In anything less nimble than my Navion, how are you going to follow the river to land on 33? You'd be flying a base leg pointed right at the threshold. The Potomac isn't very wide at that point. Runway 1 is nicely aligned with the river coming north.
I've thought along these lines since when I was learning to fly years ago!
Certainly a factor. Handling qualities was not my area, but there is usually coupling involved with a flight control displacement. Dampened of course with whatever augmentation system is active.
Well, I don't know about that. The charted ILS or LOC approach to runway 1 has circling allowed for runway 33 with limits described in the procedure: Category limitations. Why should the title of a charted visual approach to runway 1 be any different? The instructions are to fly over the river as opposed to remain within category dimensions, right?
Reminds me of retreating blade stall in a Huey. Will make it want to pitch up and roll. Ask me how I know.
What people are reading online are blanket descriptions of the H-60. I’m sure they’re reading something like “the Black Hawk crew consists of two pilots and two gunners…” That’s just a general description.
PSA:
You da Man.
Spot on. The Commanders guide was replaced with something else I should probably know about, but is still basically the same manual. Everything I need comes from the Aircrew Training Manual which has the minimum crew matrix based on what kind of tasks you expect to perform. For us, (H-47) min crew is two pilots and one Flight Engineer for D/N. Flying NVG's requires two crew in the back, as does multi-ship and most other mission tasks. Of course the Commander still has the power to reduce the number of crewmembers if the mission dictates.
The stupid and uninformed comments happen because of DEI policies. If you have organizations constantly advertising various non-merit oriented goals ( which what race/gender/sexual orientation based goals really are ) , this kind of cynicism is what you end up with - fair or unfair.
The charted visual does not mention circling or runway 33. If it were for multiple runways it would say so.
Nah it’s not classified or anything but traditionally the Army has been reluctant to release results of their accident information and PII if they don’t believe it’s a benefit to the civilian public. Perfect example of this was the TNNG crash a couple years back (below). That’s typical of what I’ve see in the past.
www.army.mil
It does say so, doesn't it? "...follow the Potomac River to the airport." Circling approaches are to the airport not to a specific runway.
According to M'lady, gleefully. She has called the river visuals into DCA (both north and southbound) the most fun that can be had in the 121 world.
I've seen a couple of news stories that paralleled what's been written in this space. This accident and the RV-10 door loss/fatality in LA come to mind.
is there an actual "holding" waypoint on the helo routes?
Much like the implication that the helo route was NA during Rwy 33 arrivals, I haven't seen anything publicly available. Not sure what the SOPs for DCA tower were.
The NTSB also stated that the 325±25 is a number they are confident in, where the accident occurred. The 200' came from preliminary ATC radar investigation, and they didn't even have all the inputs yet so they weren't sure of that number. So yes, the 200 was incorrect.
Not very common. It's there because there's a turn below minimums on that approach. You need to be able to see the runway well before you get to that fix.
That won't affect what was on the ATC screen, just what was on the helo's altimeter. Could be a contributing factor.
This is excellent info, thank you!My point was that none of those were the safety investigation report. You most likely read the publicly released AIB, which is the legal investigation.....a separate and parallel investigation, that is not allowed to "talk to" the safety investigation. Both boards are generally privy to the same evidence (aircraft or other material remains, ATC data, data recorders, recorded radio comms, etc), but testimony in the SIB (the safety investigation) is protected as privileged info, so that folks can be honest without worrying about being the subject of legal action/lawsuit/etc. Testimony at an AIB is not subject to the same protections. This doesn't necessarily mean that there are substantial differences between the two reports, but there certainly can be. The AIB is convened in order to determine if there was any misconduct that resulted in the mishap, while the SIB is convened in order to learn from what happened and improve safety. As you can see, https://www.afjag.af.mil/AIB-Reports/ is an Air Force Legal (JAG) function. We have the same processes in the Navy, we just call them SIR (SIB equivalent) and JAGMAN (AIB equivalent). When you read a media account of investigation findings, you are reading their paraphrasing of the legal investigation, not the safety investigation. Hopefully that is sufficiently confusing
This might be more explanatory than my drivel: https://www.safety.af.mil/Home/Mishap-Investigation-Process/
I would fully agree with you that in most mishaps, things like "aircrew error" are much more complex than just the error itself. There are often contributing factors that are not deemed to be "causal" in nature, which is an area that systemic cultural or training issues are commonly identified.
I wonder why they said it if they knew it was incorrect.
Blancolirio isn't the only one paying attention to all the online speculation. It's at least an indication that ATC didn't know they were too high.
Well they weren’t even altitude aware or traffic aware so…
The difference is that they do not contribute to my salary but I do contribute to theirs and thus whatever they do , they do on my behalf and therefore I ( or frankly - we - ) are entitled to know a lot more about what goes on inside DOD then , say, Apple Inc. - that is all there is to it.
I'll try to make this brief and not a 10 page essay on RF signal propagation.
I don't know much about antennas and such but I do find them fascinating...I thought those little rubber duckie antennas had a 2ft long coil (or whatever the length) inside them for a net result of a 1/2 wavelength or 1/4 wavelength or whatever... I just remembered that from a discussion I had with a radio guy about dialing in a 1/4 wave CB radio antenna on an old hunting pickup truck and how the shorter CB antennas compared (with the little coil in them)
The name of the procedure specifies the runway and there is nothing listed about circling or other runways. If it was for multiple runways it would be listed. If it was to the airport in general, it wouldn't have a runway specified in the procedure title.
Have you got a reference for naming conventions that backs that up? I've looked and didn't find one, but I'm not the best at it.
Well I get UHF with the shorter wavelength isn’t going to get you the range vs VHF. And yes, they’re both LOS. Obviously there are variables with antenna size, distance from transmitter and power outputs affecting propagation. But as a general rule, isn’t the UHF band better at navigating or “bouncing” between structures vs VHF?
