NTSB PHOTO
The view toward Raton Municipal
Airport (KRTN) from the initial impact site.
was acquired by Rotorcraft Development Corp., which added the accident helicopter to its TC in August 2007. The UH-1H has two-bladed main and tail rotors pow-
ered by a single Lycoming (now Honeywell) T53 two- spool turboshaft engine. The variant in the accident helicopter is rated for a maximum continuous output of 1,300 shaft horsepower, and the aircraft’s maximum gross weight was 9,500 lbs. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) docket- file maintenance records indicate that on Oct. 4, 2017— barely three months before the accident—the helicopter had been fitted with dual-screen Garmin G500H primary flight–multifunction displays, a Garmin GTN 750H GPS/ Nav/Comm multifunction touchscreen display, and a radar altimeter equipped with fore and aft antennas. The pilot’s familiarity with this equipment has not been reported.
At the time of the accident, the aircraft was regis- tered in the restricted category for external-load work. Under FAR 91.313, flight on restricted-category civil air- craft is limited to “the special purpose for which it is cer- tificated,” and personnel on board are limited to crew members, trainees, and those others “required to accomplish that special purpose.” An exclusion for Part 133 external-load rotorcraft operations specifically states “nonpassenger-carrying.”
The Pilot The 57-year-old commercial pilot was too young to have flown combat missions in Vietnam, but he’d learned to fly Hueys in the US Army. According to an insurance application filed 10 days before the accident, he com- pleted initial pilot training in the army in 1983–84 and flew both the UH-1H and the Sikorsky UH-60A Black
72 ROTOR WINTER 2020
Hawk during his enlistment. He attended college after his discharge and went on to a nearly 20-year career fly- ing SAR and law enforcement missions for the California Highway Patrol. After a five-year absence from professional flying, he
returned in April 2015 as a contract pilot and signed on with the accident operator as a full-time employee on Sep. 1, 2017. Both the insurance application and a medi- cal application filed a month earlier claimed 2,065 hours of experience in UH-1 helicopters. Almost all his lifetime flight experience was in turbine helicopters. The 67-year-old occupant of the left front seat was a commercial pilot who also had learned to fly in the US Army’s flight training program—in 1970–71. He’d served as a Bell AH-1 Cobra gunship pilot in Vietnam, earning the Purple Heart for wounds received in combat. He was also employed by the helicopter’s operator, though not primarily as a pilot; his insurance application, submitted on Feb. 7, 2017, listed 20 flight hours in the previous 12 months with just 1.5 hours in the UH-1H (the rest were in the closely related Cobra). This pilot had served in law enforcement for 32 years, retiring in February 2004 as chief of the Pasadena, Texas, Police Department, which he joined after leaving the army in 1971. In the interim, he’d served as a dispatcher, officer, and instructor pilot. About 2,600 of his 3,065 flight hours of rotorcraft experience were in piston heli- copters. He was the surviving passenger’s father.
The Terrain The elevation of KRTN is 6,349 feet mean sea level. The NTSB report describes the accident site as “a flat mesa about 10.7 nautical miles and 102º from KRTN at an ele- vation of about 6,932 feet,” or 100 feet higher than the
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