Accident pale d'hélice off, parachute, pilote ok

[JMsinus]

Canada, virus Sw, 1 pale off, moteur vibre comme l'enfer, sortie de parachute, atterrissage ok, pilote indemne, cause inconnue pour l'instant le TSB (équivalent BEA) enquête

Avec accord de l'accidenté je copy/paste ses messages du forum yahoo pipistrel usa

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Hello pilots,

Really happy i'm able to be posting this today. Yesterday I had to use my BRS parachute to land in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

I was over the city but luckily was able to fly to the old city centre airport being de commissioned and deployed the parachute, unfortunately the runway was already torn up by the city so parachute was my only option. But I walked away without a single scratch, and almost 24 hours later I do not feel any soreness from the impact, just a lack of sleep.

I've attached a few photos of the airplane. There was no signs of any imminent failure, then in an instant the cabin was violently shaking. It felt like the engine wanted to rip off the airplane. I was flying the 912 iS sport with a wood comp SR3000 constant speed propeller.

The accident is going to be investigated as to what caused this, but it was apparent after landing that I was missing half of my propeller. The dynon blackbox data should help investigators determine if it was engine failure linked to the propeller or solely propeller or something else.

The airplane will be a total write off, which i'm not worried about at all, just glad I walked away from it.

Just wanted to share my experience and I will post as time goes on about what the findings are from investigator

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Hey Jorge, I fully understand you want to hear my experience, i'm definitely an advocate of sharing such information after such an event as this with the outcome I had. I hope this can help others in the event that they have to deploy their parachute. I never thought twice while being in this situation of how this will wreck the aircraft or how costly it might be. The only thing I thought about was how to get on the ground the safest in this situation in an urban surrounding.

Everyone must understand that in this circumstance there is a lot of quick decisions to be made, high level of stress and adrenaline so my accounts of how things played out may not be entirely accurate, i.e. force needed to pull the parachute lever but will do my best to recall what I felt/heard/saw.

1.- What was your deck angle on descend with the parachute? I have always wondered since you have only two attachments.
When the parachute first deployed the aircraft was in an oscillation from the forward momentum, this subsided within about 10 seconds (i think) and settled to about a 10-15º nose down attitude

2.- You say the main gear hit first, do you attribute most of the damage to the initial impact? It appears so.
This aircraft was a tail dragger, when I initially hit I do remember the landing gear touching first then nose diving into the ground, the engine compartment most likely absorbed most of the impact.

3.- Did you get any bruises on your body around the seatbelt areas? Chest? Anywhere else?
It's now about 30 hours since the occurrence and I do not have any bruises.

4.- Did you hit your head against any of the close by structures in that space? Whiplash?
Emergency services checked my head and spine about 15 minutes after the landing and they could not find any head trauma. I don't recall hitting my head on anything but I do remember bracing for impact, I have paragliding training so there is a certain way you can brace your body for impact, I put my knees together and protected my face with my arms and elbows. I do not have a single scratch on me from the landing.

5.- Were you tightly secured or did you have time to tighten up before deploying?
I was on a photo flight so I had my chest straps loosened up before I deployed the parachute. I was at about 800-1000' AGL when I deployed the chute. I had ample time to tighten up my chest straps before impact, I always have my lap strap securely tightened.

6.- Was the arrival (“landing”) harsher than anticipated or not? Did you feel it in your lower back or was the deck angle steep enough to transfer the jolt to your harness around the chest?
I honestly had no idea what to expect, I didn't have time to check my decent rate so I didn't really know how fast I was descending. The only thing I thought of doing was bracing for it and covering my head/face. It was actually less of an impact then what I expected. The only thing that is slightly sore today is my lower back and left arm, I do remember getting thrown forward a little bit when the nose dived after hitting main gear.

7.- Given the positive outcome of your incident, would you have done anything differently, not so much regarding your decision to deploy or not, but in terms of being more prepared for such an event?
One thing I wish I would have thought of doing was opening my door before impact. I know that we are trained to do this but it slipped my mind. I was easily able to get out of the door after thankfully. The door was severely damaged after it flipped on it's back. I don't recall that any of the windshields broke on the initial landing, it was only when the parachute flipped the plane that all of the windshields broke apart.

8.- Was your parachute safety pin removed before flight or did you have to do it once you made the decision? If it was in, were you fully aware of this fact and removed it before pulling or found yourself confused for a moment?
I have always taken the safety pin out of the handle before flight, I make it a habit of doing so and it's in my checklist. I never really thought that I would experience such a severe situation instantaneously without any warning signs so I think it's a good thing I had the pin removed. I only had a short amount of time to make the decision to pull the parachute, I was worried that my engine was going to rip off of the aircraft so I had to act as fast as I could.

9.- How heavily did you have to yank the lever to cause the rocket to detonate? Did it surprise you for being too light or too heavy? Could a child or a woman do it without problems?
Honestly I don't remember at all how much force was needed. I do remember grabbing the lever and punching forward as far as I could reach. This is a technique similarly used to deploy a paraglider reserve chute in which I have had training in so I used similar methods. All I thought about was getting that lever as far forward as possible and as hard as possible with a quick smooth action. I don't know if a child could do it, for one it would be quite a reach when they are strapped in. It's definitely a good idea to tell passengers that there will be resistance and to give it all they've got.

10.-How high were you and what’s your perception on how much height you lost between pulling the lever and deployment?
I was about 800-1000' by the time I was over the old airport and deployed the parachute. I did not look at my altitude to see what I was at, there is a bit of g-force from the parachute when it slows the airplane down and that distracted me from everything else. I wasn't really anticipating that. I remember thinking how quiet it was when I was descending on the chute with no engine running. I do remember hearing the bang of the rockets deploying so I knew that it had worked right away. I was wearing david clark noise cancelling headphones so it must be a fairly loud explosion.

Modo Maglite : J'ai ajouté de la couleur, pour différencier les questions et les réponses, et augmenter la lisibilité.

[JMsinus]

Vidéo de la descente en parachute

http://globalnews.ca/news/1843294/small ... estigates/

[JMsinus]

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The only reason I say this is because transportation safety board said to me that the damage of the side of the fuselage most likely was from the motor wanting to come off of the aircraft. They've seem many accidents where this happens and said in most cases the engine does fall off. The engine was still connected to the firewall securely, the engine mount was starting to break apart. I didn't have time to look at the damage of the plane after I initial impact, but i'm quite certain the only damage from the aircraft flipping over was the windshield. I know that it was still intact after the initial landing. When we were flipping the airplane back over the engine had nothing to hold onto because it was separated from the cockpit on both sides as. The only thing we could really see keeping the engine on was the rudder cables, fuel lines etc.

TSB did say they will be looking into the body of the airplane as well to see what failed and how.

I noticed when then engine was still running that I could not see anything on the instrument panel, it was shaking a lot, I didn't notice cracks in the side of the fuselage, so I can't say for certain when those cracks happened, maybe it was weakened from the vibration and cracked on impact. It's all speculation at this point.

I'd be interested to find out from woodcomp if they've done impact testing on these propellers before and what the blade would look like if I happened to hit a drone or something in the sky. I really don't think it would break at the metal ring inside of the motor housing if I did hit something, I would expect there would be something left of the propeller blade.

[JMsinus]

.We are also looking forward to more analysis of the Dynon data. If the Dynon network stayed intact and kept the ADHRS and GPS connected to the displays, It will reveal some interesting details, such as the altitude at which the problem first occurred, a good estimate of the altitude and speed at parachute deployment, the altitude at which the chute blossomed, how far you descended before things stabilized, your rate of descent at ground impact, etc.

[JMsinus]

Photos a suivre

[JMsinus]

Important Safety Advisory Woodcomp SR 3000 Propellers
On 22 February 2015 an amateur-built kit Pipistrel Virus SW aircraft had an incident requiring the deployment of its ballistic parachute system.
It is already documented that a single blade of the Woodcomp SR 3000 in-flight adjustable propeller separated from the hub without notice. This caused severe vibration throughout the aircraft resulting in the engine being switched off and the ballistic parachute system deployed. The occupant landed safely and without further injury.
The Canadian CAA is investigating the incident as a priority and their results are expected to be published within the next month. At this time I have been requested by the Technical Manager of Recreational Aviation Australia to alert any of our customers whose aircraft are fitted with the Woodcomp SR 3000 propeller system.
During this investigation period it is my request that customers of aircraft fitted with SR 3000 propellers include a very good visual check of the blade root and its security during their normal pre-flight checks.
It’s important to note that the lowest allowed operating temperature in the Woodcomp manual is minus 25 degrees
(http://www.woodcomp.cz/download/SR3000Rev.H-EN.pdf page 10)
That day in Edmonton on ground was minus 17, at 3000 ft it can easy be minus 25 ( http://flightaware.com/resources/airport/CYEG/weather), this may be a factor in the failure.
Of course any anomalies or failures must be immediately reported to both myself and tech@...

Michael Coates
X-Air Australia

[Roudoudou]

Quand on voit l'immense champ de neige ou est la machine, on comprend mal pourquoi le pilote n'a pas fait un atterrissage de fortune à cet endroit

[JMsinus]

Ancien terrain d'aviation desafecté ou le Tarmac a été labouré; cela a été publié et le pilote en avait conscience donc ce n'était pas une option pour lui. Rien d'autre aux alentours de posable car au dessus d'une grosse ville, 1000ft AGL car entrain de faire des photos...


The landing site was unsuitable to land on. I was in the middle of a big city, I was lucky enough that I was right over the old de commissioned airport. The runways were already ripped up and there was minimum 2 feet of snow covering the entire airport as it has been inactive all winter. I didn't want to attempt landing and flipping the plane when I have a perfectly good parachute at my disposal.

[offtaps]

Sans ski c’était en effet la seule solution.
On attend avec impatience les résultats de l’enquête.

[Gabinger]

J'ai deux remarques: déjà le pilote a fait le nécessaire pour s'en tirer indemne c'est l’essentiel! La décision de tirer le parachute plutôt que de tenter un posé hasardeux dans un champ de neige avec une machine en partie structurellement détruite pour moi est la bonne!
Par contre dés le bris de son hélice le pilote plutôt que de réduire les gaz aurait du couper le moteur et fermer le carburant, plus rien a espérer de ce côté. Il aurait peut-être été plus serin pour la suite (mais ce n'est qu'une hypothèse et c'est facile a dire bien en sécurité derrière son PC).

Encore une fois le parachute a démontré son efficacité, a mon avis ce n'est pas une option.