Single Engine 61

Continued from previous (below) post....

So, we are sitting in some dark Norwegian seaside pub, well into the Guinness, and I'm telling you about the time I was actually scared in a helicopter.  Sure, I've lost engines before.  Had a 206's only engine quit, but we were in the hover so no biggy, as well as a Bell 47 that I got restarted before I had to do any fancy piloting, and there was the 222 that had one engine roll back to idle power as we climbed out of a hospital helipad in the middle of the night, and there was that S76 engine that we shut down at 7000 feet IFR due to the oil temperature climbing into the red, but this one?  It scared me.

So there we were......heading South along the rugged West Newfoundland coast in a big ole S61, at about one hundred feet above ice laden heaving seas, with barely an eighth of a mile visibility in a heavy, heavy snow squall, struggling to maintain visual with the cliff face off our left, with perhaps enough fuel to make Stephenville airport, and the number two engine just gave up the ghost.  The pilot now at the controls, with some 30,000 hours one of thee most experienced guys on the planet, not appearing overly fussed about the whole situation.  I had a WAC chart in my lap and one of those new fangled GPS moving map units, trying to weigh options.  There was really nowhere to turn back to and up to now, all the squalls had been short lived.  We did not expect to be in it for long. Scouring the map, it did appear that the coast line did not smoothly lead to the airport.  There was a long point that ran perpendicular to our track, and we certainly did not have enough fuel to follow the point all the way around.  Actually, I was quite concerned about the fuel that we did have.  We didn't know why the number two engine had quit, but I was fully conscious of the fact that we had refueled from drums, and it wasn't stretching my imagination much that perhaps faulty fuel would soon be taking out the other engine and we'd end up in those ice laden heaving seas calling sweetly just below us, only to be smashed into the cliff face long before we got overly chilled.  But at present the remaining engine was plugging away happily so we elected to do the same.

The WAC chart was sorely lacking in detail, but it was obvious that we had to cross the land in front of us, to get into the bay that led to the airport.  I briefed my buddy and he shrugged and when I claimed that to our left appeared to be the best option, he pulled the aircraft up abit, banked slightly, and instead of salt water, we now had the tops of pines passing below us.  I called the powerline tower that loomed out of the snow on my right and he pulled up sharply, as we watched the wires pass just below us.  We may have lost visual for a moment but soon the tops of the pines were brushing by in the chin windows, and before long, there was our old pal the sea.  The pilot cranked right, heading up the point into the wind to maintain visual with the land, now on my side.

Now you may ask why we didn't just climb and continue IFR, but trust me, icing in those condition would have had us in a serious world of hurt in minutes.  And remember what I said about falling out of the sky if the airspeed dropped much below forty or fifty?  Keep that in the back of your mind.

So I calmly tell the pilot behind the controls that we are going in the wrong direction.  I'll never forget his calm voice asking "Are you sure?"  He cussed at my response and turned left, out to sea, turning downwind.  At fifty feet on the radar altimeter, no longer visual with land, single engine in an aircraft that requires both engines or at least fifty knots of airspeed, I watched the airspeed hit zero.  That was when I was scared.  I waited for the ice laden seas to come bursting through the chin bubble at any instant, and I felt bad that my family would be going on alone without me, but somehow the pilot in me kept calling "Airspeed. Airspeed. We got zero airspeed." 

I'm not quite sure how, but we didn't go into the sea.  Somehow that 30,000 hours of experience in the seat next to me ever so gently got the airspeed to register 20, 30, 40 then 50 knots, we regained visual with the coast, and we were heading in the right direction, but now that forty-five knot wind was on our ass.  A forty-five knot tail wind with an aircraft that needs fifty knots of airspeed to keep aloft single engine yields a speed over the ground of almost one hundreds knots, and in one eighth of a mile vis in heavy snow, trying to maintain visual reference was a genuine task, and every one of those 30,000 hours was being fully utilized.  I could hear the adrenaline in my voice as I called the mayday into the Stephenville control tower, and the tower responded with what we already knew, the visibility was one eighth of a mile.  Luckily the airport had one runway that ran perpendicular to the coast line and started right on the beach, but it was surrounded by mountains so we had one kick at the can.  I dialed up the localizer and briefed my compatriot that when I called it, he had to turn ninety degrees left and land.  I waited, and waited, watching the runway grow closer on the GPS, then the localizer needle started drifting in and I called for the turn.  There was nothing to see.  It was a complete white-out, heading into mountains with a forty-five knot tailwind, single engine.  With an impossibly cool voice the other pilot called "This is going to be fun" as he lowered the collective and I started calling radar altimeter heights.

We were grounding at eighty knots when the wheels first touched the tarmac.  Somehow we bounced and floundered with the odd glimpse of dark tarmac in the chin bubble, but eventually we got stopped and let the tail swing around putting us into wind on the runway.  We still couldn't see anything.  The low fuel light had been on for some time.  I called the tower and told him we were safely down, but we were not exactly sure where.  The snow started to lighten and we found a taxiway, and as we taxied clear the squall passed and the sun shone brightly once again.  The skies were blue.  In the end, it turned out the engine had ingested ice, probably created from the heavy snow which had accumulated in the sliding door rail, and subsequently dislodged.  It was not the first known case with the S61.

And that was definitely one of my more exciting tales.  Any pilot will tell you, it's far better to be bored.