N. Lappos about VRS:
Not at all likely to occur in any helo at 300 fpm
There is something that troubles me about statements like this and in fact all that we "know" about VRS/SWP: That Canadian RAF Sea King at the airshow in upstate NY some years back.
If you can find the whole clip, you'll see the big Sikorsky hovering around up at 100 feet or so (it's hard to tell) in an OGE hover. It is nice and stable, and the cameraman is easily able to "track" the ship without a lot of jerky camera movements. The ship does a sort of sliding-pedal-turn without losing much altitude (again, hard to tell), when all of a sudden the bottom falls out and it starts descending vertically, blades coning like the proverbial ballerina, collective obviously up under two armpits, until it smashes into the ground like a ton of bricks, landing gear fails and it rolls over. (Most of the internet video clips I've seen only show the last few seconds of the flight as it is already in...whatever flight regime is causing the downward cable-snapped elevator ride.)
Now to this observer, it does not *look* like the ship was in a big vertical descent before The Event. In fact, just the opposite, it looks like the crew was being pretty cautious and slow. They didn't seem to be all that heavy, so available power shouldn't have been a problem. But "something" happened, and I'd sure like to know what. Engine failure?