Originally Posted by artp47

It's not skill in question.. It GOOD judgment.

Yep, stupid decision on the pilots part. We see it time and again people don't respect the destruction these machines can do. And yes the pilot was very capable, prolly top 10% of heli pilots to fly like that but it doesn't matter once your flying lawnmower becomes uncontrollable. Dont fly towards the pitts, simple as that.

very different culture in the heli community...there's a mainly heli site near my house and crashing is seen as a sort of badge of honor and obviously the hoped for lessons of last year haven't had much impact.

I don't see that kind of flying at our field. If I did it'd scare the out of me. So if I understand this correctly he had total control up until the time of the re kitting? I had no idea helis were that fast, my hat is off to those who can control them safely.
Orcg

Look at the number of people they killed in Europe at full scale air shows allowing aerobatics toward the spectators. It's just a bad idea.

As a new heli pilot I can say I really have no interest in 3D heli flying. We have one guy at our field that was a sponsored team guy with awesome skills and a super guy. I noticed right away that he never really did hard 3D toward the flight line. To me it's just common sense. We've got enough people at the field that hate helicopters. An incident like that would do them in.

I have great respect for that 49" 2000+ RPM scalpel on top of my helicopter. Actually before my first flight the thought of it scared the crap out of me.

Yeah I bet they wouldn't have been whooping and hollering had it hit one of the idiots standing on the flight line

Amazing how quickly the blades and heli slowed after detaching from itself.

The next beheading of a American might not be by ISIS, it might be by a helicopter flying high energy 3d maneuvers towards the pits and themselves. All it would take is a single servo to quit, strip a gear, servo arm come off etc.

Originally Posted by vegasking1961

The next beheading of a American might not be by ISIS, it might be by a helicopter flying high energy 3d maneuvers towards the pits and themselves. All it would take is a single servo to quit, strip a gear, servo arm come off etc.

Not funny.
So only helis are susceptible to catastrophic failure due to hardware malfunction resulting in the possible death of innocent bystanders? <cough>Mac Hodges<cough>

How dare you blacken Mac Hodges' name ........shame on you !

I've flown both heli's and airplanes for a long time and standing or flying on a flight of airplane event doesn't bother me as much as being near a heli that you can't hardly keep up with while watching. Heli's can go in any direction in a split second and you wouldn't have chance to know it was coming if there was a failure not counting on a pilot error, while a airplane will 99% of the follow in a more arrow or dart trajectory allowing a more likely chance to run for cover.

Originally Posted by jaggededge

Not funny.
So only helis are susceptible to catastrophic failure due to hardware malfunction resulting in the possible death of innocent bystanders? <cough>Mac Hodges<cough>

The probability is higher

This is the very reason I rarely fly helis anymore. I can fly, and I really enjoy it, but I can't control mechanical failures beyond the pre-flight checks that I do. In my experience, helis have a much higher likelihood of shedding important bits than aeroplanes. In fact, when I look back over all the flying I've done over the years, I've probably flown helis 1 hour for every 100 hours of fixed wing, and I've only ever lost one fixed wing aircraft to structural failure (it was a glider, and the failure was pilot induced, so it kinda doesn't even count), and I've had at least 5 failures on helis that I can think of, that actually resulted in crashes. Not counting the ones I safely landed from. The most recent one was a Raptor 90 that had the tail rotor pushrod pull its thread out of the ball joint on the servo. $400+ in parts, caused by a 20c linkage. I haven't flown much since that one.. No pre-flight check will pick that up, the machine was immaculate..

Originally Posted by jaggededge

Not funny.
So only helis are susceptible to catastrophic failure due to hardware malfunction resulting in the possible death of innocent bystanders? <cough>Mac Hodges<cough>

No, helis are not the ONLY aircraft susceptible to failure, but as I said above, my experience has shown that helis are MORE susceptible. NO aircraft should ever be flown through high energy maneuvering if it is pointing towards people. Period. Accidents happen, but it is much nicer to see them happen out into the paddock than the way it happened in this video.. IMO, this pilot needs a major attitude shift before he injures or kills someone..

Originally Posted by vegasking1961

The next beheading of a American might not be by ISIS, it might be by a helicopter flying high energy 3d maneuvers towards the pits and themselves. All it would take is a single servo to quit, strip a gear, servo arm come off etc.

Won't be the first time.. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...elicopter.html

Originally Posted by jaggededge

Amazing how quickly the blades and heli slowed after detaching from itself.

If you want to see something REALLY amazing, have a mechanical failure on a heli hovering in front of you that causes it to dart in your direction. Its truely amazing how much distance an out of control helicopter can cover before an average person even has a chance to react. We had one go to full aft cyclic and full throttle a couple of years ago and fortunately it didn't come directly at us because, starting from 50 feet away, it hit a tree behind us and over our heads before we even had a chance to take a step. These days I cringe when I see guys doing hard maneuvers only 15 or 20 feet in front of themselves.

Hardcore 3d heli's scare me like I scare old men hovering my 100cc extra