Whirly
Totally agree. I'm sick of seeing good machines wrecked doing EOLs which puts up my insurance premiums and risks students and instructors lives. The school I trained with have lost/ severely damaged 3 aircraft in the past 3 or 4 years doing this and frankly I'm surprised that when I was a student some of my landings did not damage the aircraft in the full hour of EOLs I did just before my GFT. (Come to think of it, that aircraft was later wrecked!). I wonder how many engine failures they have had in the same time. Now I have my own aircraft I do autos to the hover regularly but not to the ground - too much unnecessary risk for my taste.
In the event of a real power failure we would all like to walk away from an undamaged aircraft but the ability to do it under ideal contitions with an instructor does not guarantee success on rough terrain.
I think that when I was a low time pilot, despite doing dozens of EOLs with an instructor, a real failure would have been pretty messy. The improved handling skills aquired with since then make me confident that unless I pick a rotten landing site, all will be well - even though I no longer practice them. This implies that practising them is pretty pointless.
We probably all have seen the video of the police helicopter at night. If they can walk away from the aircraft with that sort of rate of descent then with a flare or pull of any sort, the outcome is likely to be that the occupants live even if the a/c is wrecked.
I recall reading somewhere that it is the entry to autorotation that kills people, yet the unexpected throttle chop is not practiced at PPL level anymore (is it?) because the risk of death is too high if it goes wrong.
The implication is that it is acceptable to risk writing off the aircraft to give a student experience of something very unlikely to happen. If rolling an R22 frequently killed poeple it would not be allowed.
Certainly practice to the hover. Maybe let the instructor or examiner demonstrate to the ground.
Surely it is time students don't do this anymore.
Do military students still do them?
Incoming!