TC said:
I would suggest, Nick that there are very few people alive today who have actually experienced actual VRS. demonstrations end at the incipient VRS and go no further.
Those who have experienced fully developed VRS are either stupid, lucky or test pilots.
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Or just a tired pilot over Forkhill. Felt obliged (!) to take control of a certain Puma once after the handling pilot of the night got himself in a bit of a fix and lost 3500ft in not many seconds. A long time at FL100 hovering followed by a lapse of concentration was all it needed. Slight rearward aircraft movement resulted in a slight pitch up, then suddenly increasing ROD followed by random pitching and rolling, VSI on the bottom stop against OGE hover power. Interesting for a while, including quite extreme nose down attitudes. Not sure he would have recovered it by himself. Having recognised things were going wrong and warned him twice to get airspeed, he was slow to respond and down she went. I put the cyclic to the instrument panel for him and pushed the lever down, interestingly, the nose down attitude didn't change for quite some seconds, she was doing her own thing. Once we had some airspeed, out she came. Not a lot was said on the way home, but a lot of thinking was done.