Robinson helicopters fall out of the sky even with experienced instructors on board. Not necessarily inexperienced pilots through their inexperience pranging them. At least in a Bell light you've got an extra second or 2 on your side to react to sudden engine silence without the rotor stalling.

Total speculation: perhaps he was on the South Shore helicopter route? Possibly below the 1500ft floor of the Class B?

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4328/...667ac635_o.jpg

bell also don't have a safety notice telling you to slow down to a crawl if it gets bumpy despite them claiming there's nothing wrong with the rotor design - apart from the coning hinges and being made from yesterday's linguine :E

Well, clearly for many the passion of flying outweighs whatever risks there might be. We can outlaw motorcycles, all of GA, and sharp pencils while we're at it. Where do you want to draw the line? Wait, forget I asked that, everyone's opinions on this forum are well known already!

For those whose only hope of affording the mission, or flying at all, is a Robinson, they have a place, or at least some 10,000 units sold (R22 and R44) say they do, or at least say a large number of pilots and owners think whatever the risks or performance limitations are, they are worth it.

No idea what happened in this case, no inside knowledge.

BUT

If you are flying along in an R44 and you get a sudden "bang" - big sound, like someone dropped a bag of tools onto the rear floor - then PLEASE suspect the sprag-clutch. Failure can lead to continued power, but no free-wheeling for split / autorotation, or to a complete loss of drive. The latter is easy to detect, as you auto down. The former is less easy (sometimes there is a partial failure and you can still split engine / rotor; but perhaps not for much longer as failure will continue to one of the two alternatives).

If you suspect the sprag-clutch then you can't check without disassembly, which I think is a distributor action rather than every maintenance provider.


I have seen it, and the disassembled unit is not pretty

Is there any benefit of popping the floats anyway, even if you autorotate onto a road? Or are these permanent ("fixed utility") floats?

They are not fixed floats.

Depends if they are Robinson clipper floats or Dart floats. They look different.

The fixed floats are there in flight. The (Robinson or Dart) floats are in packs on the skids till deployed. Assuming they deploy..