I often find myself flying with too little light. You know how it is, it’s late/early but this is the only chance you are going to get. I have even flown in the middle of the night a handful of times under some deserted parking lot lights.

One night under the bright lights I was flying into the steady wind. It was just like I was in forward flight, but I could observe how the heli reacted close up. While “hovering” in forward flight I moved the LMH in front of me, to the sides, and pretty much got a good look from all around. Then I took it high to see what she looked like from underneath. I managed to fly directly above the nearest high output mercury vapor (or whatever) light, which had two immediate effects. The first was suddenly no light was falling on the helicopter, as all of the parking lot lights point down. Second, I was completely blinded by staring briefly into the light and then back at the empty black night sky.

At this point I could hear the helicopter but I could not see it. All I knew for sure was I had been at least 50 feet up to clear the light and that the whirling mass had turned and was moving down wind, fast. I never really saw the impact, I couldn’t see much of anything, but I heard the small explosion as rotor blades met concrete. I think it must have come down nose first. The body had been shattered into several large pieces and some unrecoverable small ones. The front 1/3 of the crutch had broken off and the tail boom was badly bent. I was done for the night.

The next day I glued the crutch back together with some extra ply scraps and patched together a canopy from the original trim material I still had. One more straightening and the tail boom was back in action. Amazingly the cost of this crash was 0$. Eventually I replaced both that crutch and the canopy, they had been getting ridiculously heavy with all the added scraps and glue. My night flying, however, was over.

Spiro