Originally Posted by
FH1100 Pilot
Oh, and he had plenty of airspeed when it quit - don't they teach R-44 pilots how to do autorotations anymore?
Totally reading into the video, of course, but it looked like his initial plan was just to do a straight in from his original heading, i.e. keeping it simple, until he saw those power lines along the road. That last minute, very low level turn seemed to knocked him off his game. Maybe also the sight of the scrub brush reaching up to bite him, too.
The instructor I use for recurrent training has thrown some stuff at me that's close to that level of difficulty, but not quite. Last minute turns, but easy, "safe", terrain. A couple of times it resulted in an unplanned full down (mostly we do power recoveries in 44's) because there was no other way. Which I suppose is fine with the right instructor on board (mine sure is, 10K+ hours) but perhaps not with the average 200 hour CFI-H in a low inertial machine like the 44.
Honestly I hope I can do as well if ever faced with a low level auto in an R44 that needed a last minute turn into scrub lands like that.