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Flight testing incident footage demonstrates strength of new composite helicopter
Following a flight-testing incident in experimental helicopter ZK-HOL SN#003 on Saturday 8 November 2014, Composite Helicopters International Test Pilots Peter Maloney and Norbert Idelon reflect on their emergency landing and the technology that saved them. (vimeo.com) Más...Sort type: [Top] [Newest]
Watched the Video of he Test Flight. Awesome cool control by the 2 test pilots on the controls. Ordinary helicopters would not survive that incident.
Pretty extreme way to prove the strength of your product, great flying.
Great job by the crew maintaining their composure and attemping control of the helicopter. Certainly not a great way to test their airframe but it certainly appears that it saved their lives.
If the part that failed was operating in a regime "well below the limits.." it nonetheless failed due to "high cyclic fatigue". These statements appear to be in some conflict.
The shell is extraordinarily beautiful, and quite plainly saved two lives.
The shell is extraordinarily beautiful, and quite plainly saved two lives.
I noticed that too, those two statements seem to be in direct contradiction to each other. I think maybe someone was misquoted or misunderstood.
You just could not produce or buy any better advertising than this video tho...
You just could not produce or buy any better advertising than this video tho...
There are several kinds of mechanical failure modes. The component that failed would've been engineered for at least mechanical overload and fatigue failure. You might interpret the statement of "well below the limits..." to mean that the component did not fail due to mechanical overload (i.e. a single event), but failed due to fatigue ("high cyclic fatigue"). I think their point is that they were operating the machine under normal environmental conditions when the component failed, not, say, in a thunderstorm updraft.
I could agree with the low mechanical load part but if this is a "test" model, why the "High cyclic fatigue"? What (well used) helicopter did they borrow that part from to build this one?
The "third-party" part manufacturer must be a big player in the helicopter markets for them to use such vague and even contradictory language.