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Originally Posted by Coyote
That’s the logical F/W answer. Likely assumes you aren’t already below the terrain, following roads and clear to climb.
Below ridge lines , single ship, helo guys typically plan “lower, slower” then land. Didn’t work obviously. at his altitude, and the flight track may show him trying to climb to “on top” or other IFR handling at the end. That’s why I say the collective position at impact will tell us much about his final thoughts.
His initially not filing IFR tells us his preflight thoughts and gameplan. He is using Special Visual flight procedures. He is trying to maintain ground contact and picking his way through the ridges and terrain in the low areas using roads while staying clear of clouds. The fog is likely overwhelming to his gameplan.
He is single pilot aviating, navigating, and communicating, with PAX in bad conditions. He’s held outside of an ata for 15 minutes in SVFR conditions which is probably much less due to the fog.
Once he goes “Popeye” or Inadvertant IMC, he is apparently trying to turn around probably attempting to reacquire the ground (his gameplan) and loses situational awareness. (I’m guessing)
The reported airspeed track doesn’t make sense to his request and conditions though. He may be transitioning to an instrument scan and back to searching for the ground.
Turning around is further disorienting when transitioning to a split instrument and visual scan and helo guy’s typically assume maintaining ground reference.
The sound witness statements about hovering or 3-5 knots is likely wrong but causes further evidence of his attempt to regain the ground vice starting an instrument climb.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Pogue
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Pogue
No but the pilot was flying blind. Eyewitnesses could hear the copter flying overhead but couldn’t see it. The pilot probably wasn’t able to see the ground and from there everything that could go wrong, went wrong. You can’t land a copter unless you have visual point of reference.
Bottom line is, that Pilot screwed up. He shouldn’t have flown that morning.
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Pure Speculation on my part, but here is a
possibility that might explain the descent thing.
I mentioned before that my friend loaned their plane to a dude that wrecked it. Here's the story on that. He was flying VFR to Manhattan and hit some unexpected localized heavy fog. Tower had him change his pattern, then he tried to switch to IFR (which I think he and the plane were rated for) but he was alone, trying to navigate, switching to IFR in an unfamiliar plane, and got disoriented. He got to going pretty much straight down, and when he came through the fog, he was going way too fast to have any shot at pulling up.
It's possible he got disoriented or got distracted doing something different and lost track of his shit.
Again, pure speculation, but it's what happened to the guy from my town. And I know planes aren't copters, but it's a possibility.
01-27-2020, 10:57 PM
Kobe Bryant and daughter killed in helicopter crash
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