N61PH 206 Down in Fountain Hills AZ 2 Fatalities
 

https://www.azfamily.com/news/men-ki...23775133e.html

https://www.azfamily.com/news/slides...445df6.html#32

Sad news RIP

I think this is the Van Horn crew, not sure, unless there was a second one in Arizona...

I spent many hours in a heli collecting flight test data with Rucie. Great guy and great pilot. Hopefully a cause for the crash can be found.

It is my understanding it was an XP Services aircraft doing flight tests with a Van Horn engineer onboard. Hopefully they can recover some of the flight data for the cause. RIP

Can't access those links from EU due to GDPR legislation - the world has gone fricking mad!

Crab, Google Azfamily.com you will find the details there including quite a few pictures.

FAA and NTSB raise questions about the air worthiness of the Helicopter
 

https://www.abc15.com/news/region-no...ls-safe-to-fly

FORT MCDOWELL, AZ — There are many questions surrounding the safety of the helicopter that crashed in a field near Fountain Hills on Monday morning, killing two people on board.

The victims have been identified as contract experimental test pilot Rucie Moore and Van Horn Aviation engineering manager Stephen Estes.

Officials with the Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety board have confirmed investigators are now looking into the "airworthiness" of the helicopter that crashed.

Court documents show the chopper had a history of trouble.

According to a complaint filed by the Federal Aviation Administration against the Tre Aviation Corporation to whom the aircraft was registered, the helicopter was purchased by an aviation mechanic in Scottsdale in 2004.

Documents state the helicopter was in bad shape. It had no engine and the fuselage was corroded beyond repair. The mechanic used parts from another helicopter he had purchased to rebuild the chopper. Many of the parts used in the repair came from a helicopter with no data plate or deemed ineligible for operation.

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As an FYI: the attached story uses information from several years ago and should not be applied to this accident. The previous issue dealt with building an aircraft from salvage and the transfer of a data tag from a corroded airframe to a serviceable airframe which currently resides in that alfalfa field. While it adds to the journalistic wow factor for the story, it does not represent the condition of the aircraft prior to the accident, which had a current special AWC and was operated as experimental-R&D.

The plot thickens
 

There is far more to this story than meets the eye. This helicopter was subject to major scrutiny and regulatory action.

Some very interesting reading if you have the time.

https://www.ntsb.gov/legal/alj/OnODo...ation/5722.PDF

https://casetext.com/case/tre-aviati...aviation-admin

https://dommagazine.com/article/data-plate-dance

It is apparent that the issues raised in these documents must have been addressed. The subject aircraft was issued a special airworthiness certificate as experimental/research this past January. This info is readily available from the FAA registry. The FAA will usually not issue an experimental airworthiness certificate for an old, normally certificated aircraft unless there is good reason. Who knows what that justification was but it may have been as simple as using the aircraft as a test bed for new tail or main rotor blade designs before they are certificated. One also has to assume these folks were familiar with the aircraft , its history and current condition. I hope they figure out what happened.

The aircraft was instrumented for data collection, including having an air-data boom, so I'm sure the presence of that equipment was the reason for it being experimental.

NTSB prelimary report:
https://app.ntsb.gov/pdfgenerator/Re...relim&IType=FA

If the link provided by SimFlightTest to the NTSB report on loss of Bell 206B N61PH on 16 Apr 2019 also doesn't work for others, then try this one:

https://data.ntsb.gov/Docket?ProjectID=99264

Also, this article summarises the report:

https://aerossurance.com/safety-mana...est-mast-bump/

NTSB attributed the loss to mast bumping and in turn identify probable cause as: "a result of a sudden displacement of the cyclic stick during a low-G maneuver, leading to mast bumping. Contributing to the accident were the unsecure positioning of the flight test engineer’s laptop computer and the deviation from standard operating procedures to leave the left seat cyclic control installed during the test flight".