chopper Boys" showing the 500 lose its tail...
Didn't realise a video existed...
No drums were harmed in this display.

Remember it well. First time I saw crazy chicken dance. Bit of a shock for a new chopper pilot.

The blasé lack of reaction from the spectators in the second video is noteworthy. Even with a baby in her arms, the lady only wanders off about the time the fire truck would have been pulling out while the bloke doesn't even flinch!

How about the crashworthiness of the 500?!!