gyro plane down

[Caribean_gyro]

Is with sad feeling I have to report that a aircomand gyro pilot was killed 3 hours ago. preliminary info is he was using blades with a mccutchen hub and rotor hawk blades. thais set up was made for a local pilot at the rotor hawk factory.

Many speculative calls claiming the blades so I will post more info tomorrow after I get it or have some one inspect it.

pilot was an old timer with enought time in FW/Hely and gyro.

just my prayers for his soul and family peace

Charles Peterson

[automan1223]

MC hub came in 2 versions, a light duty hub and a larger 5'section mother of all hub bars hub...

If the smaller hub was used, it may have failed on longer blades due to centrifugal loading.

Using a skywheels hub you need to be aware the hubs are not interchangable. using longer blades on a shorter hub....

you can use the longer hub with just about anything I imagine.


Sorry to hear this.

Jonathan

[david holmes]

Originally Posted by Caribean_gyro

--aircomand gyro pilot was killed 3 hours ago. (

3 hours ago must've been about dark there.

[Friendly]

Charles.
I pray for his family as well. Thank you for posting.

[Caribean_gyro]

no it was sunny
the hub was the short one.
I track them and flew them when they arrived. Originally they were really bad. after the pitch was corected they smooth out. Now a preliminary info is that the blades didnt have conning angle.

I will post later today after more facts
charles

[Friendly]

Charles,
did something happen to the blades in flight? or are they suspect because it was the last change made to his gyro? What do you mean by" no conning angle".?

[Bob Simmons]

i am so sorry to hear about this. thanks for the information. we will all pay attention to this accident/incident.

[Caribean_gyro]

Pilot was a US custmo pilot. testing an aircomand reconstructed in PR. Blades were a MCCutchen Hub with an extruded blades. Witness state that a pice of the blade come of in flight.

Information is that inside of the exturde leading edge there is a 10 foot slid bar glued and riveted. The rivet I know was there originally but if there was any extructural eposy I dont know. The Mc cutceh hub dont have in it a coning angle. so the blades were very stiff and straight .

Witness mentioned a hard bank prior to the solid bar departure.

Pilot hit in the shore a rock the crude details from the reproter I womt list them. They dont have sensitivity.

The machine was on test so why he went out of the airport arear is unknown.

I can only hope that New bies learn that testing is not just a flight or 2 and no matter if an expert test it doesnt menas is good construction.

What shakes me beside loosing a friend is that I flew the blades could off been me. But I test it In a diferent machine and AS normal and steady I can. No hard bank or stress test.

I will post any new new once I get it.
Charles Peterson

[chuter]

Charles, I'm very sorry for the loss of your friend.

[gyroplanes]

My condolences to the family and friends, especially Charles who must be suffering and in a state of shock at this time.

I had a newspaper article translated, it's not the best, but it substantiates the rotor problem.


Jose To Miletti, of 42 years, an experienced pilot of the Service of federal Immigration and Customs, was killed when falling his girocóptero on a stone in the Jobos beach.
ISABELA - A pilot of the Service of federal Immigration and Customs died yesterday when the girocóptero that flew near the beach Jobos de Isabela underwent a flaw and it hurried on a rock near the coast. Jose To Miletti Martinez, of 42 years and resident of the district Corrals of Aguadilla, was proving the apparatus after doing some modifications to him when it happened the accident, informed the agent into the district of Isabela, Melissa Perez, who was in charge of the investigation. "It fell upon a quite great rock with the forehead on the stone. He ruined it completely, squashed the face to him, the arms, the legs. He died in the act ", indicated the agent.
Perez maintained that some people have the pastime to make and to fly the girocópteros, small apparatuses of a single motor. It added that the girocóptero that flew Miletti belonged to a friend. Alegadamente Miletti showed the owner to him whom it loved to make modifications him and soon prove it. Both were mobilized yesterday in the evening to the track of Isabela, located near the beach of Jobos, with that intention. Miletti began to fly the apparatus without problems, but during the third return supposedly a piece of the helix was broken and the girocóptero fell from a height of 200 on 300 feet, according to related the agent Perez.
The accident happened shortly after the 5:00 of afternoon, near the border of the beach, in an area where usually they do not go swimmers. Perez indicated that if had fallen in the water, the pilot had been saved. "They say that he was one of the best pilots than she had Customs, an expert person in this", added the agent.

[Jazzenjohn]

Is this what slipped out?


As you can see from the photos, the inner support has a beefy non-crushable area at the quarter-chord area, and three additional beefed-up airfoil supports that make the blade the most sturdy, stiff and straight blade imaginable. Remember, the blade is all one extruded member except for the full-length slip-in extruded bar/spar/noseweight, the full length of the blade inside the leading edge.
This bar serves two purposes: 1) a redundant independent member spar that’s a light press slip fit that’s liquid epoxy applied as it’s inserted in the leading-edge opening of the blade; 2) the bar/spar weight is the quarter-chord noseweight.
The blade material is 6063-T6 aluminum. The bar/spar/noseweight is 6061-T6 aluminum, as is the top filler plate that levels the top rounded airfoil to the flat area.

[PR Gyro Pilot]

yesterday a little bit after 5pm. My friend Jose Miletti, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection Pilot, with commercial Rotary and Fix wing multiengine ratings and lot of experience on gyrocopters, was testing an Air command Gyro with a 503 rotax engine for a friend of US. I was supposed to Test Fly the Gyro as soon as my friend landed, but an aluminum bar that goes inside the leading edge of the rotor hawk blades that were fitted at Rotor Hawk industries to be used on a Mccuchen Skywheels hub came out at approximately 250-300ft from the ground, with the results of stopping the rotor blades breaking the gyro in mid air, then the rest is history,

I will never forget the faces of the people present at the area, his wife and daughter, when they were looking at their love one and friend of mine falling to his death in inverted position. I froze and was speechless, of having witness this fatality in company of my wife and daughters and other gyro pilots present at the area.

Here are some pictures of the fatality that I took with my cell phone. and a photo of his last take off that leaded to his death.


The last photo if of one of my rotor blade, as you can see the aluminum part that came out of the Air command gyro was supposed to be held in place by 4 AN screws and instead at the factory they used silicone and a single rivet, that came out during flight.

So my opinion is that negligence at Rotor Hawn Industries killed my friend, because of what they did at the factory. And there is no way that this could be attributed to pilot error. Because I saw the machine coming apart in midair, at the hands of an experience pilot, He trusted his life on the job done at Rotor Hawk Industries. I just wish that they had done a better job and instead of using silicone and a single rivet they had used a better glue and AN screws.

[Caribean_gyro]

this is the event sequence.
1 low pass
2: acelarate and bank
3: bank was very steep.
4: the leading edge bar departed the gyro.
5: Gyro went to a spiral
6: it the ground at full engine rpm.

bar came flying and was incsrustaed in to the runway. glue reside was see as some kind of silicon and soft. So epoxy could not be.

The bar was sold down by i rivet.

A protution along the leading edge was found as if the blade pup up and the rivet went in and then drag out to the blade edge.

I can not rulle pilot error but this blades suck .

I will check with FAA to see what type of investigation they will do if any
charles

[Chuck Roberg]

My condolences to the family and friends.

Looking at the pictures it is hard to tell if there is any epoxy left on the insert. Could it be possible no epoxy or not enough epoxy was used?

[Caribean_gyro]

que mi amigo encuentre la paz con el senor y nos sotros rogemos por sus amigos y familia.
que la paz este entre todos.
chuck Peterson