Bart the pilot from the show "Ax Men" dies in crash

Wow....

My friend crashed his Brantley B2B a couple weeks ago. Lost power in the climb, landed hard and rolled. Only broken bones and a crushed plan.....he was going to start instructing in it, only had it a few months.
 
Knowing you're going to die..... and knowing that there is NOTHING you can do about it. And that.... is your warm, fuzzy feeling for the evening.

What does one "keep flying until you got nothing left to fly" at that point?

Tragic. RIP. Hope there are some good takeaways from this.
 
I'd venture to guess that he felt a vibe in the aircraft and punched off the logs. Unfortunately, whatever had come apart on the rotor system was too far along in its failure to give him enough time to get it on the ground.

RIP.
 
Likely a tail rotor or tail fin, very common to have failures of the 42 or 90 degree gearboxes or the fin itself in ops like this. You have to consider that in normal helicopter operations, the gear boxes of the tail rotor for anti-torque don't get worked that hard since the aircraft is often in forward flight. In ops like logging or heavy lifting, most of the time is spent in hovering operations or speeds below ETL, where the rotor system is bearing the brunt of the load, and the tail rotor gearboxes are working hard managing anti-torque when there's large power demands being made of the helicopter.....all with no aerodynamic "help" of forward flight. These kinds of failures are very common in logging operations, and are a high risk to take, since you're already essentially a dead man walking, by the time the failure occurs: you're in a hover, normally over a place you can't land, you can't get forward flight, and you have to immediately enter an autorotation in order to keep from spinning...so you're going down. THAT is all assuming that the mass CG shift from losing a tailrotor, or rotors, or a gearbox, or gearboxes, or the entire tail section......doesn't cause a massive forward CG shift and nose you over into the ground. Further, where the gearboxes attach to the tail fin area, there is high fatigue to the fin component due to the high stress they're constantly under. The FAA even issued an AD (97-20-09, and two amendments) specifically covering tailfin overstress fatigue during these types of operations.
 
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Damn Major. That's hard to read. 97-20-09 is going on the reading list for sure. Flying old aircraft for a living, I hope the operator was in compliance.
 
Likely a tail rotor or tail fin, very common to have failures of the 42 or 90 degree gearboxes or the fin itself in ops like this. You have to consider that in normal helicopter operations, the gear boxes of the tail rotor for anti-torque don't get worked that hard since the aircraft is often in forward flight. In ops like logging or heavy lifting, most of the time is spent in hovering operations or speeds below ETL, where the rotor system is bearing the brunt of the load, and the tail rotor gearboxes are working hard managing anti-torque when there's large power demands being made of the helicopter.....all with no aerodynamic "help" of forward flight. These kinds of failures are very common in logging operations, and are a high risk to take, since you're already essentially a dead man walking, by the time the failure occurs: you're in a hover, normally over a place you can't land, you can't get forward flight, and you have to immediately enter an autorotation in order to keep from spinning...so you're going down. THAT is all assuming that the mass CG shift from losing a tailrotor, or rotors, or a gearbox, or gearboxes, or the entire tail section......doesn't cause a massive forward CG shift and nose you over into the ground. Further, where the gearboxes attach to the tail fin area, there is high fatigue to the fin component due to the high stress they're constantly under. The FAA even issued an AD (97-20-09, and two amendments) specifically covering tailfin overstress fatigue during these types of operations.

We'll have to wait for the investigation to conclude in order to find out what a "rotor" coming off the aircraft means. The witness report of a rotor coming off in flight is definitely strange. As we've talked about before, witness statements can vary widely in accuracy. I'd like to think that a logger who has worked with helicopters would have at least a general idea of what the parts are, but you never know.

I definitely agree on the "dead man walking" factor. The Height/Velocity diagram basically goes out the window in a lot of hovering ops out there, and this pilot was certainly operating deep in the shaded area.

While I'm always springloaded to auto or take both throttles to lockout any time I'm hovering in the 60, there's very little time to get the throttles to the appropriate position to affect a successful emergency maneuver. Too slow getting the throttles off on an auto and you'll spin and most likely rollover when you cushion. Too slow getting the throttles to lockout and you just end up hitting the ground before getting enough power back to transition to forward flight.

I kinda miss a single-engine helo with a twist throttle...
 
No fire. Would hate to think he ran out of fuel. Most likely the blade smacking the tailboom when the RPM depleted. Be interesting to see if he took on any fuel during the his break. RIP

Had a good friend who had slung everything imaginable from trees to dynamite for years without incident then had a BLM pax lose her clipboard out the window into the T/R and both were a smoking hole into the side of a shack. Another one had the cyclic snap out of the floor with his two cousins onboard the week after i was at his wedding. All three a smoking hole.
Appreciate your days..Never know
 
Knowing you're going to die..... and knowing that there is NOTHING you can do about it. And that.... is your warm, fuzzy feeling for the evening.

What does one "keep flying until you got nothing left to fly" at that point?

Tragic. RIP. Hope there are some good takeaways from this.

Luckily, I was convinced that I was absolutely going to die once. It's strangely peaceful.

Garlic, dirt wet from the rain earlier that evening, light breeze blowing the brush on the hillside. Very much like the last scene from "Gladiator".
 
yeah, it's surprisingly calm...kinda slow mo and details are like HD on steroids...but beyond fear. The fear comes after, if you survive, which is all I can speak to so far ;)
 
Luckily, I was convinced that I was absolutely going to die once. It's strangely peaceful.

Garlic, dirt wet from the rain earlier that evening, light breeze blowing the brush on the hillside. Very much like the last scene from "Gladiator".

Yeah I had a "well, this is it" moment. Rudder malfunction in spin training. Spun from 6500 AGL to about 700 AGL. I remember being very calm and just trying to fly the plane the entire way.

Like @Bumblebee said, It wasn't till after that I was freaked out for a couple days. I even remember wanting to just land it in a field after recovery just to get my feet on the ground instead of flying it home.
 
@Derg @ryanmickG @Bumblebee :Wasn't expecting the thread to take THAT turn, but that's really interesting to me. Having been "around" death and somewhat "near" death, I've never crossed the "well, this is how it ends" point. And certainly not something we'd sit around and talk about over beers. Thanks for talking about it.
 
@Derg @ryanmickG @Bumblebee :Wasn't expecting the thread to take THAT turn, but that's really interesting to me. Having been "around" death and somewhat "near" death, I've never crossed the "well, this is how it ends" point. And certainly not something we'd sit around and talk about over beers. Thanks for talking about it.

Nah, it's all good! Almost a rite of passage for professional pilots. Gives you a whole different respect for doing dumb stuff in airplanes as I got cocky, lazy and didn't take the maneuver as seriously as I should have.
 
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