R44 crashes into house in Newport Beach

[Cessnaflyer]

I see 0's all the time in N-numbers. 8's are the tricky ones. I kept calling some poor Baron 5BP all morning but he was 58P

Har. We get mistakes on our callsign nearly every flight. We are also one number away from Clorox's Gulfstream and get questioned about that as well.

 

[av8tr1]

Not anymore. They replaced it with a "logbook endorsement" in the CFI PTS. And I don't think it's ever been on the Comm

Good grief.....

 

[fholbert]

When I was a ATC'er I took a hand off on a N555AE.

Shortly there after came the check-in call from a slow talking Texan.

Approach triple nickle alfa eight-ball, 6,000.

Normally I hated guys who did that but this one was kind of funny.

 

[obx]

Well the red and white bar on the bottom of the tail rotor is literally called the stinger. It’s there to protect the tail rotor from striking objects. It’s effect is limited for obvious reasons.

When doing full downs, which is an auto all the way to the ground, you generally try to level the ship before striking the tail. I’ve hit the tail on the ground before by not leveling at the right time and had no damage to the aircraft. But if you hit hard enough it’s an easy way to rip the tail off the ship. It’s common when learning the full down auto. And it doesn’t take much. Which is why it’s considered an advanced maneuver and not usually taught to private students.

Private students are generally taught to terminate the auto a few feet in the air. Generally 1.5 to 2 times of the length of the ship. That’s enough to survive the impact. The bird will likely be a total loss but the occupants will walk/limp away. Not saying I agree with the practice it’s just what is common for civilian students.

Once you hit commercial or CFI you start doing them all the way to the ground. And quickly it’s and elbows at the end of the maneuver so you need to be comfortable flying the bird that a private level student isn’t going to be. Striking the tail and not is literally the difference of milliseconds.

Thanks, that's a good description. I never knew that.

 

[obx]

When I was a ATC'er I took a hand off on a N555AE.

Shortly there after came the check-in call from a slow talking Texan.

Approach triple nickle alfa eight-ball, 6,000.

Normally I hated guys who did that but this one was kind of funny.

That's worse than "sugar pop."

 

[NovemberEcho]

When I was a ATC'er I took a hand off on a N555AE.

Shortly there after came the check-in call from a slow talking Texan.

Approach triple nickle alfa eight-ball, 6,000.

Normally I hated guys who did that but this one was kind of funny.

I hate guys that have a YT in their reg. I can not say Yankee Tango without effort and it comes out Yankee Tangee 3/4's of time.

 

[MikeD]

As was mentioned, the tail stinger can only protect so much. With light helicopters, tagging the stinger on the flare portion of an auto will likely break the tailboom off. On a more robust helicopter like the Huey, the same amount of force will merely force the nose down, hence why on those helicopters the stinger is known as an "automatic leveling device". Of course, impact hard enough and the Huey's tailboom will fail too.

The key is flaring high enough at the bottom of an auto and level enough flight-path-wise, so that the plane of rotation while flaring doesn't cause the stinger to tag the ground. However not initiating the flare so high that you don't have the enough built-up Nr in the blades that you can cash in to make a smooth touchdown to the ground (not usually a problem in the Huey, but can be a huge problem in an Astar or Hughes 500-series bird.).

 

[NovemberEcho]