What caused this?

[Mobius1]

So, I was heading home after yet another wildly successful mission (:joystick:), and all of the sudden, without warning and with no enemy gunfire involved, I fell right out of the sky. I watched the track and for the 20-30 seconds before I crashed, I saw this:

 

 

Notice that the lower rotor is at a large angle while the upper one is relatively level. This of course, led to this:

 

 

And shortly thereafter, I was dead.

 

I was wondering if anyone knew what would cause this rotor strike?

 

There was no indication in the cockpit of anything other than a high blade pitch and climb-rate I had set up to get over the hill:

 

 

I was thinking maybe it was wind after I saw the wind and rotor interaction video, but as far as I know, there wasn't much wind and that affected both blades randomly and differently, but in this case, only the lower rotor was affected and it was always up on that side. I was just flying straight and climbing when it happened, but I don't know what caused it.

[Frazer]

Looks like the rotors hit eachother and so most likely it would be.....OVERSPEED :D

 

Maybe you made a sudden move with your stick? Up, down and mostly right (look at the blades at high speed) and especially a combination of those, could make the rotors hit eachother easily at higher speeds.

[Mobius1]

Ah yeah, it does look like that. The forward moving blade is generating a lot of lift due to the high speed and the climb, and that was where the lower rotor hit. That's some good physics modeling! Thanks ED for that, and thanks Frazer for the answer.

[SuperKungFu]

lol exact same thing happened to me when i was playing with BS the first time at the E for all show. Crashed and burn right in front of Matt and evil, how embarrassing lol.

[TwoLate]

I am seeing a spike in the joystick throw to the left. It is always to the left and then I crash.

[slug88]

Looks like the rotors hit eachother and so most likely it would be.....OVERSPEED :D

 

Not just overspeed, but overspeed combined with too much pull on the collective. Pulling the collective will slow down the rotor blades, which decrease the centrifugal force on the blades that keeps them from flapping up. Therefore, when you're at high speed and need to climb, much better to just pull back on the cyclic.

 

I am seeing a spike in the joystick throw to the left. It is always to the left and then I crash.

 

Sounds like a problem with your joystick.

[skypirate]

High speed and aggressive stick moves led to the same CRASH and BURN situation high over the mountains.....

It appears that to be heli pilot is not an easy thing :joystick:

[uhoh7]

It seems to especially happen when you leave one arc and roll into the other at speed. Once in an arc I surprised at how hard you can pull the turn.

 

Since I really started watching my blade pitch I have this happen less--before that i did it many many times.

[baksie]

Right rudder at higher speed will cause similar effect. I used to fly at 250+ kmh and several rotor crashes. Now flying at 200+ I rarely have this happen.

At 280 kmh use very gentle cyclic, collective and rudder.