Houston chopper crash discussion

[Tins]

https://youtu.be/OL5ukvboKTM

[Old Farang]

Hmm, there are a couple of things wrong with that. Why he mentioned the height velocity curve I don't know, as a successful landing from there is not likely, tail rotor or not!
The other thing is if you are fortunate enough to have a tail rotor failure at altitude it is possible to stabilise the aircraft if you are quick enough, but any attempted landing should be a run on to prevent a counter rotation by pulling pitch near the ground.

RIP to the poor bugger that was well aware of what has happening.

[JDNSW]

Reminds me of an incident on the first offshore oil platform in Australia about 1970. A helicopter landing on the platform suffered a tail rotor failure as it was touching down. It killed a TV cameraman who was on the helipad filming the landing.

The failure of the tail rotor was tracked down to the tail rotor being out of balance due to having a washer left out when being assembled, leaving it out of balance with a resulting fatigue failure.

During the investigation, the washer was located in the workshop that had overhauled the rotor six months earlier - in between two floorboards under the bench.