Pictured: 14-year veteran of the Huntington
Beach police force who has died after
helicopter crashed down on Newport Beach
prompting frantic rescue: Another officer
remains in critical condition
Daily Mail (UK),
by
James Gordon
Original Article
Posted By: Imright,
2/20/2022 7:34:30 AM
A 14-year veteran of the Huntington Beach Police Department has died after the helicopter he was in crashed down on Newport Beach, California, on Saturday evening. Nicholas Vella, 44, died soon after being pulled from the wreckage. His co-pilot, a 16-year veteran, was in critical condition, Huntington Beach Police said at a 10 p.m. news conference.'The city of Huntington Beach, the residents of Huntington Beach, the Huntington Beach Police Department and the law enforcement community have lost an officer
Reply 1 - Posted by:
bamapreacher 2/20/2022 7:43:16 AM (No. 1077244)
What's with helicopters and beaches? Another one crashed in Miami Beach yesterday barely missing some swimmers.
7 people like this.
Reply 2 - Posted by:
Mizz Fixxit 2/20/2022 7:52:02 AM (No. 1077251)
FTA: Parra said the helicopter was heading to a 'disturbance fight call' in Newport Beach at the time it came down.
So, a helicopter was dispatched to a “disturbance fight call.” That sounds like an inappropriate use of resources. Why not send nearby squad cars?
15 people like this.
Reply 3 - Posted by:
planetgeo 2/20/2022 9:30:48 AM (No. 1077340)
So now the UK Daily Mail has started covering local news in the US? I'm not complaining, I just want to know if we can get a subscription. It appears to be the only newspaper that we can get reasonably broad and fair coverage of events in the US. They have no fear of probing and reporting on forbidden topics and players here.
Yes, their goofy, paragraph-length headlines and cheesy-sexy pictures are tabloid-worthy, but hey, even here at this quality salon even my best ad-blocking software can't seem to block the cheesy-sexy ads. By the way, have you seen what the camera caught some shoppers wearing?
5 people like this.
Reply 4 - Posted by:
lakerman1 2/20/2022 10:31:11 AM (No. 1077404)
During my modest amount flight training, I learned that water would appear to provide a soft landing, but that is incorrect.
The pilot was looking for a clear spot on the beach, and didn't find it. (a helicopter can make an auto rotation landing, engine off. I have participated in one, the instructor scared the hell out of me, and I never flew in a helicopter again. And the instructor? He was ferrying a Cessna two engine aircraft to the Canary Islands a year later, and was lost at sea.)
3 people like this.
Reply 5 - Posted by:
DVC 2/20/2022 12:17:52 PM (No. 1077516)
When I was in engineering grad school, one of my room mates was working on his Master's degree in engineering, too. His topic of research was helicopter rotor dynamics. He showed me some research films taken from a camera mounted on the rotor head, rotating with the rotor, looking right down one of the blades in flight. The amount of flex, twist, and flapping that those long blades do in slow motion tracking films like this are very disconcerting to see. Watching from the outside they look nice and rigid. They are NOT.
I've got a few hours piloting helos, but not a rated helo pilot, and while they are very much fun to fly, I don't trust them for mechanical reliability. Extremely complex, many, many highly stressed critical parts all working together in perfect symphony. One of hundreds of parts goes wrong....and the pilot is a passenger.
Autorotation landings (a sort of gliding like a maple leaf) after a loss in power are possible if the rotor system is still working properly, but difficult to pull off, and autorotation has airspeed and altitude minimum requirements to get a survivable emergency landing.
Another friend was a civilian emergency helo flight nurse. The helo he was riding in had a serious transmission failure, and crashed. He was the only survivor of the three on board. Broken back, still strapped in, not found for an hour, and now a paraplegic in a powered wheel chair with only a bit of forearm and finger movement.
Helos are neat but damned dangerous flying machines. I prefer the parts holding me up to be rigidly attached to the fuselage.....fixed wing aircraft.
4 people like this.
Reply 6 - Posted by:
caljeepgirl 2/20/2022 4:01:33 PM (No. 1077656)
Yep, give me a glide path any day! My first ever ride in ANY aircraft was as 20-yr-old in a helicopter transport to SFO. I'll surely never forget it! It was also my last ever ride in a helicopter.
2 people like this.
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