08 Sept 2003

The R22 Chronicles

Part Five:   "R22 - The Learning Curve"

From Part Four: There has been no Robinson R22 Main Rotor Blade failure in any other country. For a period of time, there were about 30 other accidents a year reported through the system. I guarantee that at least 5 - 10 extras weren't reported. Even at the rate of 30, the average is one accident every 12 days of the year. The penny should have dropped somewhere that there was a problem either with the helicopter or the way it was operated. Was there a cover up?

Australia was a great proving ground for the R22 when it first went into production. I flew Serial number 004 at one stage and it had been rebuilt many times. The hostile desert environment played havoc with the early drive pulleys while the Main Rotor Blades fitted to the R22 and R22 HP gave us some wonderful adrenalin moments as we rapidly maneuvered the machine while chasing around or blocking off unruly cattle or buffalo.

Experienced helicopter pilots will appreciate what was happening when the helicopter was pulled into a maneuver which required the helicopter to rapidly de-accelerate (bleed off energy) from high speed and carry out a very tight turn to block off an animal which had a mind of it's own and wanted to break away from the herd.

To stop both the engine and rotor from over-speeding, the pilot often had the engine throttle shut and the collective lever pulled way up in the turn due to  aerodynamic forces on the rotors. The Main Rotor Revs wanted to scream off the clock while the scramble to stop them suddenly heading back to extreme low revs when rolling the machine into level flight was sometimes a heart stopping event. This was often offset by the sheer look of terror in the passenger's eyes.

It was not uncommon to see these machines with bent main rotor pitch link rods due to the main rotor over-speeding. Flying this little beast most days for 9 months of the year was fatiguing, a challenge and also fun. The fitment of heavier blade tip weights and, 10 years later, the mandatory fitment of an engine RPM governor made a big leap forward in safety.

Then the accidents started. Click  Here  for some photos.

Maybe because it was a new type which wasn't suitable for all; maybe it was because some operators treated it like a Bell 47 or maybe it was as simple as the mind set of experienced operators who thought that "they knew it all" - whatever the cause, many expected too much from the "Robbie".

Lets look at some of the common problems:

Mechanical:

It couldn't handle the tropical heat and had many failures of the lower clutch actuator bearing with consequence loss of drive to the main transmission. This was a special bearing due to modified internal clearances and was clearly marked in the Robinson Spare Parts Manual and the Maintenance Manual as critical to flight with no replacements except those purchased from The Robinson Helicopter Company (RHC). The RHC replacement part came in at about $A1000. Some bright spark found that a similar bearing could be purchased at their local bearing shop for about $A25 and they used those bearings to save money. What a great initiative except that the local bearing did not have the modified internal clearance and was not an approved certified part. It was illegal to fit these bearings - but no problem to those who may not have cared about the people flying the machines.

Click Here to view a failed bearing.

It took a long while to get reliable engine to transmission main drive belts and drive belt pulleys. The constant power on/off operating in the 35 + degree C heat and  environment of high silica and iron ore dust meant that we developed excellent smell skills - the nose was always searching for the first signs of pending belt failure, the smell of burning rubber.

To keep on topic and rather than fill this page with more mechanical topics - click Here to go to the R22 component of this web site.

Operational

Thankfully Frank Robinson designed the R22 with a collapsible cabin seat structure to absorb the energy of a hard or crash landing. When things went horribly wrong, the bottom of the seat was designed to collapse into a storage compartment beneath. This in turn helped the crew gain a reduction in spinal compression damage. The flight manual and seat structure were placarded clearly that no hard objects were to be placed under the seats. However there was no other space to store water bottles, spare oil and all the odds and ends needed for a helicopter operating away from base. In many accidents the spinal damage to the crew was caused or accentuated by the non compressible hard objects under the seat. To make things worse, some operators had HF radios installed under the seats. CASA even approved these life threatening modifications.

Click here to see my letter to Frank Robinson and here to see his reply.

I bet that if you looked under the seats of almost any R22 today that you would find this situation unchanged - hard objects that would cause spinal damage in an accident.

The clincher to the seat story was when I noticed a helicopter being repaired after an accident. The seats had collapsed and the vertical support structure was bent and broken. The mechanics were going to great pains to fit a new thicker and stronger metal structure "so that it wouldn't break so easily if it had another crash". They had no idea of aircraft design and the certification requirements. I certainly hope that they listened to what I had to say otherwise the next accident would have resulted in serious damage to the crews' spines. To rub salt into the wound - the company was an approved Robinson Maintenance centre.

Over 20 years I never knew of RHC conducting any audits on the Australian service centers they had approved. You would have to ask "Why not" after all the problems that happened and the famous quotation from a senior RHC staff member "Australia has 10% of the R22 production and gives us 90% of the problems."

If RHC didn't know all - why didn't their  Australian Distributor tell them?

Was it the all mighty dollar at work or simply ignorance of the scale of falsification? Maybe they did try to get CASA to move, maybe they didn't. I guess that we will never know unless RHC or the Australian Distributor makes public any correspondence showing their efforts.

My challenge to RHC and their Distributor is for them to support this push for accountability and provide me with documents I can publish on this site.

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And then there were the non RHC approved Main Transmission and Tail Rotor Gearbox overhauls, sometimes made up of parts from different crashed machines!

See the next part of this story for some disturbing info on this and the attitude of pilots towards overloading the helicopter.

Click here for Part Six: continuation of "the R22 Problems"

Want to contribute either anonymously or otherwise to this story? Why not send me e-mail ! Your privacy will be respected - your information welcomed.

Safe flying