John Croft: February 2010 Archives

I just got back from the helicopter industry's most populus and powerful meeting - Heli Expo - where the top-down, bottoms-up message was - WE GOTTA GET SAFER!!

And today, I pull up an NTSB preliminary accident report on a Maryland State Police Eurocopter AS365N2 helicopter (N61MD - thumb pic from airliners.net).

No one was injured thank goodness (unlike the previous accident), but there appears to be a troubling lack of safety culture within the organization.

Is it just me?

Basic set up is this: It's 10:36 at night on 11 February 2010 when N61MD, aka Trooper 7, is landing on the ground-level pad at the Prince George's General Hospital (IMD4) ground-level helipad, coming in to the suburban Maryland facility with two patients medevaced from an automobile accident. NTSB says the hospital informed the pilot that he couldn't land on the elevated pad due to ice.

Unlike in the Google Maps picture above though, Maryland's been getting drenched in snow this winter.

From the report:

"The helicopter landed about 2209, facing slightly south of west. The pilot stated that "the landing...was accomplished with no incidents detected." After landing, the flight paramedic and the hospital receiving team offloaded and transported the patients to the hospital emergency department, while the pilot shut down the helicopter. The pilot reported that the shut down was normal, and after he secured the helicopter, he joined the flight paramedic in the hospital.

Then this (emphasis is mine):

About 2229, when the crew returned to the helicopter, the pilot noted that "the crew observed that the aircraft's fenestron was resting on top of an approximate three foot high snow bank," and that "further inspection detected no damage to the fenestron." According to the flight paramedic, he suggested to the pilot that it might be appropriate to remove some of the snow beneath the fenestron, in order to provide more clearance for the takeoff.

Here's the brilliant part. Maybe he didn't have a shovel... (again, emphasis is mine):

The pilot determined that "since there was no damage" and that "the tail rotor itself was clear of the snow, a straight up take off with no yaw movement would be made."  

Note in the YouTube video of a different Maryland AS365 on takeoff how the helicopter shifts rearward as it prepares to takeoff.

Lo and behold on that winter's night, once the pilot cranked up the engines...

About 2234, engine start was completed, without any anomalies. The pilot stated that "a slow deliberate takeoff was then initiated," and when the helicopter "became light on the wheels, but prior to takeoff, a vibration was detected, emanating from the rear of the aircraft." In response to the vibration, the pilot lowered the collective, shut down both engines, and applied the rotor brake. 

You can probably guess what had happened, as snow typically isn't light and feathery after being plowed and shoveled.

The pilot stated that after he shut down and secured the helicopter, he and the flight paramedic visually inspected the helicopter. The pilot stated that the inspection revealed that "the fenestron was found to be severely damaged by the tail rotor blades, the right tail rotor gear box cap appeared to have been ingested by the tail rotor, and numerous tail rotor blades were damaged." Preliminary examination by MSP and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) personnel revealed substantial damage to the tail rotor blades, the fenestron, the tail rotor gear box (TGB), the TGB drive coupling, and the TGB mounting structure.  

Bell Helicopter on Monday officially turned over the keys, as it were, of the Bell 47 helicopter to Scott's Helicopter Services, a Bell-approved customer service facility in La Sueur, Minnesota. Pictured are Bell's Danny Maldonado (left) and Scott Churchill, president of Scott's Helicopter.

The event took place during this year's Heli-Expo conference, which I helped cover for Flight International

First produced 1946, there were more than 5,600 Bell 47s produced in the 28 years of production to 1974, more than 900 of which are still flying. Since Scott's now owns the type certificate, the new name of the venerable ship is the Scott's Bell 47.

Still don't know what a Bell 47 is? Watch the video. I take no responsibility for you getting this song stuck in your head...

Air traffic control tapes released by liveatc.net reveal an apparently cool and calm Joe Stack, just minutes before he crashed his Piper Dakota into a buiding in Austin, Texas this morning.

A controller at Georgetown Municipal Airport (KGTU), after clearing N2889D, a Piper PA28-236 Dakota, to depart said, "What's your direction of flight, sir?", to which Stack replied, "Eight niner delta's going southbound, sir".

Georgetown airport is about 20 miles north of the crash site, a building that apparently contained Internal Revenue Service offices, an organization Stack was apparently unhappy with.

Later, when Stack had cleared the bounds of Georgetown's airspace, the controller called back and cleared Stack to change frequencies.

"See you later," the controller added.

"Thanks for your help," replied Stack. "Have a great day." 

"You too," said the controller.

Hear the real audio clip here...

A blog by my colleague Barbara Cockburn on a 1911 article Flight published regarding the study of birds in flight, reminded me of an ah-hah bird moment I had last week.

One of the advantages of being snowed-in for a week at my rural home in Maryland is that I get to watch the birds, lots of birds, coming to our back sliding door for the sunflower seeds we (mostly my wife) toss out. Usually we get a variety of birds, including cardinals, that look like this...

One bird in particular last week however caught my wife's eye -  a female cardinal that I call the "Advanced cardinal".

That's right - She had no tail. Nada. Yet she could fly as well as, and probably faster, than other cardinals. My brother-in-law Andy tells me that birds sometimes get their tail feather stuck in the ice, which pulls out the features when the bird takes off. He says the feathers eventually grow back.

Given at how winged aircraft are evolving to be tail-less however, why bother? It's not a sin anymore.

2/18/2010 - After reading a comment from "anonymous"

I clicked the Prestly link and got this:

Then I looked to see if the YouTube clip was still there, and got this:

BIZARRE!!!!

2/14/2010 - Thanks to Drop Bear for clearing up the mystery!  See comment section. Happy Valentines Day.  jwc

"Old advanced weapons programs never die, they just go black," says my colleague Steve Trimble of the DEW Line blog.

Trimble is speaking about a video I found today on YouTube. Supposedly the only two flying models of the X-45A UCAS both went to museums after the program ended in 2005, one to the National Air and Space Museum in Washington; the other to the Wright Patterson Air Force base in Ohio.

Posted by Thales group company Prestly Industries, the clip claims to show what is obviously an third X-45A performing a bomb release test at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland on 8 February 2010.

Not sure how in the world you could do such a test at Andrews, just 10 miles east of the US Capitol, but that's how the clip is labeled..Maybe they meant Edwards?

As further proof that this is a not an old test, compare pictures of the original bomb drop test in April 2004 with the latest test. Definitely a different bird based on the decals on the left side of the nose. Probably other differences that aerophiles can pick up .

Here's the original:

Here's the "new"

Is this for real????

A friend sent these pictures along of the unfortunate fate of a handful of very expensivve business jets kept inside what the owners, and Dulles Jet Centre itself, most likely thought was a safe cocoon.

I covered the grand opening, complete with hoopla, of the $60 million facility back in November 2006.

When three feet of Washington DC snow came to roost on the roof after a 5 February 2010 snowstorm, however, "safe" turned out to be a relative term.

See for yourself.

Textron president and CEO Scott Donnelly last week set the stage for what could turn out to be a banner new product year for subsidiary Cessna.

While the company continues to steer clear of the super-midsize business jet sector, which it had attempted to gain access to with the now-cancelled Colombus jet, it apparently is not ignoring its core constituency.

During the company's fourth quarter earnings call last week, Donnelly noted that research and development spending at the company would increase next year, focused primarily on "core light to mid-size" aircraft.

"There are a number of programs," Donnelly said, including "block-point updates" and "new entries into the family of our products".

Hmmmm....

Donnelly's thoughts, combined with some information I attained through waterboarding (just kidding) tells me that Cessna is prepping to introduce a single-engine turboprop to compete with the Pilatus PC-12, currently a zone the company does not play in.

And better yet, it would make as much if not more sense to launch a single-engine jet to take on the very popular PiperJet, and, from what a little bird tells me, a Pilatus jet at some point not too distant.

Whatever Cessna is thinking, it will surely be cooler than the Cessna Corvalis image I mucked up with Microsoft paint for this blog. Though it does look pretty fast...

Jack: "Chloe - pipe that UAV surveillance video of the bad guys to my PDA!"

Scenes like this (sort of) from Fox's 24 that used to seem so futuristic (unless you're in combat) suddenly don't seem so much so.

Check out LA-based Helinet Technologies, new product, HT 4Sight. The system lets anyone with the need to know the ability to have aerial surveillance video sent to his or her BlackBerry or PDA.

"The new capability enhances the ability of ground personnel to accurately assess and respond to crisis situations by providing them with anywhere, anytime access to real time intelligence," says Helinet.

LIke I said, Jack Bauer stuff.

Here's a graphic showing how the system works: