Chas Sheriff's 407 Mishap
 

Mishap was 1 Aug. Should he have been able to run this one on.

Charleston Sheriff's helicopter missing parts when it crashed, preliminary report says | News | postandcourier.com
http://www.postandcourier.com/news/v...374348f9a.html

I hope he bought a lottery ticket...lucky son of a gun...

Airport is the civillian side of Charleston AFB. Sumter airport is a short flight. Less than an hour.

Lots of questions begged (based upon the extremely detailed news article and its quoted sources) that might bear answering at some point in the future when the Lawyers get to nosing around in the feed trough.

I would love to be a bug on wall when the various folks get quizzed upon their actions that had a bearing upon the event.

It is amazing he survived that - it was a proper crash!

I wonder if he just let the airspeed drop off a little too much on his approach - ground rush tends to do that to pilots - but his subsequent reaction should have been to go around carefully and reposition for another attempt rather than end up in almost a high hover running out of ideas

Wonder how much TR control/failure training he had done.

A good pre-flight inspection will prevent most crashes, after “routine maintenance” I struggle to understand why you wouldn’t put your fingers on every bolt/nut that was tampered with!

You can certainly have a good look at what has been worked on but there is no way that you can see or access all the nuts, bolts and other components that may have been worked on by engineers. You have to trust them and that is why critical components require duplicate inspections after they have been worked on.

If there was an engineering error in this case then the individuals, systems and working practices need to be investigated to find out where it went wrong.

I suppose the original poster thought the better of his post(hopefully) or the moderators took it down(thankfully), but I saw it and feel the sentiment he expressed needs addressed.

The gist of the now deleted post was “from my experience, some country bumpkin mechanic was probably responsible for this accident in this backwater airport”

I grant that the original poster may have a strongly held opinion based on experience that informs his opinion of the southern United States. However, as we should all know by now, Human Factors accidents know no geographical, cultural, political etc boundaries. Humans are humans everywhere, and as long as we are in the chain, we can mess up, no matter how sophisticated we may think we are.

As humans we all fall victim to our own feelings of superiority, I know I surely was when I composed what I was originally going to say regarding that now deleted post!

But that stuff doesn’t do anybody any good. The facts are, somebody(possibly more than one) made a great big mistake that will possibly cost them their job and that nearly cost somebody their life, regardless of how well/poorly they did their job up til this point.

The only thing I know about this incident, as a mechanic who also flies as a crewmember: I don’t ever want to feel what either one of those individuals is feeling right now.

And I don’t ever want to be so arrogant that I believe that it can’t happen to me.

FltMech

It's easy to armchair-quarterback any accident. Pompous pilots say, "Well, what *I* would have done..." or "What he should have done..." Yeah, yeah...you weren't in the cockpit with him, so shut up. It's a tough situation when the aircraft does not do what you want it to do. Adrenaline starts pumping. It's hard to be as cool and calm as a test pilot, and we tend to want to just get the dang thing on the ground because we don't know what *else* is going to go wrong. The 407 did have a history of tail rotor problems.

The pilot reported that it felt like the pedals weren't connected to anything, indicating a loss of t/r pitch control. So, not a complete loss of thrust, but a "stuck pedal" situation. The report says that of the *two* levers that control the tail rotor, one was disconnected and the other was loose. Are they referring to the "dogbone" pitch-change links? If so, a running landing would have been called for, and that's what it looks like he was attempting. But it went "pear-shaped" as our British friends like to say. Oh well, we can't all be Yeager. The pilot is alive and I'm sure Bell will happily sell them a new 407.

But I'm curious. If it *was* one of the p/c dogbone links that became disconnected... Hmm. That would mean that the hardware securing the p/c links must have been both loose and unsaftied. I have to ask the uncomfortable question: Could that not have been caught on preflight? And, more importantly, would *I* have caught it on preflight?

That's where the training comes in and why I wondered how much, if any, he had done.

If you have never trained for such a scenario then you will be poorly placed - and most likely panic if it doesn't go right as per the video.

If you have trained for it, there is no guarantee you will get it safely on the ground but you stand a far higher chance of applying some basic techniques to maximise your chance of survival.

​​​​​​​If you have no idea how to deal with TR malfunctions, you really shouldn't have a licence.

If the NTSB report's nomenclatures are close or correct, there is one "lever" that could cause complete loss of T/R control and be associated with a scheduled inspection task. The lever (walking beam) is located in the aft hatrack area where the TR servo attaches on one end and the TR long control tube on the other. And is not visible at all once the aircraft is closed up.

And just to reiterate what FltMech said: It can happen to anyone regardless of skill, experience, and even 135/121 ops with all the rules. Nothing worse than the gut punch you feel when something like this happens from a maintenance perspective.

That certainly would give the pilot an indication that the pedals weren't hooked up - they wouldn't be! But... "Inspectors with the Federal Aviation Administration who responded to the crash site observed one of the two bolts that secure the levers that move the tail rotor was missing, while the other bolt was loose because of a missing pin." If it was the walking beam bellcrank behind the hatrack, how could the FAA guy have seen that so readily? It will be curious to find out exactly which pieces came apart.

I can see how these things happen. I had *two* tail rotor failures during my time at PHI - driveshaft couplings came apart. Both were after maintenance had been performed and were in areas that were not preflightable (under the t/r driveshaft cover). The first happened right after the skids touched down on an offshore oil platform. Good timing, I'd say. The second one happened just after I'd lifted off to a hover in preparation for departing an oil platform. There was a bang and suddenly the world started spinning sideways. 30 seconds later and I would've been well into my takeoff. So, good timing again, I guess. Made me glad I wasn't one of those "yank and go" guys we often see.

Hands up....who routinely practiced Tail Rotor failures on six monthly Base Checks...where you actually manipulated the Throttle(s) and adjusted the collective setting to control yaw and did landings to the ground as part of the practice?

Or was that box checked following a verbal discussion with no actual hands on allowed or provided?

Done a million of them over the years. When I transitioned to the S76B, I did the endorsement training and later went to Flight Safety in West Palm for the sim training.

When it came to tail problems, the instructor insisted that only an auto should be attempted, demo'd one, and I then did one. I then asked him to back it back up the glideslope while I showed him how we dealt with them. I flew the approach to a slow, gentle controlled run-on straight ahead. He was flabbergasted, said "do it again", so I did.

He grinned, and said "I'll lose my job if I teach that, so now we go back to the auto."

Lynx and Sea King sim every year (from TR failures in most stages of flight to TR control failures in every pedal position), AS 365 every sim trip plus practising TR control malfunctions regularly in the aircraft to fast running landings on the runway, 412 sim every sim ride.

The stuck pedal practice in the 365 backed up the teachings in the sim - it's all about training.

Since the tailboom broke off be easy to see it. However, given no fatals the FAA guys probably did all the initial field work (open panels, interviews, etc) for the NTSB.

AC,

The FSI Instructor told you straight....the policy is to only teach FSI approved curriculum.

I know that from first hand involvement in such discussions where improvements were endorsed but not yet approved by the Standards Department.

That process at times could be like moving mountains but did ensure standardization on what was being taught by each Instructor.



Current 407 Pilots might compare this text to current RFM language for accuracy......

Forgive my ignorance on how the T/R controls work on the 407 and the nomenclature of the components in the system, I did a brief stint on the OH-58D back in 2008 which I think would have had a similar setup as the 407, but I don’t think I ever saw the installation of the controls that is being mentioned here.

Would the emergency procedures still apply if the tail rotor controls were completely disconnected/severed as in this case? Would the effect of this be the same as a “jammed” T/R control?

Or to ask in another way, would this still be a “fixed pitch” type situation, where I would assume the hydraulic servo would drive in one direction or another due to there not being equal pressure applied to the control rod that moves the servo pilot valve?

Thanks to anyone who can clarify, especially with pictures!

FltMech

That's great when your Standards Dept are leading the way with the most up to date teaching and techniques - if not.............

Yes....All professional training establishments......even the CFS is subject to that grain of wisdom theyt not?

Do RAF CFI's/QHI's teach whatever they fancy or are they expected to conform to approved standardized methods, procedures, and practices as a part of a formal curriculum and course of instruction?

Why would you think it odd for FSI or any other training system to use a similar method to formallze training standards and exercise a careful consideration when changing or altering those standards?

Aviation is an endeavor that involves change and progress as a constant......it takes time to effect useful and provident change.