TFS,
Yes....the ROD seemed much slower after I was sat upon the ground beside the aircraft with my head between my knees trying to quit hyperventilating.
In all honesty.....I could not tell you what the ROD was....it was all basic attitude helicopter flying.....the old spot of hoped for landing on the windscreen and very interested monitoring of the rotor RPM....keeping it right at the very bottom of the green.
Airspeed pegged at the max glide airspeed....getting the seat cushion out of my mouth so I could talk on the radio....which was useless....no one around for hours. I kept looking at the spot on the windscreen and kept track of whether I was under or over shooting the spot.
Constant commentary to the passengers....who were showing some serious interest in current events for some reason. Sounded like ...cool...we're cool....yep...no problem...errrr....ahhhh....no....not cool...this ain't cool....errr...ahhh...okay...yeah...cool.....until I got a bit distracted and clammed up on them.
Finally, I decided it was all over....twern't gonna make the hole in the trees and it was going to be a tree landing....recalled something a very experienced forestry pilot had told me one time years before....bottomed the lever, gained some airspeed, and waited for the very last instant to start the flare....with the intent to build all the Nr I could....wait out the deceleration and at the last second...pick what looked best and use up all of the Nr I had.....as I went into the trees.
As I started the flare....I realized the landing spot that I had been trying to get to was on the other side of a few trees that I could get over....very hard flare...ballooned up....crossed the trees with a few feet to spare...leveled and pulled off all the Nr....landing into the pussy willow bushes soft as a baby's butt.
The real fun was walking the nine miles out to the nearest road in the dark....whistling Dixie the whole way. (Not scared of Grizzly Bears this guy...nope...not me)