Why Helicopters Are Cool #2: Autorotation

Video that explains a little about how we trained for what to do if we lose all engine power. Helicopters are quite capable of getting down to the ground safely without power but the manoeuvre takes some practice to get good at because there is a fair amount going on, particularly when at lower levels. Shown here are a couple of 600ft straight-ins, a 1000ft at night and a 600ft 180 full-down.

Recommend watching in HD, any comments welcome as always. This my 3rd attempt to get this uploaded with a soundtrack that YouTube will allow ... choice of music gets more and more random

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Bristow
• Academy
• Autorotation
• Schweizer
• S300
• Titusville
• Helicopter
• Flying
• Training
• Full-down
• Straight-in

[seadoosearay]

if you practice an engine failure autorotation, what good is cracking the throttle?

[DuaneTheCat]

@seadoosearay some autos are full-downs, some are to a power-recovery to the low hover. For the latter you must get the ERPM up again in advance so that it's already producing power when you bring the lever up

[mjm9536]

@DuaneTheCat man up join the army and do hundreds of autos to the ground haha

[DuaneTheCat]

@mjm9536 haha yeah most of us would prefer to have done more full-downs, though we practised plenty of them too. Power recovery is still worthwhile though (purely in my opinion) as 1) a co-ordination exercise during early training and 2) as good prep for dealing with a late relight if it happens for real (I'm thinking more about multi-engine multi-crew stuff here which is what I now fly). You've also gotta remember most of us civvy pilots didn't have to pass pilot aptitude tests to train ;)

[DuaneTheCat]

Actually sorry 1st line should read c.60 kts - been a while!!

[DuaneTheCat]

Hey Larry, we always did full-downs descending at about 65 kts IAS, keeping about 10-20kts after the flare. What you could actualy do if needed? Not sure, the slowest we practised (but not to full-down) were 'zero-speed', which actually meant zero ground speed as it was judged by eye. Of course, for the full-down; if you have a decent wind then it can be brought to a nice soft zero ground speed touch down :)

[LarryCanFly]

Thanks for posting! What is the slowest forward airspeed auto full down a S300 can do?