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LAX00LA311 · Perrucci Randall J REVOLUTION MINI-500 REVOLUTION

26 Aug 2000 · Gridley, CA, United States

Perrucci Randall J REVOLUTION MINI-500 REVOLUTION · Accident: airframe, component or system failure while maneuvering

From CA to an unrecorded destination

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Event

NTSB case
LAX00LA311
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

Perrucci Randall J REVOLUTION MINI-500 REVOLUTION

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
N7SZ
Operator
Unknown
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From CATo 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
Maneuvering
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
Airframe, component or system 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

  • Rotorcraft flight control, cyclic control rod › Fractured
  • Rotorcraft flight control, cyclic control rod › Separation

Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.

NTSB narrative

While maneuvering at 700 feet agl, the pilot of the amateur-built helicopter felt something "break" and the fore-and-aft portion of the cyclic flight control system became inoperative (disconnected). He lowered the collective control, reduced engine power, and made a run-on landing in an open field. During the landing the toe of one skid "dug in" and the helicopter came to rest on its side. Postaccident examination revealed that a push-pull tube in the cyclic control system fractured circumferentially in the wall at one end near where a through-bolt attached the rod end fitting to the tube.

Probable cause

The fracture and separation of a control rod in the cyclic flight control system.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record LAX00LA311
Event ID
20001212X21781
Case number
LAX00LA311
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: a34389be5edc5aec65a7724096e5fbb612bf0b950118ab42b02052163bb40d7a; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:31:01.656Z.