David R. Busse
Well-known member
You probably heard about the publicized emergency landing made by New York's Fox5 helicopter the other day.
The pilot and photographer heard a metal banging noise and looked up to discover one of the engine cowlings, unlatched and flapping upward, toward the rotor blades. They put the ship down in a parking lot, eventually fixed things and flew back to their home base a few hours later.
Theirs is an A-Star, and it reminded me of a preflight hint passed along to me more than 20 years ago, when I first started flying in AS350s.
ALWAYS check those cowling latches. Earlier versions of the A-Star had a simple latch prone to failure, and there were accidents that were caused by the s-shaped metal cowling coming loose and flying up into the Starflex rotor hub. Not a good thing.
Current models of the A-Star have a pair of double-latches on the engine cowlings, a design that is supposed to prevent in-flight failures like this one. My old flying partner insisted on two checks of these cowling latches by two sets of eyes--mine and his.
A-Stars seem to be everywhere in the news biz these days. If you fly in them, get in the habit of knowing how those latches work and checking them before you fly.
BTW--before gyro-stabilized cameras were the norm and most aerials were shot hand-held from open doors, news photographers loved the early A-Stars with their sliding side door. You could fly to the scene in comfort, then slow the copter, slide the door open and shoot off the shoulder, unhindered. There was a warning on the instrument panel that the door could not be opened in flight above a certain airspeed (i think 70 kts., but I don't remember exactly). If the door was opened at a higher air speed, it was prone to fly off the tracks. But, as my pilot friend told me, the good news was that it was designed to fly away from the helicopter, not into the tail rotor (unsure how that worked but I always took his word for it). The problem is that door had to land somewhere.
Anyway, a famous Texas station which shall remain nameless had their door fly off in flight once, and I'm told the photographer had to drive into a nice residential neighborhood a while later, knock on a door and ask a resident if he could get up on their roof to get the helicopter door he'd "left" there. Fortunately, as the news anchors say, there were no injuries...
The pilot and photographer heard a metal banging noise and looked up to discover one of the engine cowlings, unlatched and flapping upward, toward the rotor blades. They put the ship down in a parking lot, eventually fixed things and flew back to their home base a few hours later.
Theirs is an A-Star, and it reminded me of a preflight hint passed along to me more than 20 years ago, when I first started flying in AS350s.
ALWAYS check those cowling latches. Earlier versions of the A-Star had a simple latch prone to failure, and there were accidents that were caused by the s-shaped metal cowling coming loose and flying up into the Starflex rotor hub. Not a good thing.
Current models of the A-Star have a pair of double-latches on the engine cowlings, a design that is supposed to prevent in-flight failures like this one. My old flying partner insisted on two checks of these cowling latches by two sets of eyes--mine and his.
A-Stars seem to be everywhere in the news biz these days. If you fly in them, get in the habit of knowing how those latches work and checking them before you fly.
BTW--before gyro-stabilized cameras were the norm and most aerials were shot hand-held from open doors, news photographers loved the early A-Stars with their sliding side door. You could fly to the scene in comfort, then slow the copter, slide the door open and shoot off the shoulder, unhindered. There was a warning on the instrument panel that the door could not be opened in flight above a certain airspeed (i think 70 kts., but I don't remember exactly). If the door was opened at a higher air speed, it was prone to fly off the tracks. But, as my pilot friend told me, the good news was that it was designed to fly away from the helicopter, not into the tail rotor (unsure how that worked but I always took his word for it). The problem is that door had to land somewhere.
Anyway, a famous Texas station which shall remain nameless had their door fly off in flight once, and I'm told the photographer had to drive into a nice residential neighborhood a while later, knock on a door and ask a resident if he could get up on their roof to get the helicopter door he'd "left" there. Fortunately, as the news anchors say, there were no injuries...
