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Sikorsky 300C pilot discovers evidence of tail boom rotor strike during post-flight inspection after giving instruction in full touchdown autorotations.
| Attributes | |
| ACN | 981047 |
| Time | |
| Date | 201110 |
| Local Time Of Day | 1201-1800 |
| Place | |
| Locale Reference | ZZZ.Airport |
| State Reference | US |
| Environment | |
| Flight Conditions | VMC |
| Light | Daylight |
| Aircraft 1 | |
| Make Model Name | Sikorsky Helicopter Undifferentiated or Other Model |
| Operating Under FAR Part | Part 91 |
| Flight Phase | Landing |
| Flight Plan | None |
| Component | |
| Aircraft Component | Main Rotor Blade |
| Person 1 | |
| Function | Instructor |
| Qualification | Flight Crew Instrument Flight Crew Flight Instructor Flight Crew Commercial |
| Experience | Flight Crew Last 90 Days 100 Flight Crew Total 1780 Flight Crew Type 1000 |
| Events | |
| Anomaly | Ground Event / Encounter Other / Unknown |
Narrative:
I had an incident while I was giving a refresher; full-down autorotation instruction to [another instructor pilot]. The facts about the incident are: 1) I realized during the post-flight that the tip of the blade hit the tail boom and bent the tip of the blade. I didn't notice at any point during the flight any vibrations or other evidence of a problem. 2) I did not have a hard landing. I confirmed this with the maintenance people due to the good condition of the skids. 3) after the post-flight; I reported the incident and I am assuming the responsibility; even though for about 90% of the flight I was not at the controls and was giving the other instructor the chance to practice full-down auto-rotations. Considering that I don't know exactly the moment at which this occurrence happened; I have some hypotheses. First; the helicopter may not have slid across the grass and instead bounced backwards slightly; allowing the blade to touch the tail boom. Second; on one of the auto-rotations; once the skids of the helicopter were completely on the ground [the other pilot] could have moved the cyclic back; causing the damage without my realizing it. But once again; these are just my hypotheses and I cannot confirm them. I informed maintenance of the damage immediately and did an ASR.
Original NASA ASRS Text
Title: Sikorsky 300C pilot discovers evidence of tail boom rotor strike during post-flight inspection after giving instruction in full touchdown autorotations.
Narrative: I had an incident while I was giving a refresher; full-down autorotation instruction to [another instructor pilot]. The facts about the incident are: 1) I realized during the post-flight that the tip of the blade hit the tail boom and bent the tip of the blade. I didn't notice at any point during the flight any vibrations or other evidence of a problem. 2) I did not have a hard landing. I confirmed this with the maintenance people due to the good condition of the skids. 3) After the post-flight; I reported the incident and I am assuming the responsibility; even though for about 90% of the flight I was not at the controls and was giving the other instructor the chance to practice full-down auto-rotations. Considering that I don't know exactly the moment at which this occurrence happened; I have some hypotheses. First; the helicopter may not have slid across the grass and instead bounced backwards slightly; allowing the blade to touch the tail boom. Second; on one of the auto-rotations; once the skids of the helicopter were completely on the ground [the other pilot] could have moved the cyclic back; causing the damage without my realizing it. But once again; these are just my hypotheses and I cannot confirm them. I informed Maintenance of the damage immediately and did an ASR.
Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site as of April 2012 and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.