On Thursday, May 24th we were flying the Wasp as part of a maintenance flight to get it ready to fly to air shows. We were collecting data for rotor track and balancing which is done to reduce the amount of vibration caused by the rotor systems has the helicopter flies at different speeds. Mark Di Ciero was piloting, and Dale was copilot. I was in the back seat along with Dale’s son, Shane.
We had just completed the final regime in the data collection series which meant we were flying at about 100 knots (115 miles per hour). I was looking at the CADU so I could tell Mark as soon as the data was collected. This is because Mark must keep the helicopter flying straight and level at constant speed while the data is collected. At that point I felt odd movement coming from the Wasp almost as if we hit a rather large gust of wind. It was enough of a movement, however, for me to glance over to Mark although I was also trying to keep an eye on the CADU. At that point I perceived Mark fighting the cyclic as it was making large exaggerated moves. The cyclic controls the main rotor head using hydraulics so that fact that the rotor head was able to induce movement onto the cyclic was quite amazing. I remember remarking to myself “that does not look good.” As Mark began to slow the helicopter down, I started to notice a rolling lateral vibration of about 1-2 second period. At that point Mark went on the intercom and reported “Oh man, I think was just lost hydraulics.” I could see him working at the cyclic trying to work out the problem. Within a few seconds after his first announcement, he said “I don’t like this. I am going to take her down.” Mark put the collective all the way down which takes the pitch out of the blades and puts us into an auto rotation.An auto ration is where the vertical decent of the helicopter causes the blades to continue to spin and acts like a parachute. The pilot will flair the helicopter just as it reaches the ground to bleed off airspeed. Now this might sound very scary, but this situation is not unusual in emergency situations. In reality all pilots must be able to demonstrate autos as part of their certification. In our case the engine was still regulating the rotor RPM, but Mark was not about to take any chances.
During all this, we learned later that Dale noted that the engine RPM dipped to the low side of the green (300 RPM on the rotor instead of about 410). Now this is also bad because the mechanical failure was affecting the auto rotation. This is further evidence that Mark’s decision to get us to the ground as soon as possible was the correct one. As Mark explained later “the worst possible situation for a pilot is to loose control of the aircraft.”
As we are auto rotating down, I had a sensation that the Wasp was under a reasonable amount of control. I think, however, Mark would most likely not agree. His fear was that the cyclic would freeze in a forward position and cause the Wasp to nosedive to the ground. Luckily, Mark was able to get her to the ground before this happened.
As we got to the point where Mark wanted to flair the Wasp, the controls binded again. Luckily, they released at the last possible moment and Mark was able to input an adjustment although this resulted in an extremely high flair angle. We figure our pitch angle was about 60-70 degrees whereas it should have been about 40. This was the point where our tail rotor hit a tree. We are not sure when the main rotor started taking out the tail rotor. It was either when the tail hit the tree or when the tail boom struck the ground. There is evidence that the tail rotor did strike the ground although the groves left in the ground were not all that deep. At some point we believe that the main rotor did cutoff the tail in sections. Some of the sections were thrown about 200 feet in front of the Wasp.We skidded to a halt, but not before both landing struts on the left collapsed. I was in a crash position leaning toward the center of the aircraft, but my head was thrown into the door when we first made contact with the ground. The cuts on my face were from the headset and me striking the door. I distinctly remember thinking to myself, “that’s going to leave a mark.”
The Wasp skidded to a halt fairly quickly. The skid marks were only about 20-25 feet long. When we stopped, I could not see through all of the dust since three of the four doors had been liberated. This was the point where I got a little scared. My thought was that the Wasp was going to tear itself apart and take a piece of me with it. Luckily, Mark got to the high pressure switch and shutdown the turbine.
As I am getting my bearings and realizing everyone is ok, Mark gets on the headset and says “everybody out before there is a fire.” Now, all I heard was “fire”, so my next thought was “oh, so this is how it’s going to happen.” Luckily, I was able to get out quickly and help out Dale who is tangled in seatbelt harnesses, door moldings, and cable. While helping him out I see the engine is on fire, but only residual fuel is burning. Luckily, we find out later that there were no fuel leaks.At this point everyone is out and appears to be ok. Mark and Dale have some sore backs, and my head is bleeding. Shane walks out without even a scratch.
We start to look around and realize we are in the middle of nowhere. We cannot see any houses or roads for miles although we have a pretty good idea where we are at. Of the four of us, the only one that has a cell phone is Shane. Thanks Shane! If it was not for him, we most likely would have spent the night in that field. Shane’s phone also has a GPS which the emergency dispatch could ping to get our location. It still took the Sheriff’s several hours to find us which meant it was dark by the time we left the crash site.
As you can imagine we all consider ourselves very lucky.