How many of you guys have crashed or have had a close call

[crashresidue]

Cheers rookie,

 

It all depends on the circumstances. Having busted one isn't a bad thing, if you did all the right stuff, in the right order, and especially if everyone got out all right. It's "all the right things, in the right order" that's most important - sometimes, not matter what you do, you're gonna have fatalities.

 

They call them "catastrophic failures" when it's mechanical, "pilot error" when it's your fault.

 

A reputation as a "cowboy" or "hot shot pilot" will preceed your record of crashes - so keep the reputation spotless and you won't have problems

 

Gentle winds,

cr

[Helo-Pilot]

I had an ignition failure while on a taxiway. I was taxiing back and just did a hovering auto, with a slight skid forward. There was a guy at an airservice come running out of the building swearing that he saw the v belts fly off!

 

The only bad thing was that this was the first time I had taken my wife flying. She just looked at me and asked, 'What are we doing here? '

[HH60Pilot]

In a helicopter the worst I've had would be a mag failure in an R44 Raven II in a 15' hover while taxing backwards at the Lake Tahoe Airport (6,200MSL). The thing started kicking around and had the rotor horn on in about a second. I had a couple of transmission overtemps in the HH-3E that required a pretty quick landing (once out in the Arizona desert). During a night aerial refueling in the HH-3E, we had a failure of the collar on the refueling probe that required us to flying home some 90NM while JP-5 was being siphoned out of the fuel system and spraying back on the windscreen. I had a mag failure in my Cessna 150 on a night cross country that had me divert into Stockton, CA just minutes before the field went zero-zero in fog. Probably the worst I've had was two engine fires in a week when flying the F-4 Phantom...I'm really glad the Double Ugly had two engines!

 

Doug