Definitely one of my top ten "and there we were...." stories was losing an engine in the venerable ole S61 while on a longline job in the mountains of Western Newfoundland, in a blizzard no less. It seems like a few lifetimes ago now, and best told over cold brews in a dark tavern in Norway. Trust me, I've told many a story over cold brews in dark Norwegian taverns....
With just over 5000 hours at the time, plenty at the helm of IFR twins, but the majority single engine bush work in Canada's North, with considerable longline and slinging experience on the table, I was no spring chicken, but the pilot with me was crowding 30,000 hours, and half of that was on type. I was still relatively new on the huge S61 helicopters, a Sikorsky certified in 1961, hence the moniker. A tour company needed to move a new boat into the Gros Morne fiord in Western Newfoundland, and recent changes to environmental laws forbid dragging the boat over the frozen tundra, so the operator broke the boat into manageable pieces and hired us to sling the bits into the lake. The day for the job was fraught with "streamers", intense snow squalls generated by cold artic air collecting moisture from the warmer waters of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, driven onto the mountainous shoreline in the constant forty-five knot winds that frequent these parts. Overall, despite the odd "streamer", the weather was quite good. The flight from Halifax to the staging area was uneventful, with mostly blue skies and a solid horizon, visibilities never dropping below a mile in the sporadic squalls, and we were soon geared up and longlining.
The slinging went off swimmingly, but there were more lifts than originally planned, and a transient A-Star stopped in and took some of our fuel, forty-five gallon drums driven across the province specifically for this job, leaving us rather tight. We had planned a direct flight South across the four thousand foot mountains to Stephenville Airport to refuel for the flight home, and we could still make it with the fuel we had, but the idea of getting caught in the hills in one of the snow squalls had us recalculate our fuel for the longer route along the coast. It would be very tight but it was definitely the preferred option considering the weather.
Sitting right seat, with all our slinging gear, a couple of engineers and various odds and ends safely stowed in the cavernous aft cabin, I pulled pitch and pushed over the nose and headed down the coast line at five hundred feet in blue skies and crystal clear vis. We hit the first squall about five minutes later, but being over water, with a solid radar picture and a moving map GPS, there wasn't much cause for concern in the limited visibility and we were soon through it. The next squall was not so nice. Well beyond the point of no return fuel wise, the visibility kept deteriorating, as I struggled to maintain visual contact with the rugged cliff face on our left, the angry ice laden seas heaving below us and splashing spectacularly against the rocks. I slowed and descended, slowed and descended, maintaining visual reference, and while far from ideal, it wasn't overly taxing considering the forty five knot quartering headwind.
You see, despite all the hovering around helicopters do, they generally don't much like less than forty knots of fresh air coursing through her blades. Below forty-five knots they become quite unstable and the pilot requires significantly more visual cues than faster airspeeds, and furthermore, once a helicopter slows to the point that their own downwash is circulating through the rotor disc, you can see a significant increase in power required. For older twin engine aircraft like the S61, the loss of one engine is not a significant problem above fifty knots or so, but much below that and you may well not have enough ommph to prevent an unscheduled meeting with terra firma. So....
The visibility was now down to around one eighth of a mile in heavy snow, we were roughly a hundred feet above that unfriendly sea, and the cliffs to our left did not provide any options, so we pushed on, until....BANG....
That was the loss of the number two engine. A quick survey of the gauges confirmed the number two engine had left the party, but with our forward airspeed and quartering headwind, it wasn't a show stopper. The weather was the real problem. The squall was far worse than anything we had encountered previously, and it wasn't letting up in the slightest. As the cliff face, our source of visual reference, was on our left, I was struggling cross cockpit from the right seat, the helo crabbing further right in the strong wind, so the 30,000 hour guy took the controls from the left seat, and I cleaned up the engine failure and started looking for options on the none-too-detailed WAC chart we had, cross referencing our GPS. Things were going to get more interesting......
To be continued......
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