IAD00LA071 · Showalter ROTORWAY 152 ROTORWAY 1
Showalter ROTORWAY 152 ROTORWAY 1 · Accident: partial loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Atwater, OH (no airport) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD00LA071
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Showalter ROTORWAY 152 ROTORWAY 1
- Aircraft type
- Showalter ROTORWAY 152
- Category
- Helicopter
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N11662
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Atwater, OH (no airport)To not recorded
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- En route · cruise
- First occurrenceThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Partial loss of engine power (mechanical failure)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Ignition system, ignition lead › Loose part/bolt/nut/clamp/etc
- Owner/pilot mechanic › Maintenance, installation, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The homebuilt helicopter was in cruise flight at 70 knots approximately 600 feet above ground level (agl) when the pilot heard a loud report from behind the cockpit, felt the helicopter yaw, and thought the tail rotor had departed the helicopter. After he entered autorotation, he realized that he still had tail rotor authority. During the descent, the engine was running smoothly at idle, and he chose to continue the autorotation at idle power. The helicopter touched down in a field. At the end of the ground run, the skids became entangled in the soybean crop and the helicopter rolled over. The pilot reported that his post-accident examination of the helicopter revealed he had left a spark plug wire unsecured after a recent inspection, and that he was sure the loose wire caused the interruption in power and the adverse yaw during the flight. He said there were no other mechanical deficiencies with the helicopter.
Probable cause
The pilot/owner's inadequate installation of an ignition lead that resulted in a partial loss of engine power and forced landing to unsuitable terrain. A factor in the accident was the soybean crop in the forced landing site.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD00LA071
- Event ID
- 20001212X21742
- Case number
- IAD00LA071
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 9f14dfd280fd4cbd2226aa017745ba044a08df2b6f8a4c8c096deeb9eeb2f9bb; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:37:19.030Z.