EC225 on the ILS
'Twas a windy night in Aberdeen last night. 70kts at 2000', 60 degrees off final approach track. On the surface, gusting 10 - 50 kts 40 degrees off the runway. This direction causes severe turbulence below 1000' as the wind is coming over a 1000' hill only a mile or so upwind.
Various 737s etc were going around due to the wind and turbulence. The ones that landed sounded like they had nearly crashed.
A fine night for EC225 pilot training!
So I was pretty impressed to see that, despite being generally thrown around the cockpit and one the pilots having to go down the back as he felt sick, the localiser and glidepath remained absolutely in the middle at all times. This was either because Mr Eurocopter has painted purple lines on the screen where Loc and Glide should be, or because he has done a pretty fine job with the autopilot software. Hopefully its the latter!
You want to slow down from 130 to 80 at 500' - no problem, just turn the knob and it slows down with loc and glide still stationary in the middle. I have over 10,000hrs but if I had had to fly it manually, I very much doubt I would have been able to keep within limits - or even within full scale.
Yup, I am one impressed pilot!
EC