Why Maintenance REALLY Matters, response to Paul of Cape Copters

Hey, today we're doing something different. This video, Helicopter Maintenance Really Matters. This is our friend Paul from Cape Copters. I'm going to recommend his video because he goes in detail about a problem in a rotor system on a helicopter and goes deep into it. It's a really good presentation on why maintenance really matters. And then I'm going to put a little input on it and from my own experiences about maintenance and to expand on what he's telling you. Cool shot there. Landing on a little, skinny concrete wall of some kind. Here's a couple of two different things that I want to mention, and it's on the lines of problems in rotor systems. And I want to talk about maintenance and cheating. Maintenance. If you watch our videos, you know, I don't call people out. I don't name names. I don't name places. I worked at a place earlier in my career when I'm trying to build my time. And a lot of us early in our careers do things that we don't do or not willing to do later in our careers, right? Because in the beginning you're trying to build time, and sometimes you do things or fly things that, you know, you probably shouldn't. I worked for a place that had a couple of aircraft, and we knew things were going on, like, nobody's around. And we'd come into work and find Hobbs meters unplugged. You know, after a while, we figured out who was doing it. It was the owner of the helicopter. You know, they were. They were nice people, but we know that there was a lot of cheating going on. Sad to say, early in my career, I made the choice to keep continue flying these aircraft. In one particular aircraft was taken to another state, and it was taken by another pilot. And then I was sent down to pick up the aircraft after maintenance, and it went to a facility that specialized in this type of aircraft. And when I get there, the guys from the maintenance shop say, come out here in the maintenance shop, we want to show you something. And they showed me parts from the rotor system like they. Like Paul shows you in this video. And these guys were experts, right? And they told me, that guy that flew this thing down here is lucky that he's alive. And I'm like, are you kidding me? And they're like, no, we're not kidding. And they had the rotor system, the old parts, the aircraft was now back together and it was safe for me to fly back. But they showed me the specifics of what was wore in the rotor head, and they said this rotor system was about to come apart. So luckily, I'm there at a repair station who had a good reputation. And when they tell me it's safe to fly home, I had the confidence to fly at home. And I remember right about that time, I had a job offer from another company and who was flying. You know, this was a turbine aircraft. I'm talking about another company that flew turbine aircraft called me about a job. I told him about this incident, and he said, you know, Kenny, this is a good reason why you need to go to work for us. And he said, I like you. Early in my career flew things that I knew I probably shouldn't be flying. And he said, now you've experienced it, you've seen it firsthand. It's time for you to move on with your career and get into a better, better aircraft. So these are the types of things that really go on out there, right? So there's one instance, then the other instance I want to bring up is the helicopter that I flew when I was in my helicopter accident. And I do want to talk about the accident a little bit more. And we actually did a video the other day. It was like an hour long, and the audio didn't come out correctly, so we scrapped it. And it is a big topic. So I've decided since it's such a big topic, maybe I'll break it into some different pieces. The accident that I was involved in was ground resonance. It directly involves a part in the rotor system. This particular make and model of aircraft, well, I'll say it. It was an instrument helicopter. You know, I'll let you know. Now, after our accident later, I bought an instrument. So this isn't bashing Enstrom. Okay? Everybody wants to bring up a new part or improve their aircraft when they can, right? And in this case, instrument had used what we call a hydraulic dampener for 30, 40, 50 years. They tried a new elastomeric damper. And the new elastomeric damper took away the. What we call the instrument bounce. The instrument shake. It allowed you to not have to do the normal maintenance that the hydraulic dampener was required. That was required. Like, you're always, you know, bleeding these like, you bleed brakes. They're bleeding the dampers and putting fluid in them. So this new elastomeric dampener was something that they wanted for it to work because it doesn't require the standard maintenance. Smoothed out the problems with the aircraft in this, what we called angstrom bounce. So we started experiencing vibrations in this aircraft. After this new new part was installed, we're flying one of the only ones in the world that has this new part on it. And the aircraft was ultra smooth. It was so slick. So we were. Everybody was excited, right, hey, aircraft now no longer has that bounce. And on one particular day, we went to do startup and went to leave, and the aircraft start shaking, and it shook violently. So we shut the aircraft down. I climbed out, and this is all documented. This is in our accident. In our accident report. It's in the report that I gave to the faa. Our airport manager came out. He witnessed that we climbed out, and I said, hey, I'm not going to fly it until mechanic inspects it. And the owner brought a mechanic in from out of town, and I really wanted our local mechanic to look at it, but the owner said, no, I want to bring my guy in. So. So he brought his guy in, he did some checks, and they decided, oh, well, it might be the rear struts were a little bit low, and that caused your vibration. So we said, okay, cool. And then we start flying it again. And then another event happened with some shaking, and some shady things started happening. And I was complaining about this aircraft, and I was complaining about this vibration. Well, nobody really wanted to hear about it, right? Because it's like, well, you know, maybe it's just your technique or something. And I'm like, now I've been picking these up and down for a while. I kind of know what the technique is. And they're like, well, if it happens again, just go hoverado in the grass. Not really a good answer. When I want to know why is this aircraft vibrating and why is it shaking when it's not supposed to be. Consequently, then if you want to dive deep into this, you know, there's a really long accident report available from the ntsb, and they dive deep into the, you know, physics of all of it and the parts involved. But what it boils down to is that new dampener failed. And I was complaining prior to this aircraft going into ground resonance and ripping itself apart and shooting two of us out, ejecting two of us. And luckily, the kid in the back that was strapped to fuselage, he only received a cut to the back of his head. But the point is, something was going on with this aircraft, and I knew it, and everybody knew it, but nobody really wanted to take it too seriously. And I had even threatened to stop flying it because I wanted to know why. And I. This was documented as well that I. In the lobby at the fbo, I'm like, if you guys don't Figure this out. I'm going to eventually just refuse to fly this aircraft. You're going to have to get somebody else to fly it. Shortly after that, our ground residence incident happened. You know, the FAA showed up that day and pretty quickly went, all right, well this is pretty obvious, a mechanical failure. And they got in their vehicles and they left. Right. We know they always blame the pilot if possible. In my case, luckily I was not blamed. Right. This part failed and the aircraft went into ground resonance, destroyed itself, ejected two of us. Did I choose to keep flying that aircraft? I did. Was I complaining about it? Yes, it's documented. I was complaining about it. What should I have done at that time? I was at my 2000 hour mark. So I'm ready to move on to my, in my career. I'm ready to make that next level jump. And I want to finish this guy in the turbine aircraft getting his private license before I moved on. So I'm not saying this is really a screw up or I made a mistake because the people that were doing the maintenance on it thought I should fly it. The factory thought I should fly it. Everybody involved that we should keep flying it. I was the only one that was really hesitant. Hindsight 2020, what do you do? Right, so that plays into the video from Paul where he dives deep into problems you can have in a rotor system. So there's two things I've witnessed firsthand, specifically problems in a rotor system. I guess my best advice is if you have any doubt in your heart or in your gut and there's some kind of vibration going on, there's something happening, push maintenance to get, take a look at it, Push to get an answer on what is going on. And the last thing I'll say about it is our mechanic, that was our local mechanic for many years, didn't get a chance to work on it. And I wish he would have. And he did say to me after the fact, he said, I sure wish they would have let me work on that helicopter because I think I could have found that. And I was like, you know what, John, I think that you could have too. And he said, I would have climbed up there on that rotor head and I would have looked around. And he goes, there surely was some physical damage that was starting to happen to that elastomeric dampener. And he said, I think I could have found it. Hindsight, you know, hearsay, whatever, but that's, that's how I feel about that situation. So who's working on your aircraft? Are they reputable? Don't cheat Maintenance. If in your heart you think something's wrong, your gut's telling you something's wrong.

To fly another day.

Helicopterground.com stay on the ground, don't file it, don't fly it, and request maintenance. Top 10 checkride tips down below. Free PDF you can download immediately or we can also ship you the physical copy for just shipping and handling in the United states. In the U.S. good little book. It's called Top 10 Checkride Tips. But Dan, Taz Chrisman and I 2018 Flight Instructor of the Year. That is, I should say we put this together and there's a bunch of tips in the back. So it's really about 30 checkride tips. That's our 50 years combined experience between the two of us laying out the types of things that people screw up before their checkride. So there's your screw up part of the video screw ups in here, 30 of them common screw ups people do at checkride time. Helicopter checkride. I'm going back to this book since it was my first book, still a great book. And you know, yesterday I did kind of an emotional video about my start with helicopters and a little bit about my parents and how that inspired me to do what I'm doing today. And that's down below free PDF and we'll ship, we'll also ship this to you for just shipping and handling anywhere in the US it's now only $9.95 shipping and handling. We marked that down from like 14 shipping and handling. And then we got a helicopter maneuver Guide. This is a free PDF down below. It's cool. It's based on the Helicopter Flying Handbook. You can view it on your electronic device or you could print it off, make small book like, like this if you needed to. Just a good way to refresh your maneuvers. And this is based on the Helicopter Flying Handbook. So you know, you're getting the good stuff right from the FAA publication. Subscribe the channel, click the bell so you'll be notified of the next video. We've been having overwhelming response to these videos. And a good friend of mine, Dave Faulkner, that keeps popping up on here, he's a CFI out in California, a good friend of mine, he occasionally texts me messages and you know, pushes us to go, hey, yesterday he text, he said, hey, good job on the transparent videos because the FAA is pushing that really hard right now, like to for people to be transparent, talk about issues, talk about problems, fess up when you make a mistake. And that's what these videos are all about. So leave us. Come out down below and we'll see you next video. Peace out.

When you feel the pressure to fly, but know the right decision is to stay on the ground, hit the hogs no go and live to fly another day. Helicopterground. Com.