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Posted

There's Dashcam footage of it with the news claiming they hit wires - no way in hell did it hit powerlines causing the crash. Maybe before impact, yes, but not a causal factor. They were already in what looked like a power-off descent, they didn't hit powerlines and then crash.

  • Agree 3
Posted

The crash looks very much to me, like an engine failure followed by an auto-rotation that wasn't fast enough to arrest the rapid descent. The chopper experts claim you have about 1 to 2 seconds after engine failure to initiate an auto rotation in a Robinson R22. Failure to very rapidly adjust to auto-rotation means a loss of rotor RPM, which leads to an extremely rapid descent.

 

The Robbies have a very light rotor assembly, which is low-inertia, and losing that small amount of rotor inertia, by a delayed move to auto-rotation, means a high speed crash, instead of a controlled, slow-descent, hard landing.

It's saddening to hear the instructor was killed, and I trust the young chopper trainee pulls through, but it sounds like his injuries are critical. 

  • Agree 1
  • Sad 2

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