R44 VH-TKI down on the NSW Central Coast
 

VH-TKI looks to have crashed at Foresters Beach on the Central Coast earlier this evening. The KRviatrix just sent me a video showing what appears to be the pilot trying to do a PS&L before yawing and disappearing from view and hitting wires, with multiple people reported trapped.

For those with FB, this link should work if you click here.

EDIT: Latest report is two with minor injuries, the third is to be assessed by the team from Westpac, so there's some good news. :)

No idea what a PS&L is but as a helo pilot I'd say he got too slow and the power demand asked was such that he ran out of left pedal, and away we go.

I'll defer to your fling-wing experience megan - I've flown in them plenty of times, but not flown them so don't know many loss-of-control triggers.

PS&L was a reference to precautionary search & landing. I lived on the coast for many years and can't recall there being any helipads out that way beyond this one on the way out to Erina. The actual crash site was within a couple hundred yards of here, on the Central Coast Hwy between Tumbi Rd & Cresthaven Ave nearly 10km away, which made me consider he's looking for a place to put her down for some reason. Other than that, there's no reason I can see that he'd be that low and slow in that area.

I’d say he was looking for a place to crash…..

Going to a birthday party at the pub.
Birthday girl on board.

That will be a birthday that she will not forget. I hope for all involved it will be a speedy recovery and the injuries not too serious.

R44 crash w/video - Forresters Beach NSW - 19/11/2022
 

I'll take a guess with LTE? Very windy on southeast coast of Oz lately. All were okay. The news focused on hitting the power lines but that was clearly the secondary issue!


Got to love the news byline: "It's hard to crash your own birthday party, but that's exactly what's happened to a woman and her husband at Forresters Beach when their helicopter hit power lines yesterday. Incredibly, everyone survived but the traumatic scenes unfolded in front of the couple's family and friends."

Oh, dear...it was a guess, but an uninformed one.

There ain't no such animal as LTE, as explained by multiple test pilots such as Nick Lappos and John Dixson over the years. Search for "Helicopter urban myths" on this site.

Demanding more from the tail rotor than it can produce is a more likely cause. Frank Robinson was a tail rotor expert and it is difficult to get into a situation like the one depicted without some significant mishandling.

Looks like maybe he got too slow in a tailwind, then his feet were asleep on the pedals?

Just looks like another case of power available being less than power required.
I'd bet a cold one that there was a rpm siren shrieking it's head off.

Now Charlie I'm going to have to argue with you on this one.

LTE - Lack of Talent and Experience!

There see.... ;-)

I have a lot of hours logged in TKI, (when it was a C172.) - before it crashed (as a C172).
Is this the "Christine" of aircraft callsigns.?

Evil, how many times do I have to tell you:
It's LACK OF TRAINING AND EXPERIENCE. But a lack of talent would certainly be a factor. We saw enough of that, didn't we.....

Think overpitching here. Notice the ac actually yaws to the left as he slows down, that application of pedal will slow the MR down, I guess he pulls more power with collective, which reduces translational lift as the nose goes up a bit and the Tr says I have had enough and gives up !

How do talentless f**kwits like this keep getting licences?

Must be all the pioneering work of the family Robinson that we hear so much about. At least it’s good for business.
Can’t be shoddy training and poor oversight. Definitely not.

It looks like a case of running out of power and ideas all at the same time.

That never ends well.

R44's have plenty of power (certainly at sea level). Maybe he was just too heavy?

He might have had plenty of power, but when you demand more from the T/R than it can produce (not its fault) then the Waltz Into the Black Forest begins.

Hard to imagine that happening at sea level in a 44. Those things have really great tail rotor authority. I've never heard of anyone reaching the pedal stop on a 44, but I guess anything's possible?

As said before, Frank Robinson was a tail rotor expert and it is difficult to get into a situation like the one depicted without some significant mishandling.

We certainly did, I'm frantically shaving off the greys hairs that prove it!!

Though difficult, the best technique is:

Approach downwind, with a “good” ROD.
Jerk the collective up as the ground rushes up and you lose ETL on Main and Tail rotors. If you are heavy (or high DA), and you really try, you might manage to bleed a few RRPM, which is obviously ideal.
Let a right yaw develop, preferably wind assisted. Kick in a heap of left pedal - enough to stop the yaw instantly, and start a rapid yaw to the left. Jerking a little extra collective at this stage helps.
Really, it’s only likely to work well, if you can keep the RRPM from recovering (Tricky with so much installed power), otherwise the the excellent TR will just “work”.
Practice makes perfect.

as beginner pilot I was always surprised how easy it is to overpitch as you try to get the aircraft moving foward.
as the thrust vector points forward a lot of lift is lost from an already overtaxed hovering ship.
one can easily pull too much collective at the sight of the nose starting to sniff the runway upon moving forward.

It is worth remembering that prior to the mandatory installation of fuel cells in R44s, this kind of impact tended to result in a fire.


Mjb

Umm,...sure, I guess. If that makes you happy.

Is that how it works. ? Must have been getting it wrong all those years ago. Never managed to “sniff” a runway or the oggin for that matter.

Well it is a good point Robbie. It was the first thing that I thought about when I looked at the wreck. The pax lived, they'd otherwise be dead: Avgas loves to ignite...

They've been putting bladder tanks in Robby's for several years now. May as well just say, "No one died this time thanks to the mandated seat belts".

Seat belts have been required forever, but the bladders only came after a lot of crispy critters.

My version of LTE is “ Lack of training & experience”….same result!!👍

Well, sorry but there is a thing called Loss of Tail Rotor Effectiveness. It is pretty real when the flex coupling fails in the R 44 TR Drive shaft. LTE is the effect, not the cause and that is accepted by everyone. Instead of arguing, how about we constructively try to fill the experience bag before the luck one runs out! More seasoned ones here can figure what happened, because we have all been there or close to it, too. Glad they are largely OK.

That is a mechanical failure - most would call it a tail rotor drive failure.

Here's an opportunity for a new acronym: CLTE - complete loss of tail-rotor effectiveness :)
Doesn't that just sound so much better.

Though in this case, it sounds more like a complete loss of helicopter effectiveness.

Pretty sure that's what the POH refers to as "Loss of Tail Rotor Thrust".

anypiot, the history of the term LTE is an invention of Bell to explain to the US Army accidents they were having with the OH -58 and UH-1, they are the two aircraft referred to by Nick Lappos above. The reason for their accident rate was that the tail rotors were not big enough. Terminology is important, LTE is not loss of tail rotor thrust as pointed out by Robbie. With a few thousand hours in both and 20k total only once in a 206 with a sling load into a mountain

Yeah…

Global warming leads to LTE..;)

Government cutbacks, too, they reduced the lift available and donated it to the poor developing countries.

Failure of the meat servo?

Heavy-slow-flat approach, low time pilot with death grip on the controls?
Left pedal droops the RPM, death grip prevents governor from rolling on throttle.
RPM droops then collective under armpit causes right uncontrolled yaw.

Heavy landing for the 4 passengers onboard.

Wow,...if you're doing that, you need a better instructor, lol.