R22 operational safety - somebody enlighten me
I was visiting my parents yesterday, and to be frank hiding inside from the weather.
Roughly speaking, we were under the anvil of a CB, in light rain, with audible thunder in the distance but no visible lightning. The surface wind was around 15knots and steady, but at the cloudbase (my guess, around 300ft) it was clearly strong and very disturbed - visible from the texture of the cloud. Visibility was poor - maybe 2km or so.
As an experienced fixed wing pilot (but not a rotary pilot at-all) it all looked like conditions I wouldn't fly a kite in, let alone an aeroplane.
When along comes an R22 (no, I didn't see his registration), I think one I'd seen at (my guess) 500ft flying roughly towards the core of the CB around 10 minutes earlier before the rain had started. I'd have put him around 200ft, flying fast (80+ knots would be my guess), with the aircraft making noticeable yawing oscillations through something like ±5° (from motion of the tail). From his heading, he would appear to have been running away from the core of the CB (and who can blame him!).
My reaction, as an opinionated fixed wing pilot, was that he'd gone somewhere he shouldn't, was running away from it, but was nonetheless struggling. My uninformed opinion was that he was daft to be staying airborne, and should have just landed in one of the many available open fields and sat the weather out (almost certainly what I'd have done in a STOL aeroplane anyhow).
Presumably he got where he was going safely, since there was no helicopter crash on the news last night. But, please somebody enlighten me...
- Are these appropriate conditions for an aircraft like that?
- Would good practice be to run away in nasty conditions (as he/she seemed to be doing), or to land and sit it out?
- What are the sensible limits for something like an R22 (or for that matter, a bigger helicopter)?
G