#264 - Ground Resonance - Ejected and Survived, I Never Gave Up

In 2004, I was ejected from a helicopter suffering ground resonance. I don't have a video of it, and it's probably a good thing, but I want to talk about it real quick today, ground resonance. And I just want to make sure, if you're flying a fully articulated helicopter, that you've reviewed this recently and this is on your mind, because this could happen to you. And I do have a couple of visual. Visual aids today. Here's the pedal that came out of the aircraft that I was in when it was destroyed from ground resonance. And this pedal is bent. And I even spoke with the engineer from the manufacturer, and they think I bent it when we were trying. When I was trying to save it, even though I knew in my mind it was going to destroy itself, but I was still doing everything I could to try to stop it, and I was trying to stop the aircraft from spinning. So moral there is. You know, you do fly that thing all the way to the crash. You fly it all to the very end. And I will tell you, my law enforcement training came back probably more than whenever I was a cop where they taught us in the law enforcement academy, you never give up. No matter how bad you're hurt, shot, stabbed, whatever, beat up, you never give up. And that was ingrained in me as a young police officer. And I remember that day, as the helicopter was destroying itself, I can remember thinking that. Here's cyclic two, by the way. All right, let's take a look at the video. I'll make sure about the link for this video down below in the description box, so you can see the video yourself in full on YouTube if you like. I will tell you, this is probably the most similar I can think of to what happened to us that day, except ours was even more violent than this. So let's just watch the video. Cool thing is, everybody appears to get out and walk away. The difference in ours that day, it went on longer than that. The tailbone completely separated from the aircraft and was thrown. I'm saying probably 50ft. It was amazing how far that tail boom ended up out away from the aircraft. Our skids were completely squatted out. I can't think of a good term for it, but, I mean, the belly of the aircraft was on the ground. All of this was completely gone, scattered all over the ramp. And I was ejected this direction. Owner of the aircraft, who I was training was ejected this way. And then in the backseat, a young man that was one of my students was in the back, and he was strapped with what was left of the fuselage. And again, in a way, I don't know if I'd want to see a video of ours from that day, but everybody was on the ramp, all my friends and co workers. So after the fact, you know, we. I did, of course, talk to everybody about it. The pilot, the owner aircraft was ejected out to this side. I was ejected out that side. And I remember the aircraft starting to destroy itself. I remember trying to stop it. I remember thinking about my family and thinking that I was, you know, going to lose my life in this crash unless I could either stop it or be thrown clear. I was concerned about being thrown through the. Up, through the rotor system because of that violent bouncing up and down. I was worried that that's what was going to happen to us. And I don't know what to tell you other than, again, I want you to refresh your memory on ground resonance. If you're already flying and you're flying a fully articulated and you haven't reviewed it for a while, go to the Helicopter Flying Handbook and review this. And of course, if your manufacturer's PoH Pilot's Operating Handbook or flight manual has anything, make sure you know it and make sure you understand what to do in the event of ground resonance. And I want to roll it again. So not to take away from what these people went through. I mean, it's violent enough, right? But this is very. I mean, I felt it, man. And just look at this thing coming apart. This absolutely crazy. You don't have a lot of time to react, and there's no time for indecision. And from the eyewitnesses, several different reports about how many times we went around. And here's what's crazy from the observers, people standing on the ramp. I don't know because before, before I was ejected, I was knocked unconscious. And I know the pilot, he was out before I was. As far as. I don't know who got thrown first. I think he got thrown first, but I remember him being out because he was getting knocked around for some weird reason. It felt like he was going more sideways where I was going more up and down. And what am I trying to say? Oh, what the witnesses said was, I think he was ejected first and he did more of a trajectory up. Luckily, he didn't go through the rotor blades. I was shot out more straight that way. And the owner was injured a lot worse than what I was. He had some serious injuries. He did make it and he is alive and working today. So thank God we all survived. I was shot more out that way probably 20, 30ft. They found my glasses even farther out into the grass. And I remember as it destroying itself, trying to stop it. And I remember my face going down and I can remember my face being like in the instrument panel. And basically in this aircraft, the seat belts are attached to the seat. So the reason we were ejected, we went with our seats. He was ejected out the left in his seat. I was ejected with my seat because the seats broke from the floor. That's how extremely violent it was. We were literally thrown with our seats. So when I woke up, I'm laying on my side and the aircraft was so low to the ground because of the skids being crushed, they had to wait for the blades to stop spinning before they could come over and help us. And they sat me up in place and of course made me stay put until rescue workers got there, EMS got there. So what the. I don't remember how many times they said it went round, but after we were ejected it started flying again. Now some of the witnesses said it went 10ft in the air. Another witness said it went as far as 50ft in the air. And from my law enforcement training, we know five people can witness an accident and they'll all give a different version. And it's all what they believe they saw. They're not lying or making something up. It's just people perceive and remember differently. And the human brain does that. It doesn't always recall information exactly the way something happened. I've watched a lot of stuff on the brain and I'm really into that. And so anyway, we know that when we got ejected, it went flying again after it threw us out. So we get ejected, the aircraft goes back up into the air and at some point comes back down, luckily doesn't crush either one of us because we're laying on both sides. And I remember opening up my eyeballs and I couldn't see my buddy in the back because of the fuselage was turned away from me. But I could see the legs of the owner on the other side. And I can remember waking up and going, well, they told me what I said. We, of course we had a big get together because we were all friends, we were all co workers and everybody was traumatized by it. After that, when a helicopter would land, the office people were like hiding behind the counter over the first probably week or two, right, because it disturbed everybody, but. It's just so freaking violent. The accident report goes very deep into what was going on in the rotor system and there was new parts involved, something that was newly Certified and it gets really long and it's really technical why the aircraft came apart. Luckily, I wasn't blamed. And we know a lot of times pilots do get blamed, right? If they can blame you, they usually will. And it's pretty technical, you know, reasonings on what happened. I'm not going to go into all that because it's, it's even beyond what I understand. So the point I want to make is if you're flying a fully articulated aircraft, make sure you understand the corrective actions. And of course, on pre flights, you're really looking at things like your dampers in the rotor system, your oleo struts. Of course, you know, a good pre flight is something we need to do anytime on any aircraft. But when it gets into the ground resonance, you know, it can involve the struts, it can involve parts in the rotor system. Again, with different makes and models, of course, there's a lot of reasons why something could go wrong. And again, I'm not going to go into that. Just this is Saturday and I just ran in to make this video and today all I wanted to do was just talk about my experience real quick, show you what it looks like, and know this is one that I can talk about with complete confidence because I lived through it. And I, to this day, I don't believe I have nightmares over it because I have talked about it for years. We did have a lot of pictures, but quite honestly, I didn't want them, you know, after the fact because it took me a while to get over that. Now I have to say, sure, it's part of my history, right? So I've worked through it, I've lived through it. It's part of who I am today. And maybe it's saved my life at some point since. Who knows from me being conservative and cautious and I'd been flying many years. And a few years ago somebody said, well, you know what they call you? And this is for the people that I fly with in the area. They're like, well, they call you Cautious Keller. And I'm like, really? I didn't know that. And this pilot says, yeah, you're Cautious Keller. And I'm like, well, I'll take that versus, you know, yeah, that guy will go fly anything and he's crazy and will do anything crazy. So I'm okay with being called Cautious Keller. So again, you know, we know we learn through our experience, experiences, right? So again, I just want to relay ground resonance. If you're flying a fully articulated system, make sure you know what Items you're looking at on pre flight. Make sure you talk to your instructors about this. Make sure you understand what it says in the helicopter flying handbook. Make sure you know anything that might be in the Poh Pod separating handbook from your aircraft. Just knowledge. Right? And make sure that if you're flying an aircraft susceptible to this, that you know in your mind what to do. Okay. That's my absolute 100 best advice. I'll leave it on that note because it's Saturday night and I do want to get out of here, but. And I also want to reiterate again, sitting with the engineer, he's like, I was explaining what I was doing as it was shaking and vibrating, and I can remember trying to hit the pedal to stop the spin. And he goes, we've been trying to figure out all morning why this pedal spent. He goes, maybe you hit it. And he goes, you know, when you made contact with that, that might have been when the tailbone snapped off. And he goes, who knows? You know, it was such a violent, crazy event. Who knows? Because maybe you saved everybody's lives. I don't know. But I definitely probably changed the outcome, hopefully for the better. But I can tell you, I never freaking gave up. I didn't want to die. I was worried about it. I was really concerned that it was going to be my last day on the planet. And my daughter was very young. I mean, like, she was less than 2 years old, I think. Well, yeah, that's right. It's been 14 years ago and she's 16, so she'd have been somewhere around one to two years old. And I didn't want to lose my life. And I fought to the end until I was knocked unconscious and ejected from the aircraft. All right, subscribe to the channel. Click the bell for our daily training videos. I am Kenny Keller, creator of Helicopter Online Ground School. We do a video every single day talking about all kinds of stuff. Last week or so, I've been doing some, you know, reviews and critiques and just looking at things because we talk about everything in. In theory. And I have for so long that I'm like, you know, let's. Let's review some videos just to get it in your mind and know what some of these things look like. And my mission is, you know, if I save one person because of a video that I made because somebody thought of something or reviewed something and I helped keep them out of trouble, then makes it all worthwhile, doesn't it? So we have four courses online, private commercial, CFI instrument. We've been online almost eight years. We help you prepare for your oral test, written test, practical test. For all those ratings, go down below to helicopterground.com check it out. You can take our training for 24 hour test flight. We also have a 30 day money back guarantee on all that. So. Got my heart and soul put into it. Just like the heart and soul I put into these videos every day. Alright, I'm gonna get out of here, get home, see my daughter got a roast in the crock pot thanks to Heather. Thanks Heather. Heather hooked me up this week, did some shopping for me and she got me a crock pot. So did my first crock pot lunch today. All right, join us for day 265 tomorrow. Subscribe, click the bell and we'll see in 264. Peace out.