But then I come across this incident and I wonder WTF is going on? Are these things so flaky they can't fly a couple of hundred miles without a serious incident?
From the story in Navy Times: "The helicopters flew at times just 50 to 100 feet above the lake, which sits at 6,225-foot elevation, and hovered at about 70 feet when the first helicopter lost power from its tail rotor, spun around and inadvertently settled into the water shortly before the second aircraft did the same, the investigation found." (emphasis mine).
Is this because turbines are inherently less reliable? Or maybe it's just modern military helicopters are too complex? Or are they scrimping on maintenance for some reason? Or have I just picked up on the only three incidents in the last 30 years?
Update: I realize the Lake Tahoe thing was probably a stunt. I think both copters losing power to (from?!?!) the tail rotor at the same time is too much of a coincidence. Maybe the guys in back wanted to go for a swim, although Lake Tahoe is too cold for me. I don't really have any complaint about this, there was only half a million dollars worth of damage compared to the $50 million for the loss of the entire chopper in Abbottabad. I mean, how do you find out what you can do with a chopper if you don't try it once in a while?
Update #2: I got my links confused. Here is the link to the story in Tactical World, complete with video.
Update February 2017 replaced missing picture.
2 comments:
Rotary-wing aircraft are necessarily more complex and failure-prone than fixed wing ones.
That said, the fact that they let POTUS set foot on one says that they're safe enough. ;)
On the other hand, we may have lost one helicopter setting down in that Abottabad courtyard, but think how many C-130s we'd have wrecked trying to take off and land in that little space.
Ground effect rotor stall from the long hover, considering the high density altitude.
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