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Help Your DAR Help You.
As this is my blog, I want to talk about a few observations I have noticed lately, but I will keep it on point so as not to go on a rant.
A while back I received my designation from the FAA as a DAR-T. The issue I am seeing is, I have individuals contact me about issuing an airworthiness certificate for their machine, but not wanting or being able to provide the required data necessary.
First let me make a statement that should be redundant but recent interactions have proven otherwise:
“In order to have an Airworthiness Certificate issued, the aircraft must be airworthy.”
This means not disassembled all over the hanger floor, and not in a paint booth with all the placards and markings removed.
Now I will go into Education Mode for a few minutes and try not to be long winded.
Starting July 1st of this year (2020) the FAA has made it a requirement that all applications for Airworthiness Certificates (Except Export) are done via the new FAA AWC portal – https://www.faa.gov/aircraft/air_cert/airworthiness_certification/aw_cert_proc/media/AWC_Applicant_Registration_Guide.pdf
The above link explains how to register in the system and how the process works.
Also, once you have been assigned or have selected your DAR for your project, he will need certain information. This Information is a requirement for the correct completion of the certification requested. The list is outlined in the Regulations and Guidance and is as follows:
- A notarized agent letter from the registered owner if that is not you.
- AD compliance list
- Airworthiness limitation tracking
- Last major inspection entry & sign off (annual or equivalent OEM )
- Entry stating what inspection program is in use
- Entry showing ADS B compliance
- Current registration
- Current Airworthiness Certificate
- Current equipment list
- Current weight and balance
- Sign off 14CFR§ 91.413
- Sign off 14CFR§ 91.207
- Sign off 14CFR§ 91.411 if accomplished (required for IFR)
- Photo of engine(s) data plate
For Experimental – a program letter.
For Export- all special requirements including:
- Placards installed
- Flight manuals
For Export of an aircraft you must complete the application FAA Form 8130.1. https://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Form/FAA_Form_8130-1.pdf
Your chosen DAR may vary his list a little bit but if you put everything on this list together it will expedite the process greatly, saving you time and money. In addition, if you are requesting an Airworthiness Certificate on a newly imported used aircraft be aware that some or all of the maintenance records will probably need to be translated into English (unless Your DAR is Bilingual).
So, in closing, I hope this information will help you (or someone you know) Help Your DAR Help You. Feel free to reach out to me with any questions or clarification you may need or want.
Back in the early 80s when the offshore oil business was dying out on the California Coast the new rage for the Helicopter industry was the tuna boats. Pilots liked it because it was an easy way to build hours and for the mechanics it was pretty easy duty taking care of one or maybe two jet rangers that only flew a few hours a day.
The deal was supposed to be you went out on the boat for an average trip of 45 to 60 days and got paid $2,500 a month plus a fixed amount per ton, for each ton of tuna that was caught when the boat emptied out at the end of the trip. Now I know this doesn’t sound like much money but back in 1983 it was almost a fortune.
I was to meet my boat in a place called Manzanillo, Mexico in the middle of February so the company flew me and one other Mechanic down from Southern California in a Lear 23. In case you have never had the opportunity to ride in a Lear jet model 23 you have missed one of the things in life that anyone in aviation should experience at least one time. The thing takes off and climbs like something out of the Apollo project and the pilot’s main job for the entire flight is to keep the aircraft from going too fast. The entire flight was less than 3 hours. After a short ride to the harbor where we met the boats, we put out to sea immediately upon our arrival. We had made the whole transition from a large, dry, solid hanger in the high desert of SoCal to the high seas in less than half of a day.
On the tuna boat I met my pilot; for the sake of his privacy in case he is still alive we will just call him Sam for the duration of this story.
Sam and I would be sharing a cabin directly below the heli-deck and right behind the bridge. The cabin wasn’t bad in itself, about the size of a cheap motel room with two bunks and two small closets as well as a couple of drawers under the bunks and one desk mounted to the wall between the bunks and beneath the only window. As I learned quickly the best part of the accommodations was that Sam and I had a bathroom and shower that was just for the two of us while the entire rest of the crew except the Captain was required to share one down below.
I, being the mechanic also got my own work shop. A small room about 10 foot square with a workbench built into one wall and places to strap down my tool box. Something I did not take too seriously until the first time I had to pick up all my stuff and put the box back together.
MY Tuna Baby was a Bell 206B3 with about 1800 hours on her when the trip started. She was on fixed floats and had an aluminum shield inside the co-pilots chin bubble to keep the Captain from dropping a bomb into the nose and subsequently blowing the nose off of the helicopter.
You see, when a helicopter is utilized to fish for tuna it works something like this. When the Captain gets the feeling, or inkling or whatever that the boat is in a good spot the helicopter is launched to go and look for the tuna, which school close to the surface and are plainly visible from just a few feet up. When and if, a school of fish is spotted, the boat is directed into the area and the large powerful motor boat referred to as the skiff that is attached to the back of the tuna boat is deployed which pulls the net off the back of the bigger boat and starts to make a circle around the school of fish. In the meantime, three or four small speed boats are put over the side by use of a davit system.
Now these small boats are very interesting, they are about 10 feet long and maybe 3 feet wide, made from aluminum with 1 inch diameter steel bar-stock for a keel and rub-rail. They have 95 horse power outboard motors and are set up so that the thrust of the motor holds it down in place but if they run over the net (or each other) the motor just flips up and then falls back into place with almost no interruption in thrust. And although there were no instruments on board to tell how fast they were going the little speed boats will out run a Jetranger on floats if the seas are calm. After the circling process starts the small boats and the helicopter are all used to sort of herd the tuna and keep them inside of the net until it can be closed. They do this by throwing fish bombs into the water. A Fish Bomb is about a third of a stick of dynamite weighted with sand and sealed with wax and they are very effective at scaring the fish, blowing up speed boats, and damaging the occasional helicopter. After the circle is complete the bottom of the net which is 240 feet down is closed like a purse string and then the net is winched back aboard slowly reducing the size of the circle until the fish are concentrated in a very small area right next to the boat.
Within the first week out I learned the first of many lessons I would on this trip. One was how much I love the sea and it has been said more than once, I was born a couple centuries too late. The second was that whatever you thought you knew about corrosion control was wrong and insufficient when you place a helicopter on the open deck of a 225 ft boat, twenty feet above the water. At least half of your maintenance time is spent just keeping it clean.
Things droned on endlessly for the first month or so and not much went on but we were not finding or catching the amount of fish that we should. That’s about when the trip started to get more interesting.
Early one morning, one of the other boats in the fleet ours belonged to, crashed its helicopter into the ocean and since the pilot and the captain were both okay, they decided they were going to stay out and try and fish without a helicopter. It seems they were flying along at full tilt boogie about four or five feet off the water when the pop out floats deployed spontaneously which forced the nose of the aircraft down violently and the pilot was not high enough to correct or slow down, so the Jetranger did a face plant and ended upside down in the ocean. The story was that the forward cells of the floats tore open during the impact and the rear ones would not support the weight, but I was told later by the pilot that the rear cells were holding the helicopter at a nose down angle leaving the crew of the boat no easy way to attach a crane so the captain ordered the remaining bags cut rather than waste the time required to solve the problem.
A couple of days later we were awakened by alarms going off and the captain yelling over the PA system that we were deploying the net because we had sailed up on a large school of fish in the dark. The sun was still an hour away so Sam and I sat up on the helicopter deck and watched the crew work. The whole thing was rather fascinating. The net was closed and pulled in like usual but before it was half on board there was a problem. The large, dense, school of fish that the captain had seen on the fish finder turned out to be a pod of Humpback whales. And they were not happy about the whole net thing. Before the whales destroyed the net and made good their escape, they pulled the net off the boat backward through the hydraulic winching system and as it was not designed with a reverse the damage was substantial. We headed for the closest port where we could get the parts for our boat and stretch the net out so the crew could make repairs. This marked my first time in Acapulco, Mexico… stay tuned for Part 2.
Pesky little critters
Posted: 20th March 2011 by coptermd in UncategorizedTags: 204, Bell 204, leaches, run-on landing, tail rotor
In the mid nineties, just as I was leaving a position with a tour operator. I got a call from a friend that had several type 1 and type 2 ships out on fire contracts. He had one contract that was being covered with a Bell 204B and even though the contract had only been running a couple of weeks the pilot and customer had both complained repeatedly about the mechanic on the job.
So my friend asked me if I would be interested in assuming a contract that was already in motion. It turned out that the ship was out on a fire in southern Colorado very near the four corners area.
I traveled out to where the helicopter was based, out of a large cow pasture we were sharing with two Bell 212’s from two other operators. It was late in the afternoon when I arrived and the ship had flown a few hours during the day but the previous mechanic had left the night before. So being the first time I had met this particular Bell 204 I proceeded to give it an extensive daily, and a lot of grease, as well as several hours of cleaning .
The next morning it was time to trade out pilots for mandatory days off. It turns out that the relief pilot was my friend, the owner of the company and he was on site and ready before things warmed up and the first call came in from the fire line for helicopter support.
The first hour or so passed and the ship came in and got fuel while the pilot took care of his personal business , grabbed one of those infamous brown bag lunches that the forest service is so well known for, a fresh pack of smokes and he was off again.
About thirty minutes later a radio call came in that the 204 had lost tail rotor. The call came from a 212 that was behind him in line to dip water. Five or six very long minutes later the pilot of the 204 called in that he was inbound to the cow pasture, his tail rotor was ineffective and he was about 15 minutes out.
The available forest service personnel all grabbed fire extinguishers, and ran out to the helispot to await the inevitable crash and fire. It took a moment for me get them to understand that he would not be trying to land on the spot and that if something does go wrong having a dozen people standing around in the open is probably not a good idea. Next I managed to get them to rearrange all their trucks and equipment to open up the most space possible for an upwind run-on landing.
It was several minutes before the ship came into view and began his approach to the field. As he descended you could hear him working the throttle to keep the ship straight into the wind and he made a perfect touchdown with a total slide of about 6 feet. If you hadn’t already been aware most people would never have known there was a problem. The pilot cooled the engine normally while he smoked a cigarette and then shut down.
The problem was easy to locate, both bolts in the outboard end of the tail rotor pitch links had sheared off in the cross-head. The head of one bolt was still stuck in the cross-head so it was possible to see that the wrong hardware had been installed. There was no maintenance entry in the log book, but the bolts installed were so far under strength that it had to have been done recently.
There were a half dozen of the proper bolts in the field maintenance trailer so it was a simple process to check the pitch links and cross-head for additional damage , and finding none install the correct bolts. By the time we had examined the ship completely and performed a track and balance on the tail rotor fallowed by a test flight, it was too late in the day to go back to the fire and since the tail rotor had failed during a dip the pilot had punched the bucket and it was somewhere in the bottom of the pond.
That night at fire camp we ate dinner with the pilot of the 212 that had been watching the whole evolution from a couple hundred yards away, and after dissecting the manner in which my friend saved the 204 he mentioned how impressed he was that we had the ship back up in less than a day. We shared with him our bucket problem and that it was at least 5 days to get a new one. He told us that he had taken note of where our bucket had entered the pond when it was punched off.
The next morning he flew with us to the pond and hovering over the water showed us exactly where it had gone in at. We then returned to the cow pasture and began figuring a way to recover our bucket. After asking around and a not inconsiderable amount of time planning and re-planning one of the locals that was coming around selling water and snacks produced a three legged grappling hook from the back of his truck, and a new plan was formed immediately.
We attached the grappling hook to the end of a 200 foot line routed it around the aft crosstube and rolled it up on the cabin floor.
We flew out to the pond, where I then shoved the cable and hook arrangement out the door and it slipped past the skid heel as planned and hung beautifully under the ship. Starting where the 212 pilot had pointed out my friend began dragging the bottom of the pond for the bambi bucket. On his third try he scored. As the bucket came to the surface you could see that it was snagged by one of the shroud lines, and so could not be lifted free of the water without damaging it. The plan was to drag it to the shore and to be honest we hadn’t thought much farther ahead than that.
The water in the pond was dark and murky; I realized that at some point I would need to get into it to get the bucket organized so it could be lifted out. The next problem arose when the 100 ft line that was still attached to the bucket would not cooperate as we attempted to drag the whole assembly to the water’s edge.
I was going to have to go in and see if I could get the line free of the snag or detach it from the remote cargo hook, sacrificing the cable in favor of saving the hook and bucket. So as we hovered 15 feet above the water I stripped out of my jeans and shirt and jumped in. We had guessed that the pond was 15 to 20 feet deep based on how much cable it had taken to drag the bottom, but after three unsuccessful attempts to swim down the cable to locate the snag I was forced to unscrew the shackle at the hook and let the cable sink.
After that it was a simple matter to drag the bucket over to the edge of the pond and up onto some reeds. Once in shallow enough water I disentwined the grappling hook from the bucket shrouds and placed the remote hook on the same shackle so that they were hanging side by side at the end of the long line on the ship. Then I disconnected the udder inside the bucket so that it would fly safely under the ship.
There was no place to land the 204 so I swam back out into the pond and the pilot leaving the bucket lying in the shallows came down to where I could clamber onto the skid and into the helicopter. The ship was lifting and I was getting situated in the back and when I was putting on my belt I saw that I was covered in leaches.
In retrospect one would think that having over a dozen little creatures sucking your blood would be painful but actually you can’t feel them at all.
When we reached the cow pasture and landed it took my pilot who was also thankfully a good friend about thirty minutes with a buck knife and a cigarette lighter to get all the little critters off of me. Then we drove into town and found a doctor to get a tetanus shot and an antibiotic cocktail.
A hot shower and a night in the motel and we were back on contract the next morning only losing one day of availability for the whole episode.
Do you ever think about your “DASH”?
I know this is supposed to be a blog about Rotor aviation. But it’s MY blog, it’s raining heavily and a blizzard is threatening so I find myself waxing philosophical.
First, is every one familiar with what your “DASH” is? No, I am not trying to coin a new phrase or plagiarize from some famous author, the word has been used in this context for many years by many people.
But just to insure that everyone has it for the purpose of this particular rambling… On a grave stone or in an obituary there are always two dates. A beginning and an end, and between these dates is a dash, THE “DASH”. The dates in and of themselves most people have no control over, but the “DASH”, that is almost completely within your control. The “DASH” is the meat and potatoes. If I have any regular readers they will recognize that this is a strange direction for me to go, but recently there was an event that made me look at my “DASH”.
Over this last Christmas holiday my beautiful wife and I made a quick trip out to my home town of Las Vegas to see some of our children and grandchildren and a couple of friends. The day we arrived I found out that one of the Police officers I had worked with for so many years had retired the day before and there was to be a party in his honor that night.
He had been on the force for over thirty years and for at least the fifteen years that I have had the privilege of calling him my friend he held the rank of sergeant, never wanting to go higher although he certainly could have, but this advancement would have forced him to do something unthinkable . ..give up flying.
Yes, the friend I’m talking about is a pilot. In most segments of helicopter aviation pilots and mechanics work very closely together. And every mechanic classifies the pilots he flies with into groups. And every mechanic give his groups different names but they come down to:
- The ones you would rather not fly with again
- The ones you have no objection to flying with but no real desire either
- The pilots you enjoy flying with and look for the next opportunity, and then there is the last group
- These are the pilots that you trust completely, the ones you would go to hell with if the need arose.
My friend who retired is in the last group, this group has only had about three occupants in my career but he is one of them.
That night at the retirement party there was a long line of people giving short speeches about my friend and it was inspiring to see how many other people felt the same way about this man that I did. But the most incredible thing that was revealed to me that night was that even though I knew what a search and rescue pilot does, it struck me to learn that over 300 people are alive today because of my friend that would not be, had he made different choices in his life. What an awe inspiring “DASH” and since he is only a couple years older than myself I am sure that he will find some equally inspiring pursuit to undertake as this is the type of man he is.
This brings us to what makes up your “DASH”, I feel the answer is “everything”. How you love your spouse, how you raise your children and the people they grow up to be, how you approach your chosen profession. Are you involved and passionate or do you phone it in and get your paycheck, have you ever put your life directly in danger for the life of another human being, Do you believe in something greater than yourself and if so do you strive towards it.
But back to where I was going with this, since the night of the party I have periodically thought about my “DASH” and looked back at things that I have done and questioned what I should have done differently.
In my case, the answer to the question is NO… there is nothing that I would change in my past as those events make us who we are. You are your “DASH”.
There is a saying that has been accredited to many great people with numerous variations but accentually it goes: “At the end of your days when you look back, your regrets center around things you did not do rather than those that you did.”
Hopefully in another thirty years I will still feel the same.
The Mountain Top
Posted: 26th September 2010 by coptermd in UncategorizedTags: 206L1, AS355, freezing to death, Hughes 500, las Vegas, Nevada, rearc and rescue, twinstar
For those that are unaware, on the utility side of the helicopter industry the mechanic is in most cases also the load rigger, the truck driver, the fueler, and even the auto pilot on log ferry flights. This is a short story about one of these adventures that took place fairly early in my career.
In mid December of 1982, I went on a job to recover the parts of a crashed fixed wing from the back side of the Spring Mountains not too far out of Las Vegas, Nevada. The twin engine piper had plowed in to the steep western face of the highest peak in the range about 1000 feet below the summit and then slid several hundred more feet down before coming to rest just inside the top of the tree-line.
We were hired for the recovery by the estate of the Pilot killed in the crash. It seemed that the life insurance company was claiming that it didn’t need to pay off on the rather large policy because of some loop hole or another that could be closed by reassembling the aircraft for examination.
Only one pilot and myself went on the job that was supposed to be a one day thing, with ten to twelve loads coming off the mountain to retrieve what was left of the fixed wing. I would be in charge of rigging the loads and I was accompanied by two other guys, one of which represented the estate of the late pilot and one from the insurance company.
The only spot on the mountain where there was a large enough place to set down, let us out and unload the sling gear and net was a small alpine meadow about twenty feet in diameter and about twenty five feet below and to the south of the peak. From this vantage point you could see for a hundred miles and for about 270 degrees.
It took us about an hour and a half to hike down the mountain to the crash site with the gear and get set up for the first load. We had told the pilot to give us two hours and he showed up right on schedule. The rest of the day went well. I was able to pack up all of the wreckage into twelve loads that were within a manageable weight for the Bell 206L1. As the day went on the work made us warm even though we were working at over ten thousand feet in the middle of December, the afternoon sun made it almost pleasant and by the time the last load was being hooked onto the hundred foot long line under the ship we all three stuffed our heavy coats that we had started the day with into the last net with all the rest of the airplane scraps and the remaining unused sling gear.
By the time we started our hike back up the mountain the wind was starting to come up and it was already getting dark in the valley below us but at our altitude the light hung in for at least another hour as we struggled back up to the little meadow where we had been dropped off that morning.
The entire top of the mountain was covered with snow and we had been working in it all day but we had not really noticed the cold until we were back at extraction site at 11,500 feet standing around waiting for the ship to come back and get us. The wind was refreshing , the temp was dropping and it was getting dark. The view of the lights of Las Vegas from this vantage was unforgettable. We had all sent our heavy coats back down the mountain so that we would not have to carry them. And all we were wearing were hooded sweat shirts over our coveralls and I don’t know about the other two guys but I was also sporting long johns under everything.
Just before it was totally dark we admitted that there was something very wrong and the ship should have long since been there to get us. We began digging a sort of foxhole in the snow and piling the snow removed from the center up around the edges in an attempt to shield ourselves from the wind that was now blowing at least twenty knots. We soon had a small hole down in the snow about five feet deep and when you knelt down the majority of the wind passed over the top with only an occasional eddies into our little alcove.
Human nature being what it is we began speculating on what had occurred to prevent the pilot from returning to take us down off the mountain. There were a few other people who knew where we were working and I told my companions that I had a few friends in the Vegas valley with ships that could get to us and that someone would be showing up and that we would not be left on this mountain all night, it had not dawned on us yet that we probably would not make it through the night.
As the night wore on and we got colder and colder I was explaining to my companions that the local search and rescue which was part of the police department operated a Hughes 500C which could not get to us at the altitude we were at and that the most logical ship to come after us was a friend Paul who flew an AS355 twinstar for the local EMS contract so we sat and waited.
About midnight the realization set in that we were freezing to death. None of us could feel our extremities’ and we were getting very sleepy. We made a promise to keep each other awake as long as we could. We had run out of both small talk and the energy to keep shouting above the wind. We each gave the others messages for our families just in case.
About one o’clock in the morning we heard a little noise above the howling of the wind and we got very still and strained to make sure that it was real. Then again we heard a little buzzing sound off in the distance.
We clamored out of our hole and over the screaming wind you could distinctly make out the sound of a Hughes 500 somewhere down range. We could not see it but the sound was unmistakable. One of the guys that I was with remembered his camera and he pulled it out and snapped off a shot so the flash reflected off the snow. Between the reflection and the blowing snow the whole top of the mountain lit up, and the little buzzing in the distance suddenly changed pitch and began getting closer.
About two minutes later the little red & white 500C from the police department passed 30 feet over our heads and orbited back to a descending approach into the wind. As we got to the helicopter the copilot told us that they could only take one at a time so we helped the one that was the worst off into the ship and closed the door. The little ship sort of half slid half bounced across the meadow and off the west side, in a sprint for the valley floor.
Within ten minutes the helicopter was back and repeated the same flight path into our little meadow. My extra layer of padding that I have tended to carry most of my life had left me in a little better shape than the other guy that was with me so I helped him into the ship and it was off again, only to return a few minutes later to get me.
As I climbed into the back of the little ship I recognized the pilot as a friend and yelled over the noise as we bounced towards the edge, what took you guys so long? The pilot answered they had been at the scene of a helicopter crash since just before sundown about sixty miles south of our current location.
As we fell towards the valley floor I yelled why didn’t Paul come in the twinstar? And the copilot answered back that is who was in the crash we were at!
There was a medic on the scene at the spot where the helicopter dropped me off who checked over all three of us and sent the other two guys to the hospital for observation. However, he told me that my extra layer of spare tire had helped to insulate me and maintain my core temp and said all I needed was to warm up slowly. He gave me a ride into the thriving metropolis of Pahrump, Nevada to the motel where the pilot from my company was waiting in the bar.
The company pilot explained that after the wind started to strengthen he was unsure of his skill to get into the spot and get us out. I was furious and the next day I flew home and would not let him touch the controls. But, as the years have gone by and I look back, I find that I am not as critical that he recognized his limitations and made the decision not to risk killing us all in a fiery crash. I also learned not to underestimate a lesser machine in the hands of a superior pilot.
As a note, to this day I am still friends with the Pilot, Co-pilot & Medic from that night.
SKYCRANE DOWN
Posted: 28th August 2010 by coptermd in UncategorizedTags: Bell-206B3, CH54, logging, SkyCrane, SURVIVORS
In the early 90’s the company that I was with was engaged in logging operations in the Sierra Nevada Mountains about 25 miles west south west of Tahoe.
We were using a Restricted Type CH54 SkyCrane for a lift ship and a Bell 206B3 for a choker /support ship.
Now for those of you that have never had the opportunity to participate in a heli-logging aka: aerial timber harvesting operation the short explanation of how it works is this.
Typically, when you set up the site there are two landings or LZs, one for the timber where the lift ship will deposit the logs and the loaders will load them on the logging trucks to be hauled to the mills. The second is the Helicopter landing where the ships get fuel and spend the time they are not flying. This is also where maintenance is performed.
On the jobs you usually have two helicopters, one heavy or large medium ship to lift and haul the timber and one light ship to move people or equipment and to recover the load chokers from the log landing. And then redistribute them to the personnel down in the trees so they can be placed on the fallen logs so that the lift ship can be hooked on to them. Some companies have complex grappling assemblies that just grab the logs without using the choker cables but we were still doing it the old fashioned way. The choker chasers work on the log landing, they remove the choker cables from the logs as they are deposited on the landing and roll them up and bundle them usually into packs of ten each. The choker ship picks up these bundles on a two or three hundred foot line beneath the ship and flies them out and lowers them to the setters in the trees who are the individuals that place the chokers around the fallen trees where the hookers can connect them to the releasable cargo hook at the end of a two or three hundred foot cable hanging beneath the lift ship. The logs are then lifted up out of the trees and flown to the log landing and the process starts again.
On the job that we were on when this story took place we were set up with the helicopter landing on top of a ridge above a gorge that dropped steeply thirty one hundred feet to a river below. The Log landing was across the gorge and about a mile downstream from the helicopter landing and the harvesting site was basically all along the ridge and upper part of the gorge on the same side as the log landing.
As logging jobs went it was a pretty good one. The turns or hauls were short so there was a lot of wood being moved and the helicopters were behaving well.
One afternoon everything was going good, the lift ship had gotten fuel a few minutes earlier and we were in the process of cleaning up the landing area and straightening up the service van so we could inventory and place an order from the home office for consumables and such. Do to the ruggedness of the terrain we had gotten used to the fact that the radio that was supposed to keep us in touch with the helicopters faded in and out depending on where the ships were geographically.
We heard the lift ship call, they were making a pick 19,000 pounds on the load cell. A moment later we heard what sounded like screaming then static then silence. I grabbed the radio mike and tried to raise the lift ship. The choker ship came on but was badly broken.. garble garble “going down” garble garble “in the water” garble garble “ survivors.”
I keyed the mike and called the choker pilot by name and said “I only received SURVIVORS no other transmission was readable what’s going on respond now”
A few seconds went by and the choker ship pilot came back on the radio. “The crane is down at the bottom in the river and it’s on fire what should I do?”
“Go survey while we get gear together radio back with status as soon as you have climbed back out enough to reach me”
“Understood, I’m headed down”
At this point I grabbed the Sat. phone in the front seat of the truck and called the California Division of Forestry and reported that I had a helicopter down in the forest and it was on fire and gave them the Lat Long of the landing telling them it was in the bottom of the gorge adjacent to our location.
After about five minutes we were standing by with axes, saws and hammers when the pilot of the choker ship came back on the air and said that he had both of the other pilots on board and they were uninjured except for a few scratches and scrapes.
I picked up the Sat phone again and called the home office. I was still explaining the situation to the chief pilot when the choker ship landed on the far side of the landing and the two skycrane pilots climbed out and headed my way. As the senior pilot got close he shouted “Who is on the phone” and I told him it was the chief pilot he said “great, gimmy that” and took the phone from my hand held it up to his face and said simply “I QUIT” handed me back the phone and walked off.
The fire burned itself out twenty minutes before the air-tankers showed up followed 10 minutes later by a BO105 with a helitack crew on board. They saw the helicopter on its side in the river but since the fire danger had subsided they returned home with taking any action.
As soon as we had secured our site we all headed into town picked up the senior pilot along the road where he was walking the twenty five miles back to town. I dropped the pilots at the motel and took my crew to the ER to have urinalysis tests administered to protect ourselves and the company.
It took two days to get the skycrane out of the river. We eventually lifted it out with another ship of the same type and deposited it at a nearby airport where a truck could load the carcass for removal.
Three months later I was called to give a deposition for the insurance company who was fighting paying for the Wildland Fire resources that responded to my call. When asked why I made the call I explained that I figured the cost was less than that of one hundred thousand acres of old growth timber. At that point the deposition came to an abrupt end and I never heard anything else about it.
There is no moral to this story. I just hope you derived a few moments of entertainment from its telling.
The unmentioned facts about Helicopter Safety
Posted: 4th July 2010 by coptermd in UncategorizedTags: accident data base, AEC, Bell, engine failure, FAA, fatalities, H2SW, H3WE, H9EU, Helicopter Safety, Hughes, MD, post crash fire, rotor craft accidents, Rotorcraft accidents’, turbine rotorcraft
There can be no argument that in Aviation today that the number one most important topic is safety. You hear people throwing around all types of numbers about percentages of this and ratios of that but without a base to guide by, these numbers are of no real value and can be used to express any point of view merely by the context in which they are presented.
In this article I am going to throw out some numbers, you know percentages of this and ratios of that but I hope to do it in such a way as to give a more understandable base to go by. I will only be addressing the Rotor Wing side of Aviation and so as to not get overly long winded I will be addressing mainly single engine, turbine rotorcraft.
Everyone will agree that multi engine ships have a substantially lower accident rate than singles. And this is almost always attributed to having the second engine to ensure that there is always power to the rotor system. But the fact that less than 2% of rotor craft accidents are attributed to loss of engine power would tend to make the theory not pan out. In reality most individuals in the industry know that the differences in the accident rates between multi and single, stems primarily from pilot experience. Let’s face it, an operator will almost always put his most experienced pilots in his most expensive ship ie: his multi engine platforms.
I will be addressing the “big 3” in the light turbine helicopter market; AEC TC# H9EU, Bell TC# H2SW, and MD TC# H3WE.
The Data that I used to compile the following statistic came directly from the FAA accident data base http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/query.asp and anyone with a calculator and the patience can feel free to double check my figures. The Data is derived from accident reports over the previous 10 years.
It does not include the total number for each manufacturer as this would skew the mathematics simply because of the numbers of ships delivered over the years since Bell has delivered almost double the number of ships as the other two players combined. And MD/Hughes and Bell had a 20 plus year head start on AEC
Let’s begin with the Bell TC# H2SW this encompasses the entire 206 series from the first jet ranger up to and including the 407.
Of total accidents:
9% result in fatalities.
4% result in post crash fire.
24% of fatalities involve post crash fire.
Next let’s look at the MD TC# H3SW This includes all models of the 369 series , 500, & 600 aircraft including those manufactured by the original company Hughes helicopters, McDonald Douglas, & Boeing aircraft.
Of total accidents:
9% result in fatalities.
1% results in post crash fire.
18% of fatalities involve post crash fire.
And last but certainly not least is the AEC TC# H9EU. This is the AS350 line including the newer EC130B4, Excluding the EC120 which is certified under its own TC#.
Of total accidents:
39% result in fatalities.
11% result in post crash fire.
25% of fatalities involve post crash fire.
As I have already mentioned above less than 2% of Rotorcraft accidents’ are caused by outright engine failure. Would it surprise you if I told you that less than 2% are a result of unforeseen failure of the aircraft itself either structural or a mechanical part?
Let’s see 2+2=4 So that leaves 96% of accidents have another cause, human beings.
People will argue this point but if you go to the root of the matter the human factor is where the bulk of the blame lies. If a ship goes down in bad weather it was the pilot’s decision to place his ship and crew in that circumstance. If a ship goes down because the mechanic made the call that an Alert Service Bulletin is a waste of his time because it was not a regulatory mandate. Or a part fails because of a defect that was identified but deemed to be insignificant. Those would be foreseen failures and they belong exclusively and completely to the aviation technician who made the call. The list could go on for hours but in the end the missing 96% stems from human judgment.
There is an old Saying:
“Aviation in itself is not inherently dangerous. But to an even greater degree than the sea, it is terribly unforgiving of carelessness, incapacity, or neglect”…. It was written a long time ago by someone that no one remembers but still applies today maybe more than ever!
Integrity vs. the Bottom line
Posted: 7th June 2010 by coptermd in UncategorizedTags: 206L1, Aviation Technician, Freewheeling, Karma, maintenance manual, tail rotor blades, tail rotor strike
There comes a time in the career of every Aviation Technician when he or she will be forced by the boss to make the choice between your integrity and your paycheck. I have had this situation arise four times in the last thirty years and that is the reason that I am never complacent about what is going on in the helicopter industry outside my current position. I have found that it always pays to stay on good terms with former employers and keep in touch with friends throughout the business so that you never find yourself in a position where you have to sacrifice what you believe in order to feed your family.
The most memorable of these occasions came in the early 90s while I was working for a tour operator in Las Vegas trying to spend more time with the kids and stay in out of the field for a while. One sunny spring day a Pilot came to me and asked me to come and take a look at something on the Bell 206L1 he was preparing to launch to the Grand Canyon with five pax on board.
As we walked up to the ship the loaders were strapping in the sightseers and getting everyone comfortable. The Pilot had been doing his preflight and noticed something with the Tail Rotor that had made him question the flight.
As we walked up to the ship, you could see the damage to the Tail Rotor Blades from several feet away. Both blades had impacted something solid enough to dent the leading edge about a quarter of an inch deep and separated the bond line where the leading edge was attached to the blade skin.
I told the Pilot that the ship was out of service and that he needed to transfer his customers to a backup ship or reschedule.
And even though I already knew what it said, I went and pulled the maintenance manual and checked the damage limits. Finding not only that the limit had been exceeded but that the type and location of the damage constituted a sudden stoppage as described.
I removed the Tail Rotor assembly from the helicopter as required by the maintenance manual and was about to start the disassembly of the drive train when one of the owners of the company walked up and started chewing my ass for canceling a flight and trying to convince me (or himself) that the ship could have made the last mission and been repaired after it got back but I simply pointed out that the Hub & Blade assembly was laying on my toolbox, making it a mute point.
I showed him the manual and explained what was involved; at this point in time he sort of lost his cool and began throwing out alternatives. This finally degraded to the point where he was poking me in the chest with his finger and telling me that He signed my pay checks and I was going to do it the way he told me or I could pack my tools and leave.
So I handed him his hanger keys and pager and explained to him the danger he was in of losing that finger, and then exited the building and loaded my tools in my trusty old Ford pickup and went home.
Two hours after arriving at the house I had another job that I reported to the next morning.
I remained friends with some of the Pilots at that Operator and the following is the rest of the story as it was told to me.
“The Owner of the Aircraft got one of the Pilots that was also an A&P to make repairs on the ship based on the owners opinion. First the blade bolts were so badly bent as to require being cut off and drilled out to be removed. The blades and bolts were replaced without any further investigation of the drive train, however they were unable to balance the T/R after installing the new blades because the T/R output shaft was bent.
They then conceded and replaced the Tail Rotor gear box. During the next run to balance the new Tail Rotor on the new gear box the freewheeling unit began making chips.
By the time the balance operation was complete the freewheeling unit was producing chips so fast that it was impossible to get the oil temps on the ship into the green before needing to shut down and deal with the next chip. This ended with not only the replacement of the freewheeling unit but required the main transmission being opened and inspected and the metal particles removed.
During the ground runs for the installation of the transmission and the new freewheeling unit, the Tail Rotor drive shaft segment that contains the oil cooler blower failed catastrophically at the aft coupling damaging the fan and shroud, tail boom, cowling and the oil tank stand. I believe in karma!
The moral is… never sacrifice what you know to be the correct course of action for the sake of someone else’s bottom line or your own for that matter. If this ship had made it back into service somehow, any of the failures that followed and presumably were caused by the Tail Rotor blade strike would have resulted in the loss of several lives.
The unloved, unmentioned, and largely unnoticed
Posted: 18th May 2010 by coptermd in UncategorizedTags: American Airlines flight 1549, Charls Lindberg, Chuck Yeager, fire helicopter, Medivac helicopter, Police helicopter, Sully
Surely you have heard of Charles Lindbergh and the Spirit of St. Louis… but can you tell me the name of his mechanic? How about Chuck Yeager when he first broke the sound barrier, what was the name of the man who got the Bell X1 ready for that infamous flight? In case you are not a history buff let’s talk recent events. How about “Sully” Sullenberger, you know the pilot that dead sticked American Airlines flight 1549 into the Hudson River without a single major injury. Can you name one person on his ground crew that was responsible for the upkeep of his plane, you know the guys that made sure that it was both mechanically and structurally capable of that incredible piece of flying? Or if you are a movie buff that was dazzled as Maverick and Ice Man dueled it out over the Nevada desert in TOP GUN, and yes, that was northern Nevada not southern California you saw flashing past in the background . Those machines don’t do that kind of flying without someone keeping them safe and maintained.
Don’t feel bad, I don’t know the answers either. That’s my point. For a century now people have been marveling at feats of aviation whether it is the aircraft or the pilots. The general populace never realizes that none of those things would have ever happened without the mechanic, technician, wrench or whatever you want to call these men and women that are always there in the background making sure that the machine that is used to accomplish these feats of wonder are always equal to the task whatever it may be.
This is never truer than in the helicopter industry. That Medivac helicopter with the dashing young pilot, or that fire helicopter that held the flames back from a neighborhood on the news last night. Or maybe the Police helicopter that showed up when you were scared and dialed 911 because someone was trying to break into your house. Somewhere there is a mechanic that literally puts his life into that machine so that it is always ready and able to save the lives and property of others.
True, there are probably as many helicopters providing non-emergency type functions, maybe more. By the time you count all the functions accomplished by helicopters including sightseeing, timber harvesting, corporate transport, oil exploration and oil field support, aerial construction, power line patrol and repair or any one of a thousand other operations.
Sure the machine has evolved into many other rolls but the story is all the same, there would be no aviation if it wasn’t for the aviation mechanic, the unloved, unmentioned, and largely unnoticed person behind the scene, the one who does the real work.
So the next time one of those noisy ass helicopters momentarily interrupts the picnic or the football game, instead of thinking to yourself what a pain they are, try thinking about what their mission might have been and the people that made it possible.
