Helicopter crash Logan County Wva

Piperonca said:
I’ll buy contour. Plus, we know Gryder alleges things he extracts from rectal defilade…all of that said it appears the aircraft hit wires. It went down where they lived. They didn’t magically rise up to grab it out of the air.

Edit: Or maybe Bubba in the right seat jammed the cyclic randomly at a critical time. We may never know. Or maybe even something else. There's no scarcity of potential cause factors.
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Yeah I’d say he exaggerated the NOE a bit but if they hit the telephone wires depicted in his vid, I’d call that NOE. The basic definition might not apply (hugging trees / vegetation) but if you go by this definition, they’re there. I mean if they hit telephone wires, they definitely didn’t meet 25 ft AHO.

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This whole enterprise smells bad. Rotorcraft are excellent low altitude machines but there's a risk/reward matrix involved. Warfighter/law enforcement/rescue? Match made in heaven. Carrying pax on a skimming the forest thrill ride without justification/training/supervision? Not advisable to say the least. Like french kissing a rattlesnake...you can do it a few times, but sooner or later you get bit.
 
Velocity173 said:
Yeah I’d say he exaggerated the NOE a bit but if they hit the telephone wires depicted in his vid, I’d call that NOE.
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That's what I'm saying. Those aren't the wires they hit. Dan Gryder doesn't know what he's talking about. Whenever there's an accident, he obtains a patchwork of information, makes a bunch of wild assumptions and assertions, play a song, and wraps it all up into a self-promoting video.

As far as the video clips, he appears to have cut out the portions that most support his claims. There's typically some low level flying, very little that would qualify as NOE. Here's a typical flight:

 
OverTQ said:
That's what I'm saying. Those aren't the wires they hit. Dan Gryder doesn't know what he's talking about. Whenever there's an accident, he obtains a patchwork of information, makes a bunch of wild assumptions and assertions, play a song, and wraps it all up into a self-promoting video.

As far as the video clips, he appears to have cut out the portions that most support his claims. There's typically some low level flying, very little that would qualify as NOE. Here's a typical flight:

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Yeah that’s the vid I posted already and I don’t think they should be flying that low with passengers. I’ve seen a lot of Army Heritage flights including a Cobra one that I went on and they don’t conduct terrain flight with pax on board. Not worth the risk.
 
I am pretty sure the 80Kt limit was for a sling load…but can’t tell you why I know that.
 
Velocity173 said:
Yeah that’s the vid I posted already and I don’t think they should be flying that low with passengers.
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That's a fair critique, as is critiquing the way they operated (sans LHFE, with private pilots effectively acting as instructors, etc). But my point is that most of what Gryder had to say about the operation, including characterizing it as NOE flights for financial gain, is false.
 
Warlock said:
I am pretty sure the 80Kt limit was for a sling load…but can’t tell you why I know that.
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I was thinking the same thing but I’m not sure. It’s been a few years now and the B numbers are kind of mixed up. I do know that some gas and six people would have had them no where near that 8500 for the 80 knot limit someone posted up thread. If that applied it could be they just used that limit because it was the most restrictive.

it could also be that’s where their rotor was the most smooth. It’s almost impossible they had a matched set of blades. Those blades are rare as hens teeth. It’s one of the reasons I sold mine.
 
Piperonca said:
I’ll buy contour. Plus, we know Gryder alleges things he extracts from rectal defilade…all of that said it appears the aircraft hit wires. It went down where they lived. They didn’t magically rise up to grab it out of the air.

Edit: Or maybe Bubba in the right seat jammed the cyclic randomly at a critical time. We may never know. Or maybe even something else. There's no scarcity of potential cause factors.
Click to expand...

You do know that helicopters are flown from the right seat, correct?

Are you referring to the pilot developing a tremor and slamming into wires?
 
Somewhere I saw that passengers were being given rides seated in the right seat. Maybe I read that wrong. And even if it wasn’t, Bubba could’ve been in the left seat and jammed the controls from over there, too. Funny that you mentioned about helicopters being flown from the right seat. I have a few thousand hours as aircraft commander or IP in the UH-1 series, flying from the left seat, as it was customarily done during my time in the Army.
 
Piperonca said:
Somewhere I saw that passengers were being given rides seated in the right seat. Maybe I read that wrong. And even if it wasn’t, Bubba could’ve been in the left seat and jammed the controls from over there, too. Funny that
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Piperonca said:
Somewhere I saw that passengers were being given rides seated in the right seat. Maybe I read that wrong. And even if it wasn’t, Bubba could’ve been in the left seat and jammed the controls from over there, too. Funny that you mentioned about helicopters being flown from the right seat. I have a few thousand hours as aircraft commander or IP in the UH-1 series, flying from the left seat, as it was customarily done during my time in the Army.
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I did so much left seat, that after leaving Rucker I would still pick the left. Just got used to the sight picture on the left after awhile.
 
Himayeti said:
You do know that helicopters are flown from the right seat, correct?

Are you referring to the pilot developing a tremor and slamming into wires?
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This is from the event website. They were putting non-pilots in the right seat and letting them fly.

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Tarheelpilot said:
I was thinking the same thing but I’m not sure. It’s been a few years now and the B numbers are kind of mixed up. I do know that some gas and six people would have had them no where near that 8500 for the 80 knot limit someone posted up thread. If that applied it could be they just used that limit because it was the most restrictive.

it could also be that’s where their rotor was the most smooth. It’s almost impossible they had a matched set of blades. Those blades are rare as hens teeth. It’s one of the reasons I sold mine.
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They also would've been nowhere near 6000' for that 80kt limit posted above, if they were skimming along at treetop / wire level in that part of WV.
 
I recently flew a gyroplane into Charleston, WV; just 35 miles north east of the Logan County airport.

I shared with my client that there were very few places for an emergency landing where we could reuse the aircraft.

The terrain was steep and covered with trees.

The wires were sometimes strung between ridgelines and more often followed the roads at the bottom of the canyons.

I will be interested to learn if the wire strike was part of an emergency landing.

I have been told the helicopter was well maintained.

There were two commercial helicopter pilots and one private pilot, rotorcraft/helicopter pilot onboard the accident aircraft.
 
There were two different pitot systems on the B, C and H model UH-1 and the speed limitations were different depending on whether the nose mounted or roof mounted pitot was installed.

There was a significant difference in the Vne, for example.
 
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