Fender Bender

First I will just say that it was not my fault, second its hard to have a fender bender when you are 8 to 10 feet off the ground. But yesterday I was flying a mission and we stopped at Kushman FOB to get some gas and when I was repositioning to set up for a take off into the wind I had a steel parking panel the size of a house lift off the ground and try to eat my aircraft. The steel panel is actually 149 smaller 4 foot by 4 foot panels that all interlink to make great big pads that we can park on to help keep the dust down. As I was hover taxing near this landing panel my rotor wash got under the side and lifted this parking panel 10 to 12 feet into the air. I was already power limited and could not climb over it so I was forced to crash into it and have a hard landing. After I shut the aircraft down we got out and took a closer look and found that I did damage to the 30mm gun on the front and in trying to maneuver away from the panel I stroked the tail wheel strut causing damage to it also. I am not sure what the accident will price out at but for it to remain a class D accident the repairs have to be less than 2,000 dollars and that doesn't seem likely. Fortunately for me my wing man this day was Viper 6 my Task Force Commander. After we both shut down and took a good look at everything he told me that from where they were sitting they thought the panel was going to go into my rotor system and he could not believe that I was able to avoid rotor blade contact. This made me feel a little better but none the less we still damaged the aircraft and it will be out of the fight for a few days till it can be repaired. I ended up pushing the parking panel 3 feet which does not seem like much but this pad weighs 7500 pounds, I really was lucky. Not that I could have been seriously injured but had the rotor blades contacted the parking pad when it was up in the air we would have had parts and pieces flying all over the place and possibly destroyed my aircraft and done serious damage to my wing man as well.

So all that being said I am ready for tomorrow to be my last mission flight for a couple of weeks and I can't wait to get home. This may be my last post till I get back in country so until next time and I hope to see all of you between now and then, Night All