Originally Posted by
Uplinker
OK, he seemed to be disorientated and in an unusual attitude, but he was too low, since he hit the ground.
Do heli pilots never look at their altimeter or Rad Alt ? He must have seen it winding down ?
I would have thought that if entering marginal VMC; the first thing you would do would be to ensure you are above MSA, otherwise how will you avoid pylons, masts, high ground ??
The MSA won't prevent you from getting disoriented, and when you're disoriented, it doesn't matter what the guages are telling you, as you're brain is not working properly while disoriented.
I've read many comments on r/flying where fixed-wingers will brag about using their instruments to fly through black holes on VFR flight, but chopper pilots aren't like that.
We're not really trained to switch from VFR to IFR at the flip of a switch (and quite often not even flying IFR ships), that's why a lot of us end up killing ourselves scudd-running, or while on night flights out in the middle of sparsely lighted nowhere where black holes live.
When we encounter marginal VMC we generally aren't in the right mindset to handle it like you guys are. That's just the way the cookies crumble in rotor-wing.