Blackhawk Driver Gone Bad?

[CAMike]

Hey kids- A good lesson here- The rule of "Don't Force It" still applies. Regardless of what you do in life- It almost always never ends well when we do force it. Uhhg.

I know- it could have been a mechanical anomaly in progress but I doubt it watching the second half of the clip. Your thoughts? Or is this just old video from an event long long ago?

http://shock.military.com/Shock/videos.do?displayContent=183765&page=1

 

[zab1001]

So you have no idea what the background is on this, yet feel the need to assess the situation and pass judgment anyway?

A better post would have read something along the lines of "Does anyone know the background on this event?"

 

[insanebikerboy]

That's one way to trim the hedges!

 

[skidkid]

Looks like some kind of catastrophic failure that he was able to safely land and quickly. Don't know the details but guessing I am closer than the original poster.

 

[Bevo16]

I have never seen that video before. From the looks of that quick stop, there is a decent chance that he disengaged the head. That complicates the energy management equation just a bit. That's tough math when you have a runway in front of you. When there are trees getting big in the wind screen....it's really bad.

Wave-offs are always cheaper than 4 main rotor blades and (probably) a new gear box.

 

[Bevo16]

So you have no idea what the background is on this, yet feel the need to assess the situation and pass judgment anyway?

A better post would have read something along the lines of "Does anyone know the background on this event?"

It does not take clairvoyance to figure out that the background on this one is:

"Blackhawk pilot tries shit hot quick stop/landing, goon''ed it up and did high dollar landscaping on his roll-out."

 

[zab1001]

I'm not going to argue this with you. My point is that without the background, it's foolish to assume. I'm out.

 

[CAMike]

zab1001 is right. I truly don't know the incident background and it could have been a mechanical. I should have been more objective and will make better posting efforts in the future. My bad.

 

[ChuckMK23]

Hell of a quick stop/flare. My first reaction is power settling - did the verticle rate of decent exceed the ability of the pilot at the controls to arrest the rate of decent with collective/power? Was there vortex ring state? Combination of both?

On a positive note - that was one solid impact and the PAC kept it level - the airframe did an amazing job absorbing the impact - and even with catastrophic blade strike on the trees, it held together through shutdown. Has to make the H-60 drivers out there feel pretty confident.

 

[insanebikerboy]

Yeah, after he shut down the blade was broken in half! Yet it didn't separate and go flying off somewhere after he hit the trees.

 

[onedge]

There's no way I am aware of to tell exatcly what is going on there but if I HAD to guess I would say it looks like a prime scenario for vortex ring state. Now, it looks a lot likethat developed as a result of a low level auto. Weather he is showing off or that's a no shitter.... can't say. My .0002

 

[xnvyflyer]

I guess I would have been the only one in that crowd who would have gathered my friends/family and been heading quickly in the other direction until all moving parts had stopped moving.

Good thing no parts flew into the crowd.

 

[busdriver]

A video of this incident (from another angle) was shown when I was at Rucker. I can't for the life of me remember what the cause was, but if that's a 700 engined 60, the engine response time is much slower than in the 701C engined birds. As a result if you "disengage the rotor" as you would in a practice auto-rotation or an aggressive quick-stop it requires a "wake-up" prior to application of power, if you forget this part you end up with rotor droop and inadvertent touchdown. The is not an unheard of event at Kirtland (AF 60 school house) which still had 700 engines when I went through; mostly due to upgrade students who fly operational birds which all have 701C engines.

I very much doubt this was VRS, as the vertical velocity to get a 60 into this condition is ridiculous, not to mention the incredible amount of excess power available in a slick 60. In PRE-fully formed VRS, additional power makes the situation worse, BUT if you have a large excess of available power, and can apply it very rapidly, it's possible to "force through" the VRS situation.

EDIT: it's amazing how forgetting those three little letters totally makes that statement wrong.

 

[2ndGen]

VRS?

(feel free to flame)

 

[scoolbubba]

vortex ring state.