Here is another example of "overlearning" or perhaps cognitive failure.
The helicopter was in a hover. The student, who had been hover-taxying handed back control to QHI while he re-folded a map for his navex.
The QHI in the left seat, amazed the the student (perhaps he was an ex-digger driver) had managed to operate the collective with almost full friction applied, swapped hands on the controls to unscrew the friction barrel situated on the right hand collective. He was now hovering with his left hand on the left-hand cyclic and his right hand on the right hand collective.
Having unscrewed the friction, the aircraft descended slightly in minor turbulence.
QHI's left hand (normally on the left hand collective) instinctively pulled back / up. Unfortunately, because this hand was actually controlling the cyclic, he caused the aircraft to move backwards as well as downwards. QHI's right hand, normally on cyclic, tried to stop backwards movement by moving the cyclic forward. Unfortunately, this hand was now on the collective so it lowered it instead and the aircraft descended even more quickly.
Whereupon the QHI's left hand, normally on collective but now on cyclic, tried to arrest the increased descent again by pulling up and back on collective, but unfortunately it was the cyclic so the aircraft went backwards even quicker, whereupon the right hand tried to push forward on cyclic but as it was still on collective, lowered it even more and the aircraft went down quicker.....
Can anyone guess what happened next? <img src="eek.gif" border="0">