MV-22 crashes in Hawaii

originally posted by: buddah6 If both engines fail in a hover, it should be able to make a soft autorotation landing.

It's going to be anything but soft, but it should be survivable if done well.

With the other two Ospreys landing at same time I think rotor wash would be an issue..

a reply to: _Del_

Del, soft is a relative term! It's like the old flying saying; "any landing is a good landing as long as you can walk away from it." In Vietnam, if we could recover parts or components then it was considered a "precautionary landing" not a shoot down even if was due to hostile fire.

a reply to: Blackfinger

Not necessarily! The other Ospreys were flying within normal flight parameters were VRS was not an issue. The pilots have to be very aware of the onset of VRS so they could recover from it before you hit the ground. If you are making a fast descent, the pilots may not be aware that he is actually in vortex ring state until he starts to attempt to slow or stop his descent.

Mishap Aircraft just before the accident

a reply to: Zaphod58

You can see that the Osprey is nose high in the helicopter mode. This tells me that he is decelerating but can't tell if he's descending and at what rate. I see no evidence of roll or other indications of systems failure. Maybe, it was just a fast descent into terrain? Just a thought!

a reply to: buddah6

Entirely possible. Misjudged the descent rate and just slammed it into the ground. Or the winds shifted on him. That caused the crash in Morocco.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Marines make good pilots and I hope it isn't the case.

a reply to: buddah6

Morocco, they landed and the pilot decided to take off with a tail wind, instead of rotating the aircraft, and it picked the tail up and shoved them nose first into the ground.

I've seen days at Bellows where we had brisk trade winds all morning, then in ten minutes they flipped 180 degrees and were going the other way. It can get squirrelly there, because the mountains are so close.

a reply to: Zaphod58

They always train in actual conditions. I remember many nights with thunderstorms and heavy rain.

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: buddah6

Sounds like you're right. They're reporting they were in hover mode and lost either power or lift.

Some talking head on TV said that the Osprey can cause a vacuum underneath it and cause it to get sucked into the ground.
Yikes!

a reply to: Zaphod58

Sounds like it...found this little tidbit:

The vortex ring state is a wing-induced rotor stall unique to tilt-rotors. Carlton Meyer, a former Marine who edits the Web site G2Mil.com, explains: "As a tilt-rotor descends vertically, each wing pushes the airflow away from half its rotor. The faster it descends, the greater the vacuum the wings create, resulting in less lift. As the pilots maneuver a V-22, they may shift the airflow causing one rotor to lose so much lift that it literally falls and flips the aircraft over."

A skilled pilot can avoid the vortex ring state by descending slowly; by not going straight down, and by not making sudden maneuvers during descent. This would be fine if the Osprey were to be used for commuter flights. But for a Marine assault force approaching a landing zone which has turned "hot," coming in slow and straight can be hazardous to health. The vortex ring state can be avoided if the Osprey descends no faster than 800 feet per minute. But most military helicopters can descend safely at 2,000 feet per minute. And because they don't have to worry about flipping over if they juke and weave, conventional helicopters can take evasive action to avoid enemy fire.

Stanford.edu

a reply to: buddah6

I would think being from Pendleton they'd be used to switching winds, but Bellows can get wild in a hurry.

a reply to: MystikMushroom

The talking idiots are also still trying to portray the Osprey as the most dangerous aircraft ever built.

a reply to: Zaphod58

There are a ton of aircraft that crash...but the V-22 seems to get a lot of press when it does. Maybe because it's strange looking it gets more scrutiny and attention? People tend to criticize and bash that which they don't understand.

a reply to: MystikMushroom

There were a couple high profile accidents in the early days of the program that led to it being suspended while a redesign of some systems was performed. One of them, the aircraft flipped and slammed into the ground and killed 19 Marines.

Of course everyone who thought they knew anything about aircraft was screaming about how dangerous and stupid the design was and how if they went ahead they'd be falling out of the sky, killing people.

originally posted by: MystikMushroom

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: buddah6

Sounds like you're right. They're reporting they were in hover mode and lost either power or lift.

Some talking head on TV said that the Osprey can cause a vacuum underneath it and cause it to get sucked into the ground.

Yikes!

Sounds like media bullsh*t to me! They also believe that aircraft fly by "pure f**king magic" and when the PFM generator fails the plane crashes.

a reply to: buddah6

That's what my wife told me when we first got together. When the magic runs out they crash.

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: buddah6

That's what my wife told me when we first got together. When the magic runs out they crash.

I can't remember that far back with my wife. I'm glad that Adam picked Eve or I wouldn't have had an old lady...lol! But God must have put all those stars on her collar cuz I never outranked her...lol.

originally posted by: buddah6
Sounds like media bullsh*t to me! They also believe that aircraft fly by "pure f**king magic" and when the PFM generator fails the plane crashes.

Along with the journo trying to make it sound like only tilt-rotors experience VRS as opposed to a trait shared by all rotary-wing aircraft...