Whats wrong with a ladder?:sad:
or is everyone just to lazy to bother?

Looking at that crack, that particular R22 was possibly only seconds aways from a total separation, and it makes you shudder to think that some ham fisted techie with a craft knife can bring about some serious failure such as that.

Is it possible for any actual blade failures to be checked back to see if this sort of damage was evident, at or around the separation point? or am I expecting too much!:ooh:

Vfrpilotpb: The blades of all helicopters are highly stressed, particularly the inboard half, the damage tolerance is far less in that area, as opposed to the area closer to the tip.

One of my first experiences with an R22, was to find a crack on the underside of a blade. It was started by a fairly small dent from an ejected rifle bullet casing some nine months earlier.

Dent to massive crack in about 30 minutes.
 

A Coast guard HO3S-1G was dispatched from Grand Isle, Louisiana to remove several crewmembers from a sinking shrimp boat. On the first flight out one of the blades severed a mast guy wire on the boat. Upon return to base the blade was inspected and found to have a small dent on the leading edge of the blade. The damage was removed per the maintenance manual and the second flight was made to remove the remaining crewmen.

Upon return to base the blade was found to have a crack that had propagated from the leading edge of the spar to almost the rear edge of the spar. The blade was removed at the same time that the pilot changed his underwear. The damaged section was cut out and sent back to Sikorsky with the thanks from the flight crew for building such damage tolerant blades.

:E

Bouncing a Robinson
 

Thomas coupling:D , shame on you, " yes," " none," "yes." good heavens man, a question like that requires an in depth answer, calculations, examples, quotes from fellow pilots. How are Newpruners going to be educated if we are not privvy to your wonderfull verse

It is my semi-learned opinion that if the blade flexes down a given distance, either by a meaty hand pulling, or by an inertial force during a tow across a rough field, the stress on the mechanism is the same.

Of course, the limitation on routine pulling of blades, once per pre-flight inspection could be based on the many repeated cycles of damage the blade mechanism would accrue. OTOH, I have heard of some homebuilts where the blades must be supported in a crutch for tow operations due to these stresses.

I forgot to add this to my post above.
 

In addition to the increased load generated between the spindle tusk and the droop stop through bolt the forces exerted on the through bolt when the blade is pulled down are transferred to the teeter bolt increasing the friction load. This further exacerbates the problem. If you want to lower one blade you must raise the opposite blade.

It is the combined friction of the spindle tusk on the through bolt and the friction applied to the teeter bolt that maintains the blades in the static condition.

:E

About fifeteen years ago, the Trump organisation lost an A109 and all onboard when a blade gave up. Allegedly investigation found that during manufacturer an over zealous operative induced a hairline fracture in the blade spar by removing bonding agent with a knife.

Absolutely frightening that we as an industry continue to make the same mistakes!

Maybe bonding agent needs to be sanded off. can the manufacturer be sued for these problems?
it sounds like a manufacturer liability and quality control problem.

Bond, James Bond.
 

The removal of excess bonding material is purely cosmetic. The bonding agent that oozes out from faying parts will not hurt anything. That is if it is at the root end of the blade. If it is at the tip then QC should catch it and a suitable means of removing the excess must be established by engineering.


:E

Looks like some information on the crash is contained in the latest recommendation issued by the ATSB as a result of this accident.

The recommendation can be found here:ATSB Recommendation R20030186

Also, CASA issued another amendment to their AD on Friday. It can be found here: CASA AD/R22/31 Amendment 8

TinKicker

amendment 8 is out on the r22 blades and now includes a sliding scale relative to the blades life for their removal. the advice is to keep your old blades in case they lift the restrictions in the future.

Rotaryman

Calm Down!

As someone else has already suggested - The debate (and my posting) had moved on from the bankstown crash to a crash in the USA.

My comments were in response to Mr. Z's post about a crash in Washington state. The description of the crash site as stated by L.Z. was - No one saw the event and the fragments of helicopter and blades were such that many explanations for the crash were feasable.
Mr. Z. had stated this provided further unequivocal evidence that R22 blades were falling apart even when NOT used in mustering, NOT beyond their life and flown sedately.

My response was limited to that crash and not encompassing any other crash. At no time did I direct ANY of my comments at the people involved in the Sydney crash.

My point was the problem and its management is difficult and complex and is not helped by people throwing in red herrings.

Lu Zuckerman
Would you care to reread and perhaps correct your own post.

Quote:

"The helicopter was destroyed during aloss of control and collision with terrain at Tulalip, Washington.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Go back and re read the NTSB report.

This implies that the helicopter was in controlled flight and it was not a dynamic rollover."

Now was it "controlled" or "loss of control"?
It does not imply any of the things you state.
It simply says what it says. At some point there was a loss of control and at some point it impacted terrain.
Dynamic roll-over can happen on the ground, in the hover, while taxi-ing. Any of which results in collision with terrain.

But really; we're getting pointlessly picky and wasting band space.

The point is: This accident, as reported in the NTSB report, doesn't add anything to the subject of blade seperation in machines with a history of mustering and under recording of blade life. THAT is the problem at hand which needs sorting out.

Love 'em or hate 'em ......
 

Robinson has just delivered its 5,000th helicopter.

Since its first R22 in October 1979, Robinson has produced 3,489 R22 and 1,511 R44 helicopters, including 171 R44 Raven IIs.

The 5,000th helicopter, an R44 Raven II, was shipped to National Airways Corporation (NAC) of Lanseria, South Africa - NAC’s 75th Robinson helicopter.

Robinson now produces 9.5 helicopters a week with an 11 helicopter-per-week goal by the end of October.

Robinson will build a light turbine eventually and it will be interesting to see what happens to the used and new market for 206's, ec120's and 500's.

I love em.......... Particularly suited to my sort of work.

Diethelm, mate, you took the words outta me mouth. Cant wait until it happens.

The old, bald guys may not like it, but an enormous number of today's helo pilots started on Robbos and probably stayed on them for a while after that too. Over the last twenty-something years, that builds a lot more acceptance than any amount of advertising or statistics. Of course they know about the lightweight rotor, but...that was my first, you know?

Forget it!

Nr Fairy
That link is about as useful as a bacon buttie in a synagogue

Now put yourself in Frank's shoes.

Production of the R22 is down to about 2 a week. [based on comparing MSNs of G- reg R22s recently and 12 months ago]

Production of the R44 will be 9 a week by the end of October. [stated target is 11 heli pcm by that date, take off the 2 R22s a week as above]

OK, so the R44 will bring in a lot more money due to being a bigger craft (so financially FR will not worry), but the R22 seems to have reached saturation point.

The whole idea of the R22 was that it was an entry point to the market for the private owner (yes, Frank's target market was NOT flight schools). So, should he be worried that his "baby" is losing interest? What alternatives are there? The Enstrom is no price comparison, and a couple of big Schweizer operators I spoke to at Helitech were in discussion with SAC about bringing prices down (purchase, parts etc) because they were just making themselves uncompetitive.

Should Frank be worried?