The Lesson For Today...
 

Make sure the collective is down and locked next time.

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We often talk about people moving toward tail rotors, rarely talk about tail rotor moving into people.
Every time I see this video, I ask myself whether it was the best thing to do,
how many times did he get lucky as the tail swang arround?

Is it because the engine went into a flight idle setting because the collective raised on its own due to wind or something? So the governer raised RPM?

Was anybody at the controls? Sure doesn't look like it to me.

No - it's the pilot trying to get back in

Who gets to the level (luck? experience?) to command a 407 and not know that you don't get out of the ship with the engine at 100%? Even a newly-rated R-22 pilot knows better than that. Right? So I'm just trying to imagine the mindset of this dunce: "Okay, we're on the ground, and I've got to get out and load that cargo. I guess I'll just leave the throttle at FULL..." I mean...what? It must have been a conscious decision. But okay... if the throttle was left at "full" and the collective came up even a little, we might expect the nose to rotate to the right. Instead, this a/c is rotating to the left. Again...whaaaat?

And so we come to the pedals. We know that the 407 goes back to hydraulically boosted pedals like the original 206A had. So, questions: Can 407 pedals go hardover now when left unattended? Was there a passenger in the left seat that inadvertently stepped on the left pedal? Did something (e.g. iPad, kneeboard) fall off the glareshield onto the left pedal? Because those are the only three possibilities.

We don't see the end result, so we can only assume that the pilot did get in and stop the spin before the ship got into dynamic rollover. He must be hurt pretty bad though! We see the nose come around and bunt him out of the way - then we remember the pitot tube that sticks out. Ouch! Probably left him with a bad gash. Good. I hope he has a painful memory of his stupidity. Maybe he won't do that again. He's VERY lucky the tail rotor didn't turn him into mincemeat. There is a correct way of "getting out while running." This wasn't it. In this case, the owner almost had to go online and order a new 407 from Bell like he did with his Tesla.

I bet he won't.