Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Tied-Down Chopper Self-Destructs


As seen on Break.com

Apparently someone forgot to release the tiedowns before trying to get this Chinook airborne. I think this is actually a training film - "hey kids, watch what happens if you don't do you job right" - because of the camera placement and the fact that the thing tears itself apart and nobody is running for their lives or checking on the crew.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I belive this video was made to show the effect of Harmonic resonance. Due to the design of the landing struts (which are filled with a high pressure gas), vibrations of the rotor system may be constructivly amplified. Proper maintenence can prevent some of this, however if the ocsilation becomes too great the pilot's best option is to take off and reattempt a landing. At any rate, with two pilots and a flight engineer preforming a preflight inspection the chains are the last thing likely to be missed. FOD is one of the biggest threats to unwary aviators.

Anonymous said...

You can see that one of the blades in the rear rotor has unlocked and doubles with another one causing huge unbalance even worse once it starts to decelerate.