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#11
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Stu & Kathy Fields wrote: Hell, I've got another one. While up in Minnesota, I was going to give an gentleman a ride and so I lifted off from a tight pad and took the ship over to a field that had more maneuvering room. The group of people accompanying the passenger came over to the field with their big black Labrador Retreiver, who came running and jumping at the bottom of the helo. Having seen a dog try to bite a tail rotor, told me that this wasn't going to work so I moved to a different field. The winds were a bit gusty so we decided to wait and see if they would calm down. Shortly after, a fast moving Big Ugly Storm Cell(BUSC) was observed heading our way. Wanting to get the helo under cover, I grabbed the truck and trailer and headed for the field. Got the truck stuck in a gate that was too narrow for me to make the needed turn. CB antennas on top of the truck contacted an electric fence wire which was hung suspended on normally high enough poles. The property owner came over to offer advice, leaned on the(electrified truck door and landed on her butt. I backed the truck out told my wife to take the truck to a different field, Remember the BUSC was still coming and looking worse. I jumped in the helo, lobbed it over the fence into the next field, shut down and prepped the ship for winch loading onto the trailer. My wife arrived with the truck and trailer, (the BUSC was closer and meaner looking) and the winch failed. About this time I discovered that I had landed in the field where the heard of Buffalo lived. Complete with BIG BULL. Here they came. (It is breeding season) Winch still doesn't work and the BUSC is getting closer. Now the buffalo are surrounding the chopper, the BULL is shaking his head and pawing the ground, the owner is screaming "LOOK OUT HES' GOING TO CHARGE" The cows are in a spectator circle observing the whole process. I can't have my helo damaged so I charge the BULL with a 2x4 waving around trying to look as big as possible. My wife who is truly fearless(has night dived with sharks, and painted Radio towers) has jumped into the camper on the back of the truck and is looking out thru a crack in the door. I really like the surprise of this sentence. It simply doesn't finish like I'd expected. You got a loud guffaw out of me for that one, Stu. A great story, I thank you for sharing it! ref The BULL continues to paw the ground snorting and acting like he is not even noticing me and my 2x4. The owner is still screaming "LOOK OUT HES' GOING TO CHARGE", I'm waving the 2x4 and the gentleman who was to take the helo ride shows up in the field with a truck with buffalo feed and the entire herd turns their back on me and leaves. Now the winch decides to work. Got the helo under cover and not more than a light sprinkle out of the BUSC. Yeah! Why didn't I lob the helo back into the tight pad I started from where there were no buffalos?? That is the same question I kept asking myself while sucking on a cold beer after the above fiasco. "SelwayKid" wrote in message m... Over the past weekend in San Diego, an 84 year old man decided to unstrap and get out of the aircraft while on short final. It killed him of course. He was in a biplane but it reminded me of some incidents when I had passengers who became the emergency in helicopters too. How to handle them? A pax who was moving around in the front seat and stuck his foot thru the chin bubble and got it stuck..... Or the big guy pax who filled the seat so much that he limited the amount of aft cyclic while trying to flare and land.... Or the guy who was drunk and tried to wrestle the controls away from me so he could show me how it was done...... The pax who unstrapped and began to move around in the cockpit and was actually going to change seats by crawling across me?..... I'm sure you have seen others as weird. How about sharing them and spice up the board? Its getting pretty dull.... Ol Shy & Bashful -----= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News =----- http://www.newsfeeds.com - The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! -----== Over 100,000 Newsgroups - 19 Different Servers! =----- |
#12
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While not a rotorcraft "oopsie"...............
In the mid 1970's my dad sold his Cessna 172 and bought a Cessna 210. On one of the very first flights he took it from Indianapolis to the University of Miami (Ohio) to show one of his close friends his new toy. Everything was going great until he attempted to land. It was only when he heard the antenna on the bottom of the fuselage scraping the runway that he realized he had forgotten to lower the landing gear! He did have the presence of mind, though, not to try and pull out of it as it might have resulted in him pancaking the aircraft and himself. He just hit the master switch and rode it on in. Fortunately for him the airstrip he "landed" had a runway of pea-gravel and tar. They had just laid a new coat of pea-gravel that morning so he had the added benefit of the gravel acting as ball bearings when he touched down. He came out of it without a scratch, but I make sure to remind him of it every now and then. It was repaired and back flying in no time. I'll never forget that plane since it taught me the love of flight. While I will likely never be able to become a pilot I still look to the sky and wish that I could return. BC (snipped) |
#13
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Not mine this time, but I did have a hand in it.
Guy flying a Safari Homebuilt helo. On approach to field to get fuel, rotor tach ceases function. No problem engine tach still working and he can see the blades are turning. Lands, gasses and leaves on the short (10 mile) flight back to home pad. No problem engine tach is still working.. Then...You guessed it...Eng tach fails. Now he is setting there with one of his primary instruments completely dead. No problem (this is where I come in) He has a rotor alarm system that will provide a tone in the headset for low rotor and a different tone for high rotor. (My design..) All he has to do is keep the tones quiet. No problem. Gets it on the ground and finds a wiring problem.. Stu Fields "John?] " wrote in message . net... Highbluff Stagefield, Fort Rucker, Alabama; Two students aboard, one at the controls. Routine standard autorotation just like a few thousand before it. 1000' AGL, 90 knots, aircraft in trim and aligned with the lane. Collective pitch full down, throttle flight idle, student announces, "Rotor in the green, gas producer is...GOING-TO-ZERO-YOU-HAVE-THE-CONTROLS!!!" I said, "No, I don't; continue the maneuver and I'll back you up if necessary". He did a respectable autorotation and when the aircraft stopped I said "I have the controls", rolled the throttle back up to operating RPM and hovered the aircraft off the lane. He was white as a sheet and shaking like a leaf. I asked him if he knew what had just happened, but he couldn't speak; his mouth was opening and closing but no words were forthcoming. As much as I would like to take credit for being Joe Cool in a dire emergency, I was neither cool nor was it an emergency. The day before, another IP had experienced an N1 tach failure and we had talked about it in the IP briefing that very morning. When the student went ballistic, I saw the N1 tach going to zero but remembered the briefing and noticed that we still had EGT and engine oil pressure so I figured that the engine was still running. Even if it wasn't, we were set up for a perfect autorotation so it wasn't a problem. Turns out that they had gotten a batch of rebuilt N1 tachs from the low bidder and after a couple of more failures, they changed suppliers. Fortunately no one was hurt by the failures but several people still have nightmares. John In article , Stu & Kathy Fields wrote: Well I will share another, but I'm starting to see that I have so many to share that I had better review my maintenance , flight planning and safety strategies. The Safari that I fly has a spring system on the collective to trim out the forces so that I can even take my hand off the collective in flight for at least long enough to scratch my nose. Without this spring, the collective wants to come to high pitch rather strongly. On a beautiful day on my approach to land, I had just flared and was pulling pitch when I heard a loud bang, the collective wound up under my left ear, the helicopter was going thru 15' straight up and the low rotor alarm was screaming in my headset. To use a "Bartism" the sphincter torque gage went off scale. By the time I got control of the collective, I had a good idea what had happened: The spring broke. I now have two springs operating in parallel. I have since come to believe that seat belts are not needed if you have a 1/4" bolt just protruding from the middle of the seat. Stu Fields "SelwayKid" wrote in message m... Over the past weekend in San Diego, an 84 year old man decided to unstrap and get out of the aircraft while on short final. It killed him of course. He was in a biplane but it reminded me of some incidents when I had passengers who became the emergency in helicopters too. How to handle them? A pax who was moving around in the front seat and stuck his foot thru the chin bubble and got it stuck..... Or the big guy pax who filled the seat so much that he limited the amount of aft cyclic while trying to flare and land.... Or the guy who was drunk and tried to wrestle the controls away from me so he could show me how it was done...... The pax who unstrapped and began to move around in the cockpit and was actually going to change seats by crawling across me?..... I'm sure you have seen others as weird. How about sharing them and spice up the board? Its getting pretty dull.... Ol Shy & Bashful |
#14
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Not an emergency, but def. a really interesting phenomena:
Last night, I was going from Lakeland, FL to Key West. Severe Clear and fairly low winds, so the water in the Gulf was flat (important for floats to be effective). It was just after dusk when I started following the coast of the everglades, and dark, but not dark enough to see the stars when I crossed the Gulf on the way to Marathon (the nearest land in the Keys from the bottom of the 'Glades). Anyways, I had the line of lights on Keys island chain in sight before I started across the open water. The issue was that the horizon was hazy and fairly obscured, and the line of lights lighting up the Florida Keys made a kind of fake horizon. It was terribly distracting. I kept having to look inside to correct my conception about where the horizon _really_ was. The lights kept making my brain think that the horizon was 10 degrees lower than it really was. Very spooky. Once the stars came out full bore the job was easy again. Several people had told me cautionary tales about their experiences with "point fixation" over the water, desert, and remote areas, but I'd never seen the effect before. Its really something to be careful about because the effect is much sronger than you'd ever believe possible. Bart |
#15
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"Bart" wrote in message ...
Not an emergency, but def. a really interesting phenomena: Last night, I was going from Lakeland, FL to Key West. Severe Clear and fairly low winds, so the water in the Gulf was flat (important for floats to be effective). It was just after dusk when I started following the coast of the everglades, and dark, but not dark enough to see the stars when I crossed the Gulf on the way to Marathon (the nearest land in the Keys from the bottom of the 'Glades). Anyways, I had the line of lights on Keys island chain in sight before I started across the open water. The issue was that the horizon was hazy and fairly obscured, and the line of lights lighting up the Florida Keys made a kind of fake horizon. It was terribly distracting. I kept having to look inside to correct my conception about where the horizon _really_ was. The lights kept making my brain think that the horizon was 10 degrees lower than it really was. Very spooky. Once the stars came out full bore the job was easy again. Several people had told me cautionary tales about their experiences with "point fixation" over the water, desert, and remote areas, but I'd never seen the effect before. Its really something to be careful about because the effect is much sronger than you'd ever believe possible. Bart Bart The same can happen when coming out of a cloud bank and no ground lights. The stars can give the appearance of being the ground lights and you are inverted! Of course a skilled pilot will recognize the situation and not roll over but it sure has happened. Out over water or jungle, or large areas of desert..... Fly Safe Ol Shy & Bashful |
#16
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"Rocky" wrote in message
om... "Bart" wrote in message ... Not an emergency, but def. a really interesting phenomena: Last night, I was going from Lakeland, FL to Key West. Severe Clear and fairly low winds, so the water in the Gulf was flat (important for floats to be effective). It was just after dusk when I started following the coast of the everglades, and dark, but not dark enough to see the stars when I crossed the Gulf on the way to Marathon (the nearest land in the Keys from the bottom of the 'Glades). Anyways, I had the line of lights on Keys island chain in sight before I started across the open water. The issue was that the horizon was hazy and fairly obscured, and the line of lights lighting up the Florida Keys made a kind of fake horizon. It was terribly distracting. I kept having to look inside to correct my conception about where the horizon _really_ was. The lights kept making my brain think that the horizon was 10 degrees lower than it really was. Very spooky. Once the stars came out full bore the job was easy again. Several people had told me cautionary tales about their experiences with "point fixation" over the water, desert, and remote areas, but I'd never seen the effect before. Its really something to be careful about because the effect is much sronger than you'd ever believe possible. Bart Bart The same can happen when coming out of a cloud bank and no ground lights. The stars can give the appearance of being the ground lights and you are inverted! Of course a skilled pilot will recognize the situation and not roll over but it sure has happened. Out over water or jungle, or large areas of desert..... Fly Safe Ol Shy & Bashful Please excuse a little change in the subject. I mention this only because the subject happened to come up a week or so ago, but, does anyone think this "might" have played a part in JFK Jr's accident? He was a relatively new pilot and might have easily succumbed to such a phenomenon. Just wondering? Fly Safe, Steve R. |
#17
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I would opine that an indeterminate horizon is where things started to
go pear-shaped with that flight... But I will always wonder how much part the pax played in the ultimate outcome - in terms of distraction before and after it started to get away from him. I will also wonder why he didn't engage at least the wing leveler or HDG mode of the autopilot (*before* it really got serious of course). Ego? Lack of A/P training/knowledge? Dave Blevins On Fri, 16 Apr 2004 20:45:18 GMT, "Steve R." wrote: Please excuse a little change in the subject. I mention this only because the subject happened to come up a week or so ago, but, does anyone think this "might" have played a part in JFK Jr's accident? He was a relatively new pilot and might have easily succumbed to such a phenomenon. Just wondering? Fly Safe, Steve R. |
#18
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Steve R. wrote: job was easy again. Several people had told me cautionary tales about their experiences with "point fixation" over the water, desert, and remote areas, but I'd never seen the effect before. Its really something to be careful about because the effect is much sronger than you'd ever believe possible. Bart Bart The same can happen when coming out of a cloud bank and no ground lights. The stars can give the appearance of being the ground lights and you are inverted! Of course a skilled pilot will recognize the situation and not roll over but it sure has happened. Out over water or jungle, or large areas of desert..... Fly Safe Ol Shy & Bashful Please excuse a little change in the subject. I mention this only because the subject happened to come up a week or so ago, but, does anyone think this "might" have played a part in JFK Jr's accident? He was a relatively new pilot and might have easily succumbed to such a phenomenon. Just wondering? Fly Safe, Steve R. This has attributed to fatal accidents. Paying too much attention visual without referencing your instruments in these situations can be fatal. rm |
#19
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Black hole effect, is I think what this is called. A light way out in the
distance, dark ground before and many have flown into the ground do to this effect. |
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