Originally Posted by
megan
For climbing I never used VS mode because you could find yourself running out of airspeed and falling tail first, only use VS for descent, for climb use IAS. .
Exactly. But you have a thorough understanding of the system and know exactly what you are doing. The problem arises with pilots who only push the GA button once per year on their annual competency check without knowing exactly what it does, and does not, do. Quite often on those check rides the recurrent trainee gets an engine failure about 3 seconds after they push the GA button on a missed precision approach. The confusion and calamity with the pushing of auto-pilot buttons after that can so easily lead to mayhem and the falling out of the sky tail first. I find successful outcomes are more likely if the pilot just leaves the auto-pilot mode as it is, and manually adjust the power to droop the main rotor speed to 100%. And then leave it there. That is easy, and will see the aircraft safely climbing wings level. Whilst changing the auto-pilot mode from VS to IAS as suggested by
megan is very good advice, the execution of that in practice can be very problematic and quickly lead to an unfortunate outcome.