Homer's Fly-In

July 2004

 
Most of this is just photos we are posting now for you folks that want to get a lookie see at what went on.

Kim and Joe
Thanx bunches for the pics you took and sent us.

If anyone else has any pics at all from the fly in please send them to us so we can post them here.

Homer's Fly-In was, as usual, a super event.

Donna and I once again got to spend another wonderful 4 day vacation with some really great people.  We even got to meet some nice people we wished we hadn't gotten to meet (as you will see as you read on) lol.

 After we got parked and unloaded the trailer the fun began.  Ya know there isn't anywhere on this earth at any given moment this many people gather in one place at one time that are more fun to be with than Homer's.  It's a gift from God just getting to be a part of it all. Everyone that attends the Fly-In is absolutely wonderful and I don't know how but it just keeps getting better and better.

Homer, Sharon, Stephanie

and all the the other folks that help put this event together

Thanks Bunches!!

Donna and I and I'm sure everyone else who attends sure do appreciate you all and your efforts

This is a photo someone made of Homer Bell and BJ Schramm during the 2003 Fly-In

 Awards Time

Homer Bell

Day Time Fun

Night Time Fun

There were 3 folks that held seminars this year regarding the Secondary problem.

John Spurling and Matthew Dock of Pro-Drive, Jack Kane of Epi-eng, and one other fellow whos name escapes me.the later person has a mod that involves a strut that is attached between the main shaft and secondary shaft. The fellow pictured above is Jack Kane, he's another fellow workin hard on solving the shaft breakages.  I missed alot of the information he presented but from what I got out of from other folks who got to witness the whole thing his fix is very close if not exactly the same as Pro-Drives with the exception he's going to use a different type of metal for the shaft which is harder than the type of steel Pro-Drive is using.

These two ships flew here all the way from Canada

This ship is a Jet Exec with the Kiss Avation kit I think.

This ship belongs to Al Behuncick. It has has several mods Al's come up with thats he sells. It sure would be nice if Al had a web site because I hear he's got some pretty neat stuff.

This sure ain't no RotorWay but its absolutely totally kewl!

I bet this thing really gives a lotta ex-military guys some major flashbacks.

So far in my travels this is by far the nicest turbine ship I've ever witnessed

every detail of this ship is totally awesome.

I got to fly in Larry (Gator) Wells ship.

He took it to altitude and let me have the controls for awhile.  The ship is awesome power wise.  After a bit of flying I took it down over a bean field and attempted to hover it which wasn't a pretty site at all lol. Larry took the controls and did a totaly kewl confined area take off. Sitting on the ground he rolled in the power and we went straight up into the air.  This ship has so much power I think it would have kept climbing forever lol.

Thanx Larry! 

A pretty kewl looking ground handling

unit that belongs to Mike Mazar.

With everything goin on I didn't get a chance to ask him about it but I'd sure like to see the plans for it.

Share Mike Share!

The blades hanging in the trailer belong to Tom Upman I think.  Donna and I have been lookin for ways to haul our blades in out trailer in the event we ever had to haul them off the helicopter so I snaped this pic.  The other 4 pics are of someones trailers one of which I thought was pretty unique.

Our trip had a few bumps to it this year

Donna and I didn't have much luck on this trip at all, it was like we had a curse on us or something lol. In all we had 10 events and thats not counting cutting my hand unhooking the trailer from the bus or missing our favorite sunday night dinner when we got back home lol.

Anyways heres how it all went down from begining to end with a sorta optimistic view of course lol.

We escaped work and left at 4:30 PM with a big smile on our face finally headed out for Homer's.

About 7:00 PM running at about 70 mph up I-75 we took a hit smack in the center of the overhang on the bus from a huge bird committing suicide.  This isn't an all too uncomon thing to see happen to someone,  we see it all the time in our line of work but in all the miles we've driven in our lifes up to now its never happened to us.  At the time we really didn't think much about it but by the time you get to the end of this page you'll count it to lol.

At about 7:45 PM just above Lexington we had our second stroke of bad luck, a blow out on the left front trailer tire. 

 All of the tires were 3 1/2 years old with around 12,000 miles on them looked brand new with no sign of cracking, even the tread on them looked like new, but stuff happens right?.  Luckily for us one tire will carry the entire load and we were able to hobble our rig from about the 110 to the 121 mile marker to get to the nearest truck stop.  Donna went inside to inquire who to call at 8 PM in the evening to get a tire.  The guy at the counter gave her a number to call but all this fellow handled was semi truck tires but said to try his brother-in-law.  Donna called the number he gave her and that fellow said he would be out to fix us up.  While we waited we got the trailer jacked up and took the rim off ready for a new tire.  The fellow showed up about 9:30 with a tire, only problem is it was a car tire not a trailer tire.  It was only a 4 ply, not a 6 ply like we had.  Beggers can't be choosers so we let the guy put the tire on the rim and we paid him $148 for the tire and service call.  We installed the wheel on the trailer and got back on the road.

Next was when we were about 12 miles from Homer's on Hwy. 68 we ran over not one but two cats, one in hot pursuit of the other, also apparently on a suicide mission.  I guess you can imagine about this time we were both thinking we should turn around and head home huh, but we ain't near that smart lol.

We rolled into Homer's at or about 1 AM in the morning and everybody that was there already was sleeping so we just parked the rig near the flight line and crashed for the remainder of the night.  First thing bright and early Donna went up to Homer's house and talked to Stephanie & Sharon and commandeered a phone book and some information on tires.  She found a place in Hillsboro about 12 miles to the east that claimed to have 4 new tires for our trailer.  We took off for town and wouldn't you know it, our 5th stroke of bad luck was upon us, they only had 3 matching tires and couldn't even get us a 4th one by Saturday, even from Cincinnati, so we took what they had and took a chance on the 4th one holding up for us until we got home and could locate a 4th one...hell, worst case scenario we had 3 spares now so more power to us right lol.

After that little venture we headed back to the ranch and found ourselves with yet a 6th stroke of bad luck, we were now without a camping spot.  While we were saying our hellos to folks a fellow pulled his trailer right into the only spot we could fit our 69 foot long rig into and even with that we still needed another 40 foot or so to be able to get the heli out the door and clear of the ramp so that meant we were screwed and it looked like we wouldn't be able to camp with our Tennessee Taliban buds.  Thanks to Charlene, Mike's wife, and John Pohlman's wife Charmienne for thinking of it and a whole bunch of super nice folks who were going to move heaven n earth to make a spot for us we got to camp with them.  The plan was to move the entire line of RV's including the main tent toward the field about 15 or so feet so that we could fit in behind everyone.  We got lucky and only had to move a few trailers and we were in like flin lol.
Would you believe another stroke of of bad luck,,,,this make 7 events now lol, somehow a water line came loose and flooded our floor in the bus.  We thought it was our dog having accidents on the floor on the way up until the 2nd time we noticed it, poor old Karo got scolded for it and it wasn't even him lol. On the hot water tank there are two fittings and the intake port on it was loose and had a steady drip coming out of it. It is installed way behind the sink and the water was flooding out under the sink and stove and going under the hardwood floor I guess and coming out 5 feet away from it all.  It wasn't until we got parked and Donna went to get something from under the sink that she noticed it was flooded and looked under the stove and saw it was too.  Once we figured out it wasn't the dog it wasn't hard to track down lol.

Event 8

And this one wasn't at all a minor one

During our first and only flight at the Fly-In this year Donna and I had a moment we won't soon, if ever, forget.

In light of the bad luck we had so far making the trip to Homer's this year, on Thursday afternoon before we pulled the heli from the trailer we gave the ship the preflight from hell. Friday morning after breakfast we set out to do some flying.  We once again went over the ship and deemed it airworthy and we were ready to go.  We fired it up and hovered it over to the main field as usual for 10 or so minutes prior to taking to the air which is something we always do prior to any flight just to make sure everything seems to be ok prior to taking off. After a final before flight instrument check we took the active and flew off to the north and entered an extended left hand pattern (1 mile out) around the Bell Ranch.  Midfield on the upwind side of the pattern running at 500 feet AGL and 80 mph we turned the ship toward the NNE and headed for the town of Hillsboro. The plan was to give the nice folks at Highland Tire, the tire store where we got our 3 new trailer tires installed at, a fly by and then back to the Bell Ranch for more fun.

These are pics Donna took on our take off from the Bell Ranch and on our way out and our partial trip back from Hillsboro.

All of a sudden something went amuck! and we had to do an unplanned descent.

Last I remember we were climbing to our intended altitude of 1000 AGL at 65 MPH.  We had just passed through 800 feet AGL and just about to cross Hwy. 50 below us when something happened that caused the yellow Trouble Warning light on the instrument panel to light up and the ship to have an immediate loss of power.

I immediately entered an auto rotation and at the same time trying diligently to get the power back on line.  After two very short attempts I abandoned that effort and went on in.  Donna asked "what's going on", and my reply was "were in trouble" and that's all that was said the entire way down until we stopped at the bottom.

The sight picture we had wasn't very pretty at all. We were too close to the tree line to make the field directly below us which was much larger.  My options were to do a 180 auto which I haven't done too many of, or take a straight in approach to the smaller field we ended up in.  At altitude it looked pretty good but when we got down there it sure didn't. We came in about 20 feet, if that much, over that tree line and that's when I got sight of that bank we dang sure couldn't land on.  I flaired the ship to a dead stop at what I thought was as close as we dared go toward the edge of the bank, rolled it forward to a level position and pulled the collective up to my arm pit with everything I had.  At or about 3 to 5 foot AGL off the ground the main rotors, having gave us all they had left, totally lost all lift.  We literally fell from that point on hitting the ground pretty hard. After we came to a rest the next thing I remember was the ELT going off and the engine running at idle. I reached up and cut all the switches off and then just sat there a few seconds watching the main rotor wind down collecting myself before I turned off the ELT alarm.

This is the field that we auto rotated /augured into depending how you look at it lol.
It shows the final path we went in on and our final resting place about 10 feet from a steep bank.

X marks the spot

Putting it mildly Donna and I were both absolutely amazed we were still upright and in one piece. We bailed out of the ship thinking we had made it with out doing any damage.

I was looking at the landing gear in amazement and Donna called out, we had had a tail boom strike.

 Seeing that chunk missing from the top of our tail boom sure was a sad sight to behold but at the same time looking at each other we both said, it sure could have been a lot worse.  The tail rotor belt was still there pretty much untouched by it all with the exception of three very light cuts and the belt had rolled.  My guess is the blades just barley ticked the top of the tail boom and ripped the metal away otherwise the belt would have been cut in two.  After the shock of seeing that we noticed even more damage to the tail boom at each access door.  You could see where the tail boom had slightly buckled right in the center of the span of both inspection panels and some more forward toward the front on both sides. At that point once again I tried to raise someone on the com but no one responded.

After that I started pulling panels to see if I could see what in the @*$@ happened to us.  Everything was just where it was supposed to be and it all appeared to be in fine condition.  About 5 minutes later I tried again to hail someone on the com and I think it was Brett Newhart that responded, wow! what a good feeling to hear someone come back on that thing lol.  I told him we had a mayday and had to make an emergency landing and that we were both unharmed but unfortunately the the heli had an issue and asked that he would relay the information back to folks at the Ranch and see if someone with a small trailer could help us out in getting it back to the ranch.

Here comes the fun part, people began arriving by the bunches.

First on the scene as I was speaking to Brett on the Com was about 6 firefighters who just happened to be putting a roof on a house at the time and saw the whole thing from the beginning until we vanished out of their sight over the trees.  They said we were blowing black smoke on the way down and thought they were coming to a fire.

Next on the scene was 3 Hillsboro Deputy Sheriff's shortly followed by 2 Ohio State Troopers.  Next came a couple of helicopters from the Fly-In and from that point on it got pretty crowded lol.  People from Homer's Ranch began arriving as well as lookieloos that were just wanting to see what all the flashing lights on the highway and hulabaloo was about.  We even had a fly over from the local channel 5 Hughes 500 news helicopter.  They hung out in a 500 foot hover southwest of the field for awhile.

Yours truley, and yes I'm taking the 5th on this picture lol

All the officials were pretty nice with the exception of that the Ohio State Trooper that contained me in his easy bake oven like a convict for at least 30 minutes or better.

He was a nice fellow, perhaps he was afraid I was going to take it on the lamb and fly away or maybe it was my evil looking mug that made him suspicious lol.  After he finished emptying out the ink from a couple of pens doing the aircraft accident report papers he turned me loose and once again I was a free man lol.

Homer, John Spurling, John Pohlman and a few other fellows had removed the main blades from the ship and were waiting for the officer to get permission from the FAA to pack it up and head back to the ranch with it.   After a brief wait the FAA talked to us (and wanted to make sure we didn't try to fly the heli lol) and gave the officer permission to let us load the heli up and take it back to the Ranch which took all of about 10 minutes to get on the trailer thanks to Homer Bell and some other fine folks that helped.

If we had to have an incident like this happen it couldn't have been at a better place with a better bunch of folks around.  We sure want you folks to know what a great help you all were to us while we were dealing with all the officials and their paper work, all the while still reeling it all in mentally.

Ya'll really made it a much better situation for us!

When we got back we unloaded the heli from the transport trailer and pulled all the panels once again to see what we could see.  After several of us looked it all over and finding nothing visibily wrong we cut the rear and forward tail rotor belts to remove them and made an attempt at starting the ships engine without the main rotorblades installed.  It fired right up without a moments hesitation and appeared to have no problems at all, not even a minor miss much less a major lack of power. There were alot of folks there that had ideas of what could have happened but there just weren't any signs of trouble.

Later that evening with some help from some good people we reinstalled the main blades and Donna and I pulled the heli into our trailer and began bolting it all down for the trip home.  When I went to strap the blades into the hangers I noticed there wasn't any resistance whatsoever when I backed the blades up, meaning there was no sprag clutch engagement.  They free wheeled in both directions and that only met one thing.......A Broken Secondary shaft.  Everything on it was in the proper place and the rotorhead even turned when we ran the engine, I guess that's what fooled all of us.  When we rotated the blade backwards the top of the shaft moved but there was no movement whatsoever on the bottom end of it. 

The next morning, ironically while the secondary shaft seminars were going on, I got to meet the local FAA representative from Cincinnati.

Just like all the FAA folks here in Tennessee we've dealt with this fellow was just great.  He filled out the forms, checked to see that my Rotorcraft licence, medical, and air worthiness papers were all in order and it was a done deal taking no more than an hour from start to finish.  Including all the stuff we talked about that had nothing to do with the event lol.

The short version is he wrote it up as an incident with no pilot error on my part.

Looking at the hole in the tailboom it's kinda hard to reason with that no pilot error part, I wonder if my mama's gonna see it that way lol. 

For the trip home we took an old cardboard door glass box and wrapped it around the tail boom.

We then secured it in place using the ratchet strap on the tail boom support and a second ratchet strap on the rear.  Once we tightened it down it was a stout as it ever was.

The additional damage to the tail boom

The engine appears to still be at the correct hight and the landing gear and airframe also seem to be undamaged.

Our secondary with all the temp dots blown

This was a shock to see.  I monitor the bearing temp more than I do the main rotor RPM and the last I saw of it it was at 142 degrees which is a normal operating temp for our ship at the ambient outside temperature we were running in.  Evidently the temp gauge doesn't do much for us, that or perhaps it flared to an all time high after it broke and we were autorotating to the ground.  Some folks say you get a temperature rise prior to the mishap and some say you don't, all I can truthfully tell you is what I remember.

We may have had an alert to this problem on a prior flight back at home.  We had an engine temp increase while we were circling a friends house taking some aerial photos.  We were 2 miles from our home base when this happened and we immediately landed the ship.

We checked the ship out and there were no coolant leaks and the coolant level itself was where it should be, the engine oil level and oil pressure was fine. We did find an anomaly though, that we had blown our 170 degree temp dot on the secondary shaft.

 The next day May 9, 2004, we put two new temp dots on the shaft and hovered the ship for 30 minutes and shut it down.  We had no high temps nor did any of the heat dots blow so we came to the conclusion we were ok and it must have just been a flook.

Our thinking at the time was that the light 4 knot winds mostly at our tail on that flight and circling our friends house may have given us the higher engine compartment temps thus blowing the 170 temp dot.  Next we flew it in the pattern around our airport again with 4 knot winds and again we didn't have any problems in the air nor when we did a reinspection back on the ground.  Everything was just as it should be so we wrote it off.  A few weeks later on the day of our airports annual fly-in we put another hour on the ship without any indications of temperature troubles so we thought we were good to go right up until this happened to us at Homer's.

At the end of all that, Donna and I decided it gave us a bad feeling in our gut and we backed off from flying the ship.

We had a plan!

It was to fly the ship only enough to keep me current and to save the remaining time of about 3 hours for flying it at Homer's Fly-In.  After we got back home on the weekends that followed we were going to perform the lengthly 100 hour inspection and while we were at it we were going to install John Spurling's new Pro-Drive Secondary Setup.

The moral to the story is:
Next time Donna and I get a bad feeling were going to listen to it lol.
 

Remember that trip to the tire store where we could only get 3 new tires, well good old tire number 4 gave it up about 30 miles south of where the first one did.

On the bright side we did have those 3 spare tires aboard now and all we had to do was figure out how to get the old one off the rim and put one of the old tires on it and only took an hour and a half but we did it with only a few hand tools lol.

This is a site we're always glad to see!

After a quick drink, we ain't talking coke here lol, and chatting with some friends for a bit we headed out for our 2nd favorite scooter bar, Quaker Steak & Lube, where our daughter Brandy works days.  Brandy joined us when she got off from her 2nd job and we had a wonderful time.

PS

 
Full contact autos are much different than the pretend ones

If you've never done them I highly suggest you go rent some time in a ship and do some.

The power recovery autos we learned to do during training and keep practicing afterwards are a great idea but personally I feel if it wasn't for the time I spent training with Frank Sweet in his Schweitzer helicopter doing full engine out autos to the ground, I really don't think it would have went as well as it did.

Frank taught me how to do these and sent me back home with some very valuable lessons and insites of not only what to do, but what not to do in this type of situation.  I've also got to say all the close quarters training I did with Frank was a godsend.  Thinking back to it all, every manuaver Frank taught me was done in as small of a box as it could have fit in.

I hate to admit it but it took me up until the moment I was writing these words to finally understand why.

Thanks Frank!

Donna and I both feel we owe our lives to you.

  Practice those Auto's

The End!

Well Sorta

Some emails received from friends we thought we'd share lol

God sent a lil bird down from heaven to whisper in your ear that it was not a good day to fly. So you plastered the poor lil bird on the windshield! Then the lord sent not one but two of his finest cats down from the heavens to deliver the message, again you smoked them on the road! In desperation the Lord seen you were getting closer to your destination He blew your tire to stop you and even fixed it where the tire man did not have a replacement! What did you do? You stuck anything on that trailer and went on! When you got to the campsite God parked his own RV in your spot so you would leave and go home and dare not drag the helicopter out that day!!!!! But nooooooooo you  just had to get in there!!! So... God sent 3 animals, a tire man and a whole campground full of people to try to stop you. Oh and God told me the tire He blew out on the way home was just to PISS YOU OFF!!!!

Sure are glad you guys are ok!!

Gary and Lisa

Clell & Donna,

First off let me say that I am glad that you both are okay after your mishap in the air.

I am sure that one of the reasons that you both are okay is because of the very good job the both of you have done on your ship & a very large part Clell in your piloting skills. A good job in putting her down in one piece (well with a little bit missing). I still would like to some time in the future to come out and see you both and your ship (also the other 2 members of your family). The both of you have no idea just how much you have helped Jiji and myself (and I am sure many others too). By putting all that you have and continue to do so, on your web site about your adventures, tips, your build story, continuing advice, recommendations and any new stuff. Please do not stop doing so. Again, we are both glad that you are both okay.

(Micki)

Michael L. Sturkey

Clell and Donna,

Congratulations on your successful autorotation and thank you for your well written article on your experiences at Homer’s!

Dave

Hey Dude

I suspect you are now home. Hope the return trip was less eventful than the trip to Homer’s. You did a great job getting your ship down on the skids. Have you been able to look it over for other damage? Hope it is just the secondary and tail boom. Always enjoy seeing you folks. Stay safe.

Regards 

Tom Uppman