06 February 2009

Who's In Control Here?

8 comments:

The Duke said...

Clearly no one, really. I think the right-seater is on the controls ( the left seat guy seems to have his feet flat on the floor, and right hand on the ceiling before the first bounce).

Why the pilot on the controls would stick his leg out is beyond me. I guess it was instinct, but that is just stupid for a number of reasons.

I'm also wondering what is going on here. It looks kind of like loss of tail rotor thrust because of the right yaw (video is slowed down), but after the first bounce when he almost rolls it, the nose seems to straighten out as he drifts backward. During that drift he also doesn't seem to have much left pedal put in, and (having never experienced this EP) I imagine the urge would be great to shove the left pedal through the chin bubble.

I wonder if this is a flight control malfunction, or just some fixed-wing guy with an extra $30,000 and an overinflated sense of piloting aptitude.

Anonymous said...

I got it, you got it, I got it,
OH S*%T who's got it????
John K

Greybeard said...

Duke and JK-
I wish this video had sound. I think that would answer some questions. I showed this video to a guy that owns a B2 Brantly and he said throttle/RPM control is difficult AND critical on this machine. With sound we might have some indication that he let his RPM get low, and therefore the tail rotor just couldn't meet the demand pressed upon it.

The first thing I notice is the right skid touching the ground and the aircraft starts to roll using it as an axis. (Dynamic Rollover?) As Duke says, at that point the right-seater looks as if he wants to get out of the aircraft...
Where the hell is he gonna go?
(Into the Vic Morrow veg-a-matic!)

When the skid breaks free he is clearly out of control for a few seconds, almost making ground contact the main, then the tail rotor.

Kudos to the camera operator for not ducking for cover. (Notice the Rotorway Exec on the left side of the screen at video's end...
Some kind of fly-in?

I bet both occupants went immediately to wash their underwear!

The Old Man said...

Dear God, inside ground effect should be otto-matik. But I wasn't a wobbly (although I flew R/C fling-wings - big deal, right?) and I really have no nickel in this quarter...

CJ said...

So, Duke asked my question, sort of - what in the world was the idiot thinking when he stuck his leg out the door?

And to answer your question - I'd say it looks like the helicoper is.

cjh

Cissy Apple said...

I deserted a golf cart once that was sliding backwards down a hillside of dewy grass, but it didn't have huge blades whirling overhead.

Rita said...

As far as the guy sticking his foot on the ground, I have a story of my genius cousin. And I do mean that he was a genius, reading the encyclopedia when he was three, teaching himself every kind of instrument, able to create magnificant drawings before he was a teenage.

Anyway, they lived on the side of a mountain in Huntsville Alabama. When he was a teenager visiting our grandparents in Loogootee, his foot was all bandaged. When I asked him why he said that they had been working on a car on "the hill" which didn't have brakes.

The car got loose and he jumped in the drivers seat WITHOUT shoes and stuck his foot out on the ground to try to stop the car.

Luckily only the bottom of his foot was chewed up, no real damage to anything else.

I'm only assuming the guy in this video is NOT my cousin. Genius doesn't necessarily go along with common sense.

In the case of this video, I'm sure the guy was just acting on instinct. Kinda like sticking your hand on the dash of a car when you are crashing. (I've done that one). It just makes your arm hurt worse the next day, it sure doesn't have the ability to cushion the impact.

Aviatrix said...

Shows what I know. If it weren't for the leg being stuck out the window, I would have thought the whole thing was some sort of control exercise: take off, go forward, go backwards, tip over, spin around slowly, tip backwards, land again.

You mean they didn't MEAN to do that?