Check out this skillfull recovery
 

Good day everyone.

Since I did not find an entry regarding this incident in the forum, I had do post it.

And since I am too low on posts I can’t publish links.

So if you please google

Phare de la Vieille helicopter

you will find the video documenting an amazingly skillfull manoeuver.

(I have an image but the system doesn’t allow that either)

Here is the subject video:
A number of the comments appear to offer explanations for what happened, which seems to have involved a sling load.

Mods may consider moving this to Rotorheads (I checked there earlier to see if there was any discussion of this video, but I did not see any).

What is the smoke by the skids after the recovery? Did they activate some pyro to deploy floats?

Looks to me as if that smoke is coming out of the engine exhaust - possibly because the pilot has pulled the hell out of it trying to recover.

The floats are activated by a small pyrotechnic squib but it would not produce smoke like that. Sometimes the floats are packed with chalk powder to protect against chafing and that can make a cloud of dust when you pop the floats but it does not look like that either.

I think that the engine has been massively over-torqued / over-temped and the smoke is the result of that.

Lucky / skilful recovery.

Looks as though perhaps the underslung load or the longline became snagged?

Smoke
 

My non-expert guess is that engine and/or transmission experience sudden – uhm – stress surge, maybe oil is burning up?

1. Must have taken a crowbar to get the seat cushion out of the ass of that pilot.

2. At least one, if not two changes of underwear. required.

3. Nice save.

AS350 close call - France
 

A very close call for this pilot: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ighthouse.html

Apologies for the source and VERY over-the-top journalism; smoke from the engine, but hardly bursts into flames. However looks a very close call none the less, and would certainly have got the pilots attention!

h14

That “wine shear” can be very tricky, as can having your “rear capable” break.

Awesome save! I would not be surprised if there was a main rotor blade(s) strike on the tailboom during that pull up!

Saw the video on reddit. There's a pop, the nose dives, he pops the floats, then recovers.

Definitely a trouser soiling moment!

Don't know the layout of the cyclic on the Ecureil, but I suspect the load-pickle and float-deploy switches are pretty close together. Unexpected pitch-down? Push every button within reach, pronto...

Floats are packed with powder lubricant. Could be the puff of 'smoke'.

There is a noticeable emission of somethibng (dark smoke/dust?) from the skid area immediately as the excursion occurs.
The helo then enters a violent pitch-down spiral from which it (just) recovers until the floats inflate and a large amout of white vapour comes from the engine exhaust.

I can't see that white vapour as anything but engine related, it seems clear where it's coming from.

To my view the float inflation is not connected with the white vapour, I think they are two seperate issues.

The white smoke? How about a flameout (the dark puff - FOD?) initiating a desperate pilot induced pitchdown for survival, blowing the floats commendably fast, and the relight system relighting an engine full of fuel and vapour with governor wide open as a result of a panicked "up to the armpit" pull on the lever?

Skilful recovery, or sphincter-based? I'd call it a reflex action supported by an astonishingly forgiving airframe.

There. That's my speculation for the week.

In treadigraph's post #4 above, it appears something falls of the top of the light house just before the rapid drop??? At about the 4 second mark of the video
And as noted, it might have been during a sling operation?

It is a person standing in an elevated position. After the initial mishap the person jumps in two steps down to the platform. This was already described in the original French article, before the close-up video appeared online. In the close-up there is also some activity at the lower left corner of the outer structure of the lighthouse platform, faintly visible, but if one looks closely it appears to be the line, or part of it.

You can see a loop of something flop around the pillar thing on the top corner of the lighthouse - and later see a cable of some sort from the loop? Maybe it tripped the helo around the skids to cause the nose down?

The source is the exhaust, so a 'lever round your ears' manoeuvre together with a 'half-crown/sixpence' moment, a rugged powerplant and an airframe/rotor system of 'brick-built outhouse' standard. "Have the new moleskin trews ready for arrival, Jeeves !"

half-crown/sixpence
 

Never heard that phrase. I guess I get the meaning in this context, but where does it come from? You care to elaborate?