Today was a pretty decent day to fly. There was some instances of heavy turbulence–at one point, I got a sudden descent of more than 1000 feet per minute for about ten seconds–but I thought things were going well. I was on short final, getting ready to land and switch out, when the “Main Gen Fail” light came on.
The only immediately obvious effect was that the air conditioner stopped working. It started again once we flipped the switch that started running the non-essential electronics off the main battery, at which point we discovered that the intercom in the back seat was also on that circuit. Other than that, the landing was very normal; it seemed odd to have to inform tower that we were declaring an emergency and that we were performing a precautionary landing.
As we weren’t at the base field at the time, we had to get back somehow. Standard procedure is to send the medevac helicopter out to the site of any emergency declared, so I got to ride back in the side-facing seat of an open-door Huey.
This marks my third flight emergency in four months of flight. It is a lot of fun to be a pilot, but I’m glad I’m not (directly) paying for the maintenance and upkeep of these helicopters; they are very expensive.
