Fatal accident for the pilot, 2nd person on board, the camera man survived.
Happened this morning in Sao Paulo as both Helicopters were reporting on an early morning bank robbery.
YouTube Video shot from second news chopper on scene.
Wow! That was an impact!
Looks like Tail rotor fail.
Thing is, if you watch the on board, it appears he had problems early on but kept going. I would have put it down (But Im not a chopper pilot).
That’s what I was thinking.
But after the tail rotor quit, maybe something went wrong with the engine, maybe, just because of all the smoke.
You gotta get the guts up to let it fall, then at the last second, pull the collective all the way!
Thats called Autorotation Will, and works if you have use of the Tail rotor. As this was not the apparent case. The best thing to do is close the throttle and lower the collective. Pulling up on the collective in a tail rotor failure situation only exasperates the problem. I’m not a rotor-head, I’m only going on what some Navy helo pilots have told me in the past.
Either way you’re SOL…
And that, my friends, is why I’ll stick to airplanes. I know plenty of helo guys and they always say the same thing - “aww man, helicopters are way safer than them planes you go up in…” And then I always see another one of these videos that reaffirms my beliefs.
Let me say though - that thing appears to be flat out moving in the first couple minutes of that video from the accident chopper!
I don’t have Astar time (the one that was involved in the accident) but you can close the throttle on the collective and then pull to cushion at least on the Robbie’s you do. I only have time in those.
Opposite pedal(Stops rotation),lower collective (begins stable descent) ,close the throttle(closes the correlator that opens the throttle when you raise the collective) and autorotate, approach the ground, flare, level, and yank the collective WITH throttle closed…I believe that’s the procedure.I haven’t flown for 2 years and don’t have the POH in front of me.
That’s alot to handle when you’re being slung around like that, I’d imagine. Watch the video taken from the crashed chopper - it’s really spinning pretty wildly - the vid taken from the other helo doesn’t do it justice I don’t think.