Originally Posted by
Flying Bull
..If you need to nurse a helicopter cause it was designed so, every unexpected gust can lead to desaster, cause you’re already operating at the edge of its envelope...
If I'm doing high altitude heavy sling loads to mountain tops in a 206 (or 212, or whatever helicopter), I nurse it in sensible ways so the unexpected does not lead to disasters. And it's real simple, slow down to a speed that maintains stable load in flight, keep it pointed outside the critical wind azimuth on arrival, keep the NR at 100, keep the sink rate near zero, keep the apparent closure rate until you have arrived where you need to put it. And if you can break the loads up into lighter sorties, do it. We all know these things. Short of the donk stopping at the perfectly wrong time, which would be a disaster, nursing a helicopter so it can safely complete a task is just basic operational airmanship.