R44 Turns over while trying to land on a trolley in California
 

Edit to add clarity that nomorehelosforme is the original thread starter with the post below this one. Looks like there were gremlins with moving my post from another thread to here. Probably to do with timings as coincidently I submitted my post only minutes before nmhfm created this thread.

Recently did a few trolly landings in a 350. Lot's of new things to think about including not being able to easily see the bl@@dy thing when over it.
Had I overthunk and questioned everything that goes on with these flying contraptions I probably wouldn't be able to plonk it down safely.

R44 Turns over while trying to land on a trolley in California
 

Funny that the first thing they appeared to do was cover the registration number!

CARLSBAD, Calif. -- A helicopter crashed while landing at a North County airport Wednesday afternoon, but neither of the two people on board were injured, authorities said.

The Robinson R44 helicopter was landing at McClellan-Palomar Airport around 1:45 p.m. when it rolled on its side, FAA spokesman Ian Gregor said.

Video from SkyFOX showed the helicopter on its side near a square landing platform. The aircraft's rotor blades were bent and badly damaged, but the cockpit was intact and did not catch fire, according to San Diego County communications specialist Gig Counaughton.

The pilot and a passenger walked away from the crash without injuries, Gregor said. The cause of the accident is under investigation.

https://fox5sandiego.com/2019/10/02/419007/

Not the first bad trolley landing in Carlsbad in recent times.... Must be the airport....:suspect:

This one seems to have come to a stop quite quickly and with a much better outcome compared to the last one!

Surely there cannot be many R44's left flying. Rarely a day goes by that a crash is not reported somewhere. How many of these have been built?

6,188 as of the begining of this year.

Well they've made around 6,000 of the things, so...

Sadly, your problem might be that you only pay attention to Robinson crashes. According to the NTSB database, since the beginning of 2019 there have been 9 Robinsons (all types) destroyed, 32 substantially damaged, and 7 Bells (all types) destroyed, 29 substantially damaged. It's neck and neck. Not sure of the fleet totals, but at this rate, if both factories stopped building aircraft, we might still run out of Bells first because of the sheer number of Robinsons built.

The Bell's have enough common sense to go crash somewhere on the job where no one will see it happening.
The Robbie's are determined to do it in public and while performing dangerous manoevres such as landing or taking off :}

Looks like a R44 Cadet. Not too many of these about. Think they have only built about 60+ so far.

Apparently developed for the training market with the rear seats taken out and that area used for storage/cargo ? Who when training takes cargo or would need that space ?

So why not stick with the R22 for training ? Does anyone know the real benefits of using a Cadet for training.

Only two here in the UK.

Higher rotor inertia would be a big one. More stable in the hover too.

Yeah,...its the R22 for fat guys!

As do pretty much every other kind of helicopter, so it's really no difference at all:

https://www.pprune.org/rotorheads/60...ml#post9925773

Which logically means the Bells have crashed for 'explained reasons' which presumably means either mechanical issues or pilot error

so Robbies are better built and flown by better pilots :ok:

Before I receive the usual tirade from Robbie bashers who are gullible enough to think I mean this seriously, may I simply point out that this daft argument has been going on for decades on pprune without any sense coming out of it. Is it time to call a truce? I will get my hat

Yes, that's the first time I hear something like that for an helicopter !

So who is the owner who doesn't want us to know is name ?

This brand new R44 Cadet belongs to Robinson Helicopters Co from Torrance.

I really don't know why they did such a thing knowing that the registration would be known officialy quickly.
.

When you blame inexperienced operators for most of the faults of your aircraft, but then go do it yourself it could be a little bit embarrassing.

Isn't that best for survival?