Fire 407 Crash in Idaho 2024  

The helicopter was only authorized to fly daytime VFR. The pilot was trying to beat the sunset to get home. He kept the MGT right at the top, exceeding max but dropping below the limit before hitting the 30 second over-temp limit. But then rising terrain forced his hand to keep the power up for a bit too long and he tripped the 30 second over-temp and locked in the maintenance caution. 

He continued on bouncing just above and below max temp limit. It seems the Moog MGT gage might have reached its limit on how many over-temps and could record, and subsequently performed its own power-off/re-start. When the Moog did its BITE check, the pilot misinterpreted it as an engine-out and did a full down auto-rotation…but ended up in corn that caused the bird to nose over.