Kwan
Senior Heliman
Location: Los Angeles
| Extremely saddened by the news. Condolences to the families. As this filters through the heli community, hopefully this will establish a better safety guideline for general field operations.
This incident reminded me of another incident a few years back locally...extreme 3D was just becoming mainstream, and at one of the local airshows at an airport, a couple rc heli pilots were invited to do a demo for the airshow. One of the pilots were eager to please the crowd on hand and performed maneuvers that were beyond his abilities. To make a long story short, the pilot was hacked by his own rc helicopter and suffered considerable blunt trauma to his torso region and was hospitalized.
There are many of us that have taken this sport of ours too seriously. In our eagerness to either improve or impress, safety often suffers, and it is unfortunate that it usually takes a tragedy to make aware of the dangers we face. Similar to traffic laws and regulations, if it were not for prior accidents, we would not have the necessary safety precautions and laws. After seeing several pilot's maneuvers that not only endanger themselves but spectators, it is only inevitable that accidents will occur. At Phoenix FF a couple years back, I even saw one of the top US demo pilots landed his helicopter to tune the engine and reached in with his arm as he lied on the ground with the rotor blades still spinning at full song.
As Stet had pointed out, it is unclear whether this incident occured with or without safety precausions, accidents can occur as per Murphy's Law. It is only up to us to minimize that possibility.
Again, extremely saddened, and condolences to the families.
Kwan |
