But when we were in "open country" we had to fly at high altitude... My concern upon seeing the hydraulic fluid was the size of the existent puddle, the question of how much had been wiped up previous to my boarding, how much was left in the reservoir, and the question of whether or not the last drop would hit the floor of the aircraft while we were at altitude.
Understanding that while with fixed wing aircraft altitude is your friend, in rotor wing aircraft too little or too much altitude can be a problem during a power loss or loss of transmission of power. Should loss of power or transmission of power occur, the pilot goes to the auto rotate procedure. During autorotation you bottom the pitch and try to keep the rotors moving (creating a saving amount of lift) all the way to the ground... When at altitude, with no power applied to the rotor, you have a limited amount of time before the rotors loose forward momentum and then you drop like a rock.
I'm very familiar with maintenance procedures and that they are, for probably 99.9% of the time, performed at or prior to schedule. But then there is that 0.1%. I've got in more than a few hours of flight time... I lost a very good friend that was probably the most desciplined pilot that I've ever known when his AeroCommander came apart at 27,000 AGL over Georgia. Any pilot that commands an aircraft that doesn't keep in mind the possibility of a mistake being made in a maintenance procedure has linited his mental reference sources available during an emergency.
I also have a collection of tools in my garage... They are in a special tool box that I pull out to show my friends. These are tools that I or my father recovered from runways at Metro Nashville International Airport and a couple of other public airports here in middle Tennessee. Tennessee is not special when it comes to tools being left in wheel wells and cowlings... It happens at all of them. If tools didn't make it back to the tool box in flight maintenance, what else didn't get completed before the panel got buttoned back up?
LOL. I'm only laughing because being a 46 pilot I never really thought too much about what the guys I had aboard thought about this. The 46 has a low inertia rotor system. Which means that once power is removed the rotor rpm drops quickly if the collective remains up. At low altitude/low airspeed collective pitch needs to be reduced much more quickly than at high altitude. The good news is that the rotor rpm (Nr) is easier to control to avoid an overspeed. The inboard section of the rotor blades is what is operative in autorotative flight. Higher onset altitude gives the pilot many more options for landing safely. Bottoming the collective only saves rotor rpm, as there is no lift at flat pitch. The 46 has a 3 degrees detent position on the collective that keeps that much pitch on the system. High inertia systems make Nr monitoring more important because they can and do build turns in an auto.
The hydraulic fluid you saw on the ramp and leaking most likely is from the utility hydraulic system. Total loss of fluid in that system greatest risk is a fire from the pump overheating. There is alot of fluid when topped off and the drips you see don't account for much as a little goes a long way and makes a hell of a mess.
Any pilot that commands an aircraft that doesn't keep in mind the possibility of a mistake being made in a maintenance procedure has linited his mental reference sources available during an emergency.
Duration of a fluid-loss caused inflight emergency is measured in a few minutes before you have to be on the ground and all are 'land as soon as practicable' save for a #1 Boost failure which is 'land as soon as possible'. Whether the tank was serviced correctly was a matter for the preflight as are all maintenance issues. Real hydraulic leaks in a 46 are epic events as the sytem operates around 3000-3500 psi. None of the systems are serviceable inflight.
If tools didn't make it back to the tool box in flight maintenance, what else didn't get completed before the panel got buttoned back up?
All toolboxes in a 46 squadron are painted, so if a tool isn't there, the Maintenance Action Form (MAF) can't be signed off until it is located. QA checks the work, a smart pilot inspects as well. The best check is that the crewchief who is with you during the flight did the work.