Ship down in NC

[string fellow hawk]

The reports say the pilot said the engine had a lose of power. Sounds like from the video that the engine was still running when they went in. My first thoughts were density altitude issues. Flying slow in the mountains in a Schweizer on a HOT day do not mix very well. Looks like he slowed down there at the end and the helicopter just settled. Every 300CB I have ever encountered is right hand PIC. I would like to know why this pilot was PIC on the left side while the videographer was on the right.

 

Thoughts?

 

[TXFirefly]

The C model is PIC from the left, as you can remove the right seat collective for a "middle seat" option. The CB and CBi are PIC from the right.

[apiaguy]

that was sweet!! It is most certainly a CB or CBI... you could easily fly from the left even if it was right hand pic if you wanted to for some reason..maybe it was instructor/student.. or friends .

 

They most definitely slowed too much over the terrain and started to settle so he decided to go straight in... you could hear the engine straining as it dogged on power and low rpm.

 

Kinda looks like they might have been trying to land in a small clearing and once they got below the power curve... it was all over.

Edited June 25, 2010 by apiaguy

[string fellow hawk]

that was sweet!! It is most certainly a CB or CBI... you could easily fly from the left even if it was right hand pic if you wanted to for some reason..maybe it was instructor/student.. or friends .

 

They most definitely slowed too much over the terrain and started to settle so he decided to go straight in... you could hear the engine straining as it dogged on power and low rpm.

 

Kinda looks like they might have been trying to land in a small clearing and once they got below the power curve... it was all over.

 

Yeah the reports said it was a 2000 model CB. I know you can easily fly from the left seat with a student or friend but this guy was a professional videographer from a production company. If it wasn't a training flight then the videographer should have been on the left with the left controls out. I know The seating arrangement had nothing to do with the crash. I just thought it was odd.

 

This wasn't any landing attempt. He just got behind the ship for the conditions that day. He had nowhere to go but straight in. Regardless of what happened, the important thing is that they are ok!

[r22butters]

If I ever crash, I want it to be just like that. Nice and slow!

 

As for flying from the left, I've done that on a couple of Photo flights. As long as there are two people in there, its no big deal.

 

By the way, the photographer wanted to sit on the right because of where the Sun was.

Edited June 26, 2010 by r22butters

[copter doctor]

It sounded normal to me until it sounded like the blades were hitting the trees. Too small a confined area? hard to say since we weren't there.

[HelliBoy]

I hate to speculate and I live in a glass house just like everyone else, but my guess is rotor droop or overpitching (settling with power in Canada). I fly a 300 CB almost every day and he let his airspeed drop below ETL. Very lucky considering the unlucky situation.

[ascj]

You can definitly get a cbi set up as left hand drive so i presume they did for cb's also.

 

looks/sounds like it was overpitched from slowing through translation. Looks can be decieving though. I would like to know though why the pilot thinks that if whatever happened, happened at 600 feet instead of 40ft that he would not be here today. I can only come up with the idea that he meant if the tree was 600ft tall then he may have fell out of it while he was climbing down... over here we are taught to auto for that first big mob of height. its a good thing he "stayed calm".

 

Waiting for incoming

ASCJ

[r22butters]

... I would like to know though why the pilot thinks that if whatever happened, happened at 600 feet instead of 40ft that he would not be here today...

 

Perhaps he felt that at 600' his rate-of-descent would have been too great to recover from? After all, that landing did seen awfully slow!