HAA fatal, Air Evac Oklahoma 1-21-24
 

https://kfor.com/news/three-killed-in-weatherford-air-evac-helicopter-crash/

Quote from local news source

Air Evac Lifeteam is heartbroken to report that three crew members have perished in an incident that occurred on Saturday, January 20. At 11:23 pm local time AEL’s Operations Control Center (OCC) lost contact with the aircraft, a Bell 206L3 with call sign N295AE. The crew is based out of Weatherford, OK, and was returning to base after completing a patient care transport in Oklahoma City when the OCC lost contact with them.

More information here.

https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/351081

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....387c4d1c7.jpeg

Where's the main rotor?

nearby, looks like the tail got chopped, don't know if the MR did that. BTW, my recall of the METAR shows clear night, +10sm viz, flat ground, cultural lighting, ground track from origin was beeline straight.

Localized wreckage, no spread.

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....01282ef58.jpeg
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Possible, but which blade? There's still one blade missing. Those are Van Horn blades with the one missing blade broke at the grip plate mount area.

In the photo of the main rotor all of the white objects appear to be the same width. Could that be ice that shed off of the main rotor blades? I also see white objects on the leading edge near the blade root. Temperatures after day break would have probably prevented ice melt.

Probably pieces of the tail boom, as evidenced by the white paint on the remaining blade?

Van Horn blades have a foam core.

Hi Malabo.
Shared info from your post to a FB group.
The amateur accident investigators are out in full force.
Cheers
Albatross.
PS A lot of folks think that I am you because of your “Malabo” monicker. Anyone accuse you of being me? Funny that.

A brief search shows the other blade a few feet away....
https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....944446ac51.png
https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....6363700b75.png

I think you'll find that portion of blade pictured is from the blade portion still attached to the hub and the white debris in between them is the form core from that blade. And given there is no debris on either side of the hub and that blade portion and their distance from the main wreckage it unfortunately points to the MR assy departed in flight and the airframe continued on. Regardless, rumor is the other "missing" blade assy has been found some distance from the airframe and hub.

Define "some distance"? I know of an incident where an AS332 rolled over when taxiing in Aberdeen and one of the blades came through the roof of the main airport terminal half a mile away!

Its my understanding the hub/blade portions are over 150 yards from airframe and the missing blade is over 500 yards from the hub/blade portion with no debris along the trail. And all the remaining parts are accounted for at the airframe site. But nothing confirmed.....

Straight and level at 1700' and 110 kts.

More VHA blade issues? 3 pax isn't exactly lightly loaded, so the infamous nodal beam interaction vertical hop probably wasn't at play. Personally I am still immensely uneasy at their certification without a dynamic load fatigue assessment. It doesn't appear that VHA does flawed specimens for fatigue testing either, which is more than head scratching. According to the TSB, C-GEBY blade failure was precipitated by aggressive loading conditions after engine failure on a fatigue damaged blade set (thought VHA vehemently disagrees).

https://assets.verticalmag.com/wp-co...o-1024x654.jpg

The ADS-B reported altitude of 1700MSL would put them very close to the ground in that area. Less than 200 feet. Assuming the ADS-B reported accurately.

The day of this accident, we had an unusually high pressure system over the area. In Eastern Texas and Louisiana we had altimeter settings of 30.56 and higher. That would cause transponder pressure altitudes to read 500-600 low on these readouts. With that adjustment, they would have been flying around 800-1000 feet AGL.

One would assume they would set the altimeter to ground elevation prior to take off.

Surely a standard encoding altimeter set to the QNH would give the correct altitudes to the Transponder anyway.

Crab, as far as I understand, the raw ADS-B data is pressure altitude (referenced to 1013.25hPa) [in accordance with ICAO Annex 10 Vol IV. 3.1.1.7.12.2.4]. For an amateur receiver simply listening for the ADS-B data and feeding this into a website, there is no correction and to determine the actual altitude AMSL, a correction will need to be applied corresponding to the QNH that day.