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RIP Black Mamba: Kobe Bryant dead in helicopter crash CONFIRMED


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52 minutes ago, ChiTownDoc said:

Wait 2 heli’s or planes can’t have same tail numbers right?  That would lead to all kinds of issues.  (YourMom confirmed it)

It’s the same aircraft. Those pics with the darker scheme were taken before his last game played with the Lakers. It flew him to the game. Pretty sure the wrap was done for him by Nike and then eventually it was taken off. That’s why the blue/ white coke scheme from the crash site.

As noted by others, Tail number stays with the air frame until changed. Like a license plate, Registered only in one jurisdiction.

 

 

 

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8 minutes ago, T’Boo Ted Marshall said:

I'm a bit confused.  Some reports say he was in a climb  to rise above cloud and others are saying he was rapidly descending and hit a mountain.  

 

He was confused as well.  Apparently totally disoriented.  Happens per many experienced pilots.  
Thing is just slow the fuck down and only operate on the z axis (thats straight up and down I assume) as was noted.  Definitely seems like pilot error.  

Edited by ChiTownDoc
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1 minute ago, ChiTownDoc said:

He was confused as well.  Apparently totally disoriented.  Happens per many experienced pilots.  
Thing is just slow the fuck down and only operate on the z axis as was noted.  Definitely seems like pilot error.  

aren't the preliminary reports saying he was like 20-30ft from not crashing - it's crazy that such a small error means errrbody dead, thats why these instruments that people are referencing exist and why they should be mandatory for flying anything other than personally owned hobby craft.

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1 minute ago, Sbbruin said:

Well, guess who is going to the game Friday against Portland?  Boss just tossed me our tix.  That is going to be one helluva scene Friday.  Gonna need to bring some tissues for sure.

Yeah that is gonna be rough.    That is why I didn't necessarily agree with postponing the game last night.    Their next home game was gonna be EXTREMELY rough whenever it was played

 

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29 minutes ago, immamac said:

aren't the preliminary reports saying he was like 20-30ft from not crashing - it's crazy that such a small error means errrbody dead, thats why these instruments that people are referencing exist and why they should be mandatory for flying anything other than personally owned hobby craft.

Yeah but that's kind of misleading. NTSB dude said they crashed 20-30 ft from the top of a smaller hill that was inside a crescent-shaped area surrounded by even larger hills. He was also descending at 2000 ft per minute. Those people were fucked all the way around even if they had cleared the first smaller hill.

I totally agree with you on mandating safety devices. It's mind blowing that a ~50 foot long, 12 passenger Romulan Warbird of a helicopter would not have these systems.

 

EDIT - and the pilot was apparently using an iPad for GPS navigation?  If that is true then WTF happens when the iPad crashes mid flight, much like my iPad crashes while streaming video from https://www.naughtybutts69.org//ball-danglin'/jerry-and-bob-enjoy-cucumbers-by-the-office-watercooler.mpeg

 

 

 

Edited by smuggs
show yourself NowThis. you're part of our internet family, you wild MF'er.
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34 minutes ago, T’Boo Ted Marshall said:

I'm a bit confused.  Some reports say he was in a climb  to rise above cloud and others are saying he was rapidly descending and hit a mountain.  

 

 

Quote

Zobayan was told to follow a freeway and stay at or below 2,500 feet (762 meters), according to radio traffic. About four minutes later, “the pilot advised they were climbing to avoid a cloud layer,” Jennifer Homendy of the National Transportation Safety Board said Monday.

It was his last message to air traffic controllers.

“When ATC asked what the pilot planned to do, there was no reply,” Homendy said. “Radar data indicates the helicopter climbed to 2,300 feet (701 meters) and then began a left descending turn.”

So to answer your question, he did both, first a climb then for whatever reason started a left descending turn. Maybe as others suggested the turn and descent was inadvertent as he got lost in the clouds, spatial disorientation or vertigo. Or maybe because he was already at 2,300 ft while climbing he knew he could only climb 200 more ft before he violated the 2,500 ft max so he started to descend while turning back towards the direction he came from, not knowing that the mountains were hidden in the clouds.

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24 minutes ago, dad said:

 

So to answer your question, he did both, first a climb then for whatever reason started a left descending turn. Maybe as others suggested the turn and descent was inadvertent as he got lost in the clouds, spatial disorientation or vertigo. Or maybe because he was already at 2,300 ft while climbing he knew he could only climb 200 more ft before he violated the 2,500 ft max so he started to descend while turning back towards the direction he came from, not knowing that the mountains were hidden in the clouds.

Yeah, that left turn had to have been a mistake.  He was supposed to follow the 101, but at Lost Hills started banking left.  That would have put him going away from Mamba Academy.

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47 minutes ago, Sbbruin said:

Well, guess who is going to the game Friday against Portland?  Boss just tossed me our tix.  That is going to be one helluva scene Friday.  Gonna need to bring some tissues for sure.

Yeah ironically I’m going to be in LA when the all star game is here in Chicago.  Gave up 2 good seats and now I’m debating taking em back - not really but if it wasn’t the wife’s bday weekend I’d be there.  Will be an incredible scene. 

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1 hour ago, BillyGoatHill said:

It’s the same aircraft. Those pics with the darker scheme were taken before his last game played with the Lakers. It flew him to the game. Pretty sure the wrap was done for him by Nike and then eventually it was taken off. That’s why the blue/ white coke scheme from the crash site.

As noted by others, Tail number stays with the air frame until changed. Like a license plate, Registered only in one jurisdiction.

 

 

 

Makes sense.

Edited by d2o
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49 minutes ago, C-Man said:

Heard Gordo on the Musers talking today and he wss reading something that said TAWS (Terrain Awareness and Warning System) go off so frequently on helicopters that pilots oftentimes just completely tune them out.

Heard that too.  I wonder if it's one of those things that sounds great to laypeople like us, but pilots hate, and unless it was mandated would opt to not have such equipment.

Also curious how much it costs to retrofit old birds for new equipment?  Is that something that's even done?  At least on the car side I certainly don't know of anyone installing newer car safety features in older cars.  Stuff life blind spot warnings and the like.

Edited by Gene Parmesan
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1 hour ago, smuggs said:

Yeah but that's kind of misleading. NTSB dude said they crashed 20-30 ft from the top of a smaller hill that was inside a crescent-shaped area surrounded by even larger hills. He was also descending at 2000 ft per minute. Those people were fucked all the way around even if they had cleared the first smaller hill.

I totally agree with you on mandating safety devices. It's mind blowing that a ~50 foot long, 12 passenger Romulan Warbird of a helicopter would not have these systems.

 

EDIT - and the pilot was apparently using an iPad for GPS navigation?  If that is true then WTF happens when the iPad crashes mid flight, much like my iPad crashes while streaming video from https://www.naughtybutts69.org//ball-danglin'/jerry-and-bob-enjoy-cucumbers-by-the-office-watercooler.mpeg

 

 

 

Using iPads for primary or secondary navigation is not unusual at all. Some iPad programs  like Foreflight even have backup instrumentation options  in case the ship’s instruments crap out. If it quits working you’d do the same thing you’d do if your car GPS died. You’d handle it manually. 

I haven’t seen anything about the helicopter clipping a hill before crashing , but that might be the cause for the sudden dive. There’s some thought that the hard climbing maneuver combined with high speed and weight could have caused the main rotor to hit the tail boom. Or, if the pilot got vertigo he may have managed to get the thing inverted or nearly so, and keeping a positive G feeling in his butt led to an unrecoverable dive at low altitude not I liken a death spiral in a plane.  

All the wreckage in one spot makes the me think the latter case is it. 

Edited by Bobby_Batronic
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19 minutes ago, Gene Parmesan said:

Heard that too.  I wonder if it's one of those things that sounds great to laypeople like us, but pilots hate, and unless it was mandated would opt to not have such equipment.

Also curious how much it costs to retrofit old birds for new equipment?  Is that something that's even done?  At least on the car side I certainly don't know of anyone installing newer car safety features in older cars.  Stuff life blind spot warnings and the like.

What is the bare minimum that will get the job done? It’s rare for operators to retrofit much above that standard. Unless they can use it as a selling point with their clients. And most don’t care. 

Edited by Bobby_Batronic
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If all they had was the ipad then surely its broken or fried and even if it wasn't I doubt they could recover useful data from it. Do those piloting apps store data locally? Do they stream it to the cloud and that data is available somewhere for NTSB to look?

Also has the S-76 been known to ever clip off the tailboom with the MR blade in any condition? Is it a fully articulated rotor that could get into a dynamic mode that flaps the blades enough to cause it? This happened in our Bell 525 aircraft in a certain regime but I wouldn't imagine it happen to a production aircraft with plenty of flight hours.

Edited by dad
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33 minutes ago, Bobby_Batronic said:

Using iPads for primary or secondary navigation is not unusual at all. Some iPad programs  like Foreflight even have backup instrumentation options  in case the ship’s instruments crap out. If it quits working you’d do the same thing you’d do if your car GPS died. You’d handle it manually. 

I haven’t seen anything about the helicopter clipping a hill before crashing , but that might be the cause for the sudden dive. There’s some thought that the hard climbing maneuver combined with high speed and weight could have caused the main rotor to hit the tail boom. Or, if the pilot got vertigo he may have managed to get the thing inverted or nearly so, and keeping a positive G feeling in his butt led to an unrecoverable dive at low altitude not I liken a death spiral in a plane.  

All the wreckage in one spot makes the me think the latter case is it. 

Now that you say that, I wouldn't rule out a mast bump. If he pulled up hard, he could have mast bumped and down it goes.

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From what I'm reading it's a fully articulated main rotor so it wouldn't be susceptible to mast bumping but if it got in any kind of mode that would cause excessive flapping it could have sliced through the tail boom. But I would assume that if that happened it would fall faster than it did.

Edited by dad
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9 minutes ago, dad said:

From what I'm reading it's a fully articulated main rotor so it wouldn't be susceptible to mast bumping but if it got in any kind of mode that would cause excessive flapping it could have sliced through the tail boom. 

That’s getting beyond my limited helo knowledge.  But certainly possible. I still lean towards vertigo if the audio posted is accurate as there’s no change in sound like an impact or slowing of the main rotor before the crash. Just the sound of acceleration. 

Could retreating rotor stall cause the sudden turn at the end, or just a hard rolling moment?

Edited by Bobby_Batronic
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Using iPads for primary or secondary navigation is not unusual at all.


Not legal as you know but I have used foreflight illegally to land, a few others as well i know in MVFR.

Also, my first flight in clouds with my instructor, I wanted to go through one. He told me "you don't go through clouds ever unless absolutely necessary. You go around them. Two things hide in clouds, other planes and mountains"
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8 minutes ago, markstanco said:


 

 


Not legal as you know but I have used foreflight illegally to land, a few others as well i know in MVFR.

Also, my first flight in clouds with my instructor, I wanted to go through one. He told me "you don't go through clouds ever unless absolutely necessary. You go around them. Two things hide in clouds, other planes and mountains"

 

It’s a tool to use when s**t goes pear shaped. Sounds like good CRM in a bad situation to me. 

We use it for maps and weather etc. Some attach a bad elf for flight following purposes. Also not legal, but the suction cup marks are hard to miss. Very handy. I use it a lot to read notams as the company disseminated paperwork is borderline hieroglyphic in format.  

i had an FAA guy on my jumpseat today who was speculating about using one as a portable ADS-B out unit to make it more affordable and practical for GA use. 

Clouds are weird things. I had a minor case of the “rights” the other day in Denver on climb out and let my partner know in case the vertigo got bad. 

Edited by Bobby_Batronic
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3 hours ago, Sbbruin said:

Well, guess who is going to the game Friday against Portland?  Boss just tossed me our tix.  That is going to be one helluva scene Friday.  Gonna need to bring some tissues for sure.

It seems pretty uncouth to publicly announce your intent to masturbate at the game, dude. 

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2 hours ago, purplepride95 said:

We all know Earl is humble. Having met Earl once and had him sign a napkin and have a lengthy chat lol, this dude is as down to earth as it gets. Nothing shocking here. Genuinely one of the best humans on this planet. And damn, Vanessa's post is hard to read. Losing a spouse and daughter, just...fuck. 

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4 hours ago, Bobby_Batronic said:

I haven’t seen anything about the helicopter clipping a hill before crashing , but that might be the cause for the sudden dive.

I swear I read somewhere there was an impact and then fall, but I can't confirm where.

1 hour ago, smuggs said:

I’m not convinced that wasn’t Sour Shoes.

after about noine seconds in, I knew it wasn't

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1 hour ago, mulletpelini said:

I swear I read somewhere there was an impact and then fall, but I can't confirm where.

after about noine seconds in, I knew it wasn't

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.buzzfeednews.com/amphtml/briannasacks/kobe-bryant-helicopter-nearly-cleared-hill


“The helicopter carrying Kobe Bryant, his daughter, and seven others was trying to ascend above a fog-shrouded hill when it slammed into the ravine and dropped 2,000 feet per minute to the ground below, federal investigators said Tuesday.

Shortly before 10 a.m. Sunday, the Sikorsky S-76 chopper with nine people aboard climbed to about 2,300 feet seemingly in an attempt to clearthe thick cloud layer. It hit part of a ravine in the Calabasas and fell, crashing in an area on the hillside 1,085 feet above sea level, National Transportation Safety Board member Jennifer Homendy said.

The helicopter plunged into a steep descent with a rate of "over 2,000 feet per minute," making it a "high-energy impact crash."

"This is a pretty steep descent at high speed," Homendy said. "It wouldn't be a normal landing speed."

The time from descent to impact was about a minute, she added.

The helicopter was navigating a canyon with multiple hills and peaks, NTSB investigator Bill English noted, describing the area as a "ravine with undulating terrain."

"The main impact was about 20 to 30 feet from that small hill, but there were other higher hills surrounding it…it’s in a canyon with small hills within it," he said.....”

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