How not to take off in your Robinson!!
 

Came across this today, clearly it wasn't the pilots day.

https://www.liveleak.com/view?t=9e6C9_1592379852

Pulitzer prize to the journo who penned this....

Looks like he tried to do a splash & go.

It felt a bit like less than three weeks between flicking its tail in the air and the impact.

I doubt it was a journalist and almost certainly auto-translated from Chinese!

I think that can go down as 4 take-offs and landings in the logbook :E

Link deleted

BEWARE, clicking that link brought up a rather unusual image that had to be closed before the Robinson footage could be viewed.

Soooo, I'm guessing a slippery surface and slow on the pedals?

,...well at least it wasn't a 22! :-)

Maybe he forgot that he sold his Clipper last week:}

I've often wondered what would happen if you just yanked the collective without touching the pedals or the cyclic - mystery solved.

In all fairness, the aircraft did it's best to fly away from the water. However, the person operating the controls must have had other intentions... Wonder if the water was cold!

I saw similar behaviour with an R22 at rather close quarters some years ago (dramatic enough for me to dive for cover)
From recollection the incident was something to do with a gust lock or control friction setting which caused a serious PIO as soon as the thing lifted.
Does this make sense ?

I don't fly these machines, but I'm sure that plenty on this forum do and can comment further.

To be fair, I don’t think it is how to take off in any helicopter.

All the humor aside, can someone please elaborate on takeoff technique and hazards from slippery surface like ice? I do not remember reading this in Helo Flying handbook. But one of my instructor mentioned one time to me.

Not sure how that is relevant to the sh*t show referred to by the original post, and this question may be worthy of its own thread, but: when operating from a slippery surface (which is not always ice, some ramps can be incredibly oily and slick), probably the biggest issue is transitioning the main rotor between fight RPM and ground idle RPM (both directions, speeding up or slowing down). Obviously this must be done gently and slowly while working the pedals appropriately to prevent the ship from spinning right around on you. In Robinson helicopters, under slippery conditions I've been trained to turn off the governor and manually control rotor RPM until safely up to flying speed, then turn the governor back on. I operate onto and off of glare ice often in the winter and this works quite well, and of course it works under less slick conditions also. Even if you don't think the conditions are slick always be ready to put some power pedal in when coming up out of ground idle rotor RPM.

Not sure if this question is relevant to sh*t show displayed here but I asked because Robbiee mentioned slippery surface TO
Governor off during lift off from slick surface is interesting. I will discuss that with my instructor

Spraying bugs with helicopters? Whaat?

I wonder what sort of nozzle you'd need to spray helicopters. Some kind of rotary atomiser? It seems an extraordinarily complexand costly way of getting rid of bugs. Why not use an insecticide?

I wonder if there was a C of G issue with the insecticide tank? It seems to just tip backwards and stick the TR in the water, which no doubt results in loss of TR drive and the subsequent gyrations.

Can piston engines develop sufficient torque to make rpm transitions (usually spinning up not down) tricky?
would think a normally aspirated engine would have all the torque of a wet noodle thrown at a wall.

In case I wasn't clear enough in my post above, the governor is turned back on prior to pickup. It is only turned off so that the throttle can be opened more slowly above 80%. Once you achieve full RPM you turn the governor back on, then go flying. Upon landing, you can leave the governor on as roll-off overrides the governor, of course.

There's plenty of torque in an R22 or R44. Under normal circumstances not so much that one has to take special precautions. But on low traction surfaces there's enough to cause issues. On ice there's enough so that if you let the governor automatically take over (which occurs at 80% engine RPM) the governor will open the throttle fast enough from there to very quickly spin you 90 to 180 degrees if you leave the pedals at neutral. In an R44 I've even had it spin me 10 degrees or so on a slippery ramp (hot day, melty pavement, probably some oil on the ramp surface, too). I've also had the opposite: skids stuck in soft tarmac crack-sealant on a hot day. One skid stuck in crack-sealant is a dynamic rollover waiting to happen. Ice and snow op's I've had formal training on. Tricky asphalt was never trained and I've had to learn that on my own, thankfully without any serious issues.

I have a small amount of experience from my training days (1979-1980) on a clear patch of smooth ice on a frozen pond .... make sure throttle is at low idle during startup or the clutch will engage and fuselage will do several 360's in an instant .... think of ice skates .... steel on ice is very slippery.

Getting rotor up to speed takes more time than on water because floats are a bit draggy

All well and good those techniques for operating on slippery surfaces but none of those are applicable in this instance. The helicopter was obviously at flight RRPM and pointing straight until he's fallen backwards off the dolly and ended up in the river. The TR impacted the water before he knew what was going on and from there the outcome was inevitable.

You think this is how to take off in any helicopter? LOL

I think Mutley's tongue in cheek comment went over your head chopjock.