By way of some history - Bolkow made a "semi-static" trainer in the early 60's, consisting of an almost-flying helicopter (with a single rotor blade!) attached to a platform. A place was provided for an instructor to sit on the left side. I found some photos:

http://www.internetage.com/rotorcraft/history1.htm
http://avia.russian.ee/vertigo/bo-102-r.html
http://www.helis.com/50s/h_bo1023.php

Last weekend I got a good look at the example owned by the Hiller Aviation Museum in San Carlos, California - I'd sure like to try it, but they won't fire it up!

Dave Blevins

Mr Selfish! (Surely you could come up with a better nickname than that!!)

Anyway the latest that I heard was that the main rotor blade tracking and balance properties were out of alignment and consequently the tail boom was severed in flight and directional control was lost.

Why did this happen 30-40 minutes into the flight though. Why didn't it happen in hover taxi or t/o??

The witness on the ground though said that the helicopter was falling to pieces as it came crashing down.

Someone else may be able to correct me here but this is the latest info that I have.

R22 Blade Cracking
 

http://www.casa.gov.au/avreg/aircraf...22/r22-031.pdf


Have a look at the latest AD that CASA has put out in response to the Robbie falling out of the sky in Sydney...

Any chance of a link ?

The CASA media release,

New safety inspections for Robinson 22 helicopters have been ordered following a fatal accident near Sydney late last month.

An urgent airworthiness directive has been issued today by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority for the inspection of main rotor blades for cracking.

This follows preliminary investigations of the 20 June accident at Warragamba by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB).

The investigation has shown the main rotor blade failed at the inboard end of the bolted joint.

The Airworthiness Directive requires visual and eddy current inspections of the blades and the fitting of a special vibration warning placard in the helicopter cockpit.

The eddy current inspections must be carried out as blades reach 1500 hours time in service, with those blades already beyond 1500 hours requiring inspections by 31 July 2003. These inspections must be repeated every 200 hours in service.

The manufacturer requires main rotor blades in R22 helicopters to be replaced at 2200 hours time in service.

The warning placard states: "If main rotor vibration increases rapidly or becomes severe during a flight, land immediately". This is based on an alert from the manufacturer that states unusual vibration can indicate a main rotor blade crack.

CASA's Directive also orders both visual and eddy current inspections before further flight if an R22 has suffered severe main rotor vibration during a flight or if there is an unexplained main rotor unbalance.

CASA's Director of Aviation Safety, Mick Toller, says the authority is working closely with the ATSB as investigations into last month's accident continue.

"CASA and the ATSB have acted quickly to make sure there is no immediate threat to safety," Mr Toller says.

"Clearly, there is still more to discover from the investigation and we are committed to learning all the lessons to minimise the risk of further accidents.

"CASA is also exchanging information and ideas with the US Federal Aviation Administration because that's where the R22s were designed and built."

Media contact
Peter Gibson
Ph 0419 296 446
Ref: MR0336


CASA page

Didn't a 22 have a blade crack last year in the U.K? The pilot recognised there was an issue and got it down fast.

I do hope this isn't the start of a serious problem for Robinson.

Yes, there was a safety alert issued in June last year as a result of a blade cracking near the root.

http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthr...threadid=58410

Sounds distressingly similar to the Sydney situation :(

I know we had to have our blades examined as a result of this safety alert. I wonder if the same inspections were ordered in Australia ?

Thats from the link to the site above, can you believe you can actually take off with only 40hp (probibly not with my weight though);)

Grainger: As far as I can tell, the new AD that has been "issued", is actually the 4th amendment of a current AD that has been around for some time. (since 1990?) There is reference to the R22 SL-53 and -21A.

The rumour that was mentioned in the other thread regarding timex blades being used, if true, will obvously compound any existing faults in the blades.
An eddy current inspection every 200 hours on all M/R blades is going to be a real pain especially for remote location operators.

First my condolences to the families of the two pilots involved. Unfortunately I did not have the privilege to know either one.

What I read on this topic the PIC was a rather coolheaded, down to the facts pilot and not prone to let a student get in over the limits or doing any stunts to impress the student.

So one must guess that something was wrong with the machine.

Concerning the warning lights in the Robinson: The POH mentions that if the clutch light starts to FLICKER, upper bearing failure MAY be imminent, and a landing has to be done immediately. (Upper bearing of the belt sheaves) Though I never heard of any accident caused by this. The closest I ever "saw" was a R-22 belt failure - one of the microswitches involved in the clutch mechanism failed and the clutch would run to max extension before stopped by an end-switch. After 200 hours abuse of the belts they snapped - sucessful autorotation - new belts and microswitch - back in the air ever since. You might want to blame the pilot for this, as it takes nearly two minutes to get to the endswitch whereas a regular clutch engagement should take no more than 1 min with a normal retensioning of about 6-10 seconds after about 5 min flight. Normally a student is told to watch for the time and note changes over time)

I read an accident statistic about Robinson´s, MD´s and Bell´s today (I will post the source tomorrow...) and the Robinson´s win hands down.
Just amazing, that whenever a Robinson comes down, someone wants to cancel all of them, Winnie- you start to sound like Lu at his "best" times, personally I think you do not know what you talk about - there is nothing flimsy at all on either of the R-helicopters, just because it is lightweight it doesn´t make it flimsy - I had the chance to see a R-44 accident - by pure pilot missjudgement - this machine can take an immense amount of abuse before it gives up!! Show me any other helicopter in the respective class that can get even near the R´s and still take half the abuse.
It is just natural that more R´s show up at accidents, as the fleet grows unproportionally fast compared to the other brands. Plus most R´s are used for hard core work. And still they stay at the top of the statistics by a good margin. Most accidents attributed to pilot error.

It is suspect to me, that in this case time-expired blades are mentioned (just like constant over limit abuse in the last case in Latin America....). This has nothing to do with recent maintenance, you can do maintenance all day long, if the blades are overtime it changes nothing.

Though I doubt Mr. Shannon would have kept flying with an out of track&balance R-22, as these start to vibrate rather pronounced if out of limits.

I hope the real cause of the failure will be found and the responsable person is found - if time expired parts are involved he/she should get live for manslaughter - like the case in NZ with the fake TR blades some time back.


I am sad for the loss of an obviously all around profesional pilot and an aspiring student, but I think before putting the blame on the machine and with this on the designer and builder, lets wait what comes up as the cause of the accident.


3top

R22 Main Rotor Blades
 

This is not the first time that main rotor blade failure has occurred in Australia!

It will be interesting to read the accident report concerning this helicopters previous working history.
(I bet it has been outback mustering)

I believe CASA should make it mandatory that all Robinson Helicopters be fitted with hobb meters that can not be tampered with,perhaps fitted inside main rotor-transmissions.

Lets get real.
 

R22's [and previously H300's] are used nearly exclusively in our entry industry of cattle mustering.

And its a poor example of our professional standard.

Its now routine for people, in fact legendary, for folk in this industry to "miscount" the hours on critical components.

And why???. Because of the extra $$$'s involved.

I hope that CASA has the Guts [Which they won't], to trace this back to those callous individuals that "may" have contributed to this problem.

If they ask, I can supply the names and addresses of those individuals that have contributed to this misrepresentation of Flight Hours in the MR.

Lets see if CASA is interested.

Hi heliroo,

I had the fortune and pleasure to fly with Mr. Tim Tucker while at a Robinson Safetycourse. Mr. Tucker did all the Testflying and certification flying for the R-22. Besides he has about 9000 hrs in Bell products from JetRangers up through Hueys. He should know...

He saw how the R-22 gets ABUSED in the Australian outback, as a result Robinson had to beef up the Flex coupling plates, although these where NOT AFFECTED in any other country or work. The same happened in a R-44 crash case, where the cyclic stick broke. Although it was found out that this particular R-44 was abused by repeatedly banging the cyclic at its stops, leaning on it, etc. Robinson decided to beef it up and have the whole R-44 fleet follow with a Service bulletin. All followed, except the ones who caused the trouble in the first place!

Since a while there is also a Safety notice from Robinson in circulation about Rotor overspeed. It is common practise (although NOT approved or part by any syllabus!) to show students to use 2-4% more MR-rpm to get out of a tight situation when power is marginal - it is understood that is only an emergency and is not to be use for prolonged time. The Robinson Maintenance Manual gives clear instructions what to do when this occurs and where the limit for what overspeed is (It starts with rpm´s over 110% power off. If you ever pull the engine to 110% you have to inspect the it). I can imagine this happens all the time while mustering, especially with the temperatures involved in the area and with the older R-22´s with the 320 engines.
As a note the R-22 runs at 104% Rpm governed - means the regular operation is at 104% indicated.

It seems some people just never get it:

The Safety notice - 36 reads that it is dangerous to use up to 120% !!!! MR-rpm. And it was not even because of MR-overstress, but for the TR drive shaft getting into possible resonance.

If you take 1 headache pill, well 10 must be better, right!


3top
:cool:

High Nr and heliroo,

the trans hobbs won´t work as maintenance and component life time is counted on collective time not engine run time, but I am sure it would not cost a fortune to install one in a way that gets collective activated. Would have to be intergrated in the trans never the less and completely mechanical. As soon as it goes electric or electronic someone will find a way to disconnect it.

Or go the other way: Electronic Blackbox with computerized key. No key no start, if the key is removed once started it will record and timewise ground the machine. Authorities just have to check annually for the correct times or there is no Anual Inspection given!

I wish this "time expired" business could be rooted out soon!

3top
:*

Police R22!?
 

Took our aircraft over to Hawarden this morning, and there was a CID officer on the 'phone to our engineers regarding an R22, hired out to the Police, that had a forced landing near Prestatyn, took off and then subsequently crashed(somewhere).

Any info anybody? :confused:

MG,

I heard it was a Hields Aviation machine r22 instrument trainer that suffered a clutch belt failure. The aircraft landed safely without further incident as far as i am aware.

I will find out the full details and post them shortly

The r22 did,nt crash, infact it is still sat in a field in wales awaiting parts.

An r22 recently crashed at Blackpool.(Spread its landing gear) not sure what happened, i heard it lost tail rotor authority whilst drifting downwind in a spot turn. Suspect it ran at of power and suffered a heavy landing. Instructor / student on board nobody hurt.

3top :

On the R22, the Hobbs is oil pressure activated, so maintenance is predicated on how many hours the engine has.

The R44 has a collective activated Hobbs meter.

So why not make the Hobbs based on two things - oil pressure or collective position so that it couldn't be claimed that it was a maintenance problem that we didn't notice?
Also put a light in to show that one or the other connection is not working?
Sort of like FADEC computer counting cycles and overtemps - good pilots don't mind it, but those who cut corners are afraid of the stuff. Better TBO and resale values for those with the computers that count.

Nr Fairy: Won´t bet on it, but as far as I know all new Robinson´s come now with collective hobbs. At least they are TBO´ed at 2200 hrs Collective now. Though operators mount an additional oilpressure hobbs to charge the clients for running time.

Here is the promissed source for the accident comparison mentioned up the thread:

It is in an article written by Tim Tucker in the March 2003 Rotor&Wing magazine. The subject is the turbine versus recip reliability.

Two figures:

one from 93 to 97:

R22/R44----------2 (2%) engine failures out of 109 accidents total
B206/MD500--27 (10%) engine failures out of 268 accidents total

second from 96 to 2000:

R44---------------0 engine failure out of 6 accidents total
MD500-----------9 engine failures out of 76 accidents total
B206-------------13 engine failures out of 106 accidents total

So much Turbine versus Piston!

A quick look on Pilot Error:

93-97:

R22/R44----------95 (87%) pilot error on all accidents out of 109
B206/MD500-----185 (69%) pilot error out of 268 accidents

96-2000:

R44---------------5 pilot error out of 6 accidents
MD500-----------42 pilot error out of 76 accidents
B206--------------84 pilot error out of 106 accidents



Allthough the second chart does only show R44 and no R22. However this filters a bit the higher attrition rate in training where most R22 are at home...

Questions?

3Top

:cool:

No Hobbs meter in the world is going to stop people using time-expired blades.

Sabotaged R22
 

Turns out the r22 from Hawarden was sabotaged. Somebody loosened all the bits around the clutch actuator, clutch warning light came on in flight. They made a precautionary landing with a strong burning smell to find the belts shreadded.

Two instructors on board. The machine was'nt let to the police but i suspect they are involved now.