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Show - . v , l .. 7 . - : . ;' ' . ;: A- ' vA" U FAA INSPECTOR B.W. Hardesty checks helicopter crash site for " any indications ot why the chopper went down last Wednesday I k near Pelican Lake. Also pilot ot the helicopter Royal Kent Walker helps with the inspection. FAA official cheeks chopper acciden? A federal investigator and the pilot of the helicopter that crashed 20 miles southwest of Vernal checked through the wreckage Thursday to piece together details of Wednesday's incident inci-dent that injured two. Investigator B. W. Hardesty, a Federal Aviation Administration investigator in-vestigator working on behalf of the National Na-tional Transportation Safety board, said Thursday that the next step probably pro-bably will be a thorough check of the chopper's engine for the posibility of engine failure. Pilot Royal Kent Walker, 41, Sandy, said the craft lost power as he tried to land on a knoll on the edge of a desolate basin about four miles west of State Route 88 and five to ten miles northwest of Pelican Lake. Walker said he walked between an hour and an hour and a half to Highway 88 to get help. Injured were Peter Stavros, 56, and Bill Ford, 25, both of Salt Lake City, They were flown to Salt Lake City Wednesday afternoon by LDS Hospital's Lifeflight helicopter. The chopper was flying a survey mission mis-sion for Deseret Generation and Transmission. The craft is owned by In-termountain In-termountain Aerial Surveys, Salt Lake City. Walker said he sustained a chipped ankle bone. Stavros suffered internal injuries and Ford sustained a broken arm and bruises, according to the Uintah County sheriff's report. Hardesty and Walker agreed that the craft could have made it to level ground if it had gone ten feet farther, Hardesty spent about an hour looking over the crash site and said afterward that he had seen nothing to indicate pilot error. He said for sure that the chopper's rear rotor guard and then the rotor itself struck ground near the top of a ledge, and caused the craft to crash into a short but rocky hill. "At this point we can't say either way if the engine was when it crashed," he emphasized. Hardesty said Walker was lucky to be alive. The chopper slammed into the hill on the pilot's side. The Sheriff's Department placed the Continued on page 2 Helicopter... Continued from page 1) time of the crash at 11 a.m. Wednesday. Emergency medical technicians and other rescuers initially had to le flown in by chopper. Sheriff's deputies later lound a route in by four-wheel drive vehicles. The lifeflight helicopter arrived at the crash sith at 1 :25 p.m.. but not after help from local chopper pilots in finding the wreckage, according to deputies. The victims were evacuated at 2:54 p.m.. said Sheriff Arden Stewart. Uintah Uin-tah County. llardesty said if mechanical failure was involved, the investigation could last anywhere from a week to a month. If there was a mechanical failure, he added, "it could only be failure of the turbocharger." He explained that a tur-bocharger tur-bocharger gives the craft extra power when needed. "There are no marks until here (the edge of the hill), which tells you how close he came to making it," llardesty said. He was locked in after that point he totally lost control. Even if he had the revs, he wouldn't have been able to pull out of it," llardesty's findings seemed to back up Walker's story. After losing power, recalled Walker, "we attempted getting get-ting to a landing spot, but (the chopper) nose-dived into the canyon. "One guy (Ford) got out very rapid- lv 1 Out till 'inrl I'l-irtorl l .,,.11 j. f,.,. uivi .iiiii itu m mu (Stavros) out, and the other guy helped. He (Stavros) was having a hard time breathing. We decided one of us had better get out. I felt I was in the best condition." Some pieces of the rear rotor and rotor guard were scattered 50 or CO feet. The cockpit, main rotor and its mat were heavily damaged. The engine was knocked out of its carriage and a skid was sheared off. The chopper's air frame was bent slightly by the inertia of the craft hitting the ground, llardesty said. One of the chopper's fuel tanks continued to leak Thursday morning nearly 24 hours after the crash. Chopper pilots Jim Richards of Vernal Ver-nal and I.eon Koss from Roosevelt ;iid-ed ;iid-ed rescue efforts. Uintah County Sheriff's Deputy Wayne Ilollebeke said he and Ule Indian In-dian tribal police were the first near the scene, hut could get only a mile and a half to two miles away with two wheel drive vehicles. A member of an KMT team from Fort Duchesne made it In the crash sith on foot, Ilollebeke said. |