Hi all,
I don't know what all this fuss about emergency training is.
VRS is not a scary thing to practise if you do it right - at least 2000' AGL, better 4000.
It only really gets scary when you get it where you shouldn't - short final, coming down too fast, going too slow and no ALTITUDE left to recover.
I always had a hard time to get into a decent VRS with any Robinson, but once in it, it is easy to demonstrate, that increasing power doesn't help, just makes it worse. It is this demo that is worth gold, as it drives the fact home, that power is worthless at this stage.
No one mentioned to enter Autorotation to recover - watch your MRRpm though. A proper demo and pre/after discussion of VRS will make any student aware of the dangers of a incorrect decent procedure.
At 3000-4000 it is no problem, but you will normally not get it there.
I never teach revocery by Auto OR Forward flight, it sounds like you have a choice of needing altitude OR go around. I ALWAYS point out, that you WILL need altitude, no matter what. I need a minimum of 400 feet from full VRS to "fly-out" - it also shows, that you have about 0% chance to get away if you get on short final.....
Same goes for EOL (does anyone do REAL EOL? I assume engine idle would be the thing...). How are you ever get someone to do a good auto if you never get them on the ground? Are you planning on damage anyway?
The situation seems to me like 15-20 years ago in fixed wing: "We don't need spin-recovery, because we train our students to never get into one!"
Well, WHY then is spin-recovery back in the syllabus??
Face it, initial training will always carry more risk for Helo-body-damage than regular flying. Well, part of the game.
Nothing to do whether your first ride is R22 or something else.
B-47s got lots of damage in training long before Frank knew about the R22 himself...
I am not in favor of NOT demonstrating Low-g anymore either, as it is a rather interesting experience. If you are never in it you really have no idea what to expect. So why is there no more low-g demo?
Because of the US-system of basic flight instruction. A 150-200 hr chap gets to instruct the next guy, having really 0 experience. He gets low-g demoed, next thing he shows his "new skills" to his student, chickens out (panics) half through the demo and ....crash.
No wonder FR pulled the plug on it.
I agree on this though.
What they should do, is demo it at their Safety-course, with the factory-instructor (Tim Tucker or whoever else is there now too....).
It is a rather harmless occurance, IF you know how to recognize and meet it, like retreating blade-stall and VRS.
Same should go for the VRS, don't let the green instructor kill his first student and himself with it, but let your 1000 hr+ chief-flightinstructor or better yet your 18K+ retired pro, turned instructor do the more complex/demanding demos and instruction. Cost? So what!!
Until you have full motion sims (I hear there is even a R22 sim under development...) realistically perform advanced emergency maneuvers, there is no substitute for the real training, including VRS, full-touchdowns autos, running ldgs/tkoff, stuck pedal, hover-autos, etc.
Enough ranted......
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