Bell 214ST testbed crashes, no injuries

During a test flight on 7 Aug 2012, a Bell 214 test aircraft reportedly lost tail rotor control... and possibly tail rotor components, landing in a field and rolling over after a wheel dug in to the soft ground.  The FAA preliminary accident report is here.

Of significance is that this aircraft was testing components (possibly the transmission) for the future Bell 525 relentless project.  It is more than likely that the suspected failure of the tail rotor components was unrelated to the incident, but it is impossible to know at this point.  The 525 is planned to have a five-bladed rotor design, and from the wreck pictures it appears that the 214, which normally flies with a two-bladed system, was equipped with a four-bladed system.  

Good job by the pilots in getting the aircraft down in one piece.  Since this was an instrumented test aircraft, I imagine the investigators and the engineers will have way more data than they will need to pinpoint the cause.  

The Bell 525 Debuts...

In a overblown theatrical production much like... a lot of other Bell helicopter product intros, Bell recently rolled out the mock up of their new "super-medium" class helicopter, the Bell 525 Relentless.  


Looking something like a cross between an AW139, 214ST, and a stretch S-76, the most shocking thing is that Bell appears to have gone with a clean sheet design, no small step for a company that seemingly begins designing new helicopters with old blueprints and erasers.  


16 seats!  18K Max Gross!  140 knots!  Five blades!  Fly-by-wire controls!  Garmin G5000 Avionics!  A big baggage compartment!  First flight still a couple years off... I hope many of these features survive to production.  


I am excited to see Bell moving forward with a new design, and I hope that they can move this project forward soon and build into it the hell-and-back reliability and unmatched product support that made Bell great in the first place.  


Still I remember the Bell 417, rapid and frequent Bell CEO changes, and other projects that just didn't make it, but I am still hopeful.  Maybe they learned a lot from their involvement in the AW139 (once the Agusta-BELL 139) and don't want to lose that segment of the market.  


Good luck to you, Bell.  Stay on schedule, and for heavens sake lose that ugly paint job on the prototype!  

407 checkride

As part of my annual refresher training, we did a half an hour worth of touchdown autorotations in the Bell 407 helicopter.  The point of the training is to be prepared for the possibility of an engine failure.


This particular maneuver is known as a "full down" (terminating in a power-off landing to the ground) 180 degree autorotation, beginning from about 500 feet on the downwind leg.  The throttle is rolled to idle, which disconnects the rotor system from the engine, and after some flight control manipulations the rotor system transitions to a "driven state", where the only thing keeping the rotor turning is the air rushing through it, as the helicopter rapidly descends in a turn.  At around 100 feet, the helicopter's nose is pulled up to slow the forward airspeed and descent rate, and in the last ten feet, the helicopter is leveled and the touchdown is "cushioned" by pulling pitch in the blades, using all the remaining energy in the rotor system to slow the blades and provide a soft touchdown.  All of this happens pretty rapidly, in our case, about 25-30 seconds from when the throttle is rolled off until you are sliding along on the grass.  Piece of cake.  


In this video, the instructor was doing the first demonstration, mine were not quite as pretty.  

Autorotation training can be dangerous, what happens if you attempt a 180 degree full down auto, and of the critical items (turn, flare, level, and cushion) you only score 50%?  It looks a lot like this next video, and NO, the skids don't normally spread that far.  

For this reason, our instructors are always ready on the controls in case we are a little slow, and in the Army, full down autorotation practice is something that is only done in flight school.