PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Loss of Tail Rotor Effectiveness, recovery etc
Old 2nd Sep 2004, 20:04
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NickLappos
 
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Plain English:

Any single rotor helicopter can run out of pedal if the main torque is driven high enough and the rpm is drooped low enough, but almost every helicopter has a hard time doing this within normal flight maneuvers because most tail rotors have enough margin.

Some helos with very marginal tail rotors are more prone to finding insufficient anti-torque within normal maneuvers, and for them, extra care is needed, and the term LTE was invented. LTE stands for "Loss of Tailrotor Effectiveness" which actually never happens, because the tail rotor never loses effectiveness, and actually produces its required thrust under all conditions within the normal envelope. When LTE rears its head for those helos that are prone to it, what really happens is that the small thrust margin is not enough to overcome the wind, or the extra main rotor torque that the pilot is pulling. In those cases, the pilot hits the pedal stops, the aircraft keeps spinning, and its Katy Bar the Door.

In the old days we thought the tail rotor was stalling or some such myth, but we now know that the paltry tail thrust margin of some helos is just not enough, and that the other forces (wind and main rotor torque, chiefly) can swamp the tail rotor. For those marginal helos, care must be taken with crosswinds and power applications at low speed to prevent this swamping of the tail thrust (LTE).

For most helos, the tail rotor is bigger, and has more pitch available so that it can overcome moderatly abusive flight conditions, and not make the helo swap ends. These helos do not ever experience true LTE.

Recovery? Reduce main torque, and also reduce the crosswind. Not easy when doing 100 degrees per second to the right! The old AH-1G cobra gunships that I flew were so prone to this (due to pitifully small tail rotor margins) that we used to practice recovery techniques in checkout.
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