20100623036699A

The owner/operator of the Bell 206B was piloting the aircraft at the time of the accident.. He had a stc'd belly tank attached to the aircraft with spray boom for dispensing economic poisons. He had been applying fungicide to a wheat field near Rickreall Oregon, about ten miles west southwest of salem. He was out of product materials and had to go back to the nurse truck to obtain more. While taking on the partial load of spray materials the pilot claims to have noted his fuel at 12 gallons, which he determined to be adequate for the task at hand. The pilot departed the truck without refueling the aircraft. He sped past the remaining patch of wheat and then placed the aircraft in a ninety degree bank to line up on the patch, he rolled level and from about ten feet he applied the remaining spray material. At the FAR end of that patch was a set of power lines and the pilot placed the aircraft in a aggressive cyclic climb to clear the wires and once over them, he then just as aggressively pushed the nose down. What little fuel was remaining was sloshed away from the fuel pickup port and the engine then sucked air and the fire went out. The pilot was now about thirty feet AGL, with a very nose low attitude. He now could only react to the position he had placed himself in. He came back hard on the cyclic in an attempt to decelerate and right the aircraft. The result was the main rotor actually sliced through the trailing edge of the horizontal stabilizer and tail boom. It also bumped the main rotor mast so violently that the mast broke just below the rotorhead and the whole head with both main rotor blades intact,left the aircraft. With no remaining flight controls conected to any dynamic components, the main fuselage came to rest upright in the wheat field the belly tank was badly damaged, but it likely saved considerably more damage to the aircraft and injury to the pilot. The pilot did receive a minor bruise or two, but was otherwise uninjured.