Thanx for all the inputs guys,
Scissorlink, your suggestion is true in theory, but obviously you haven’t done a lot of survey flying because if you had, you would know that to follow your suggestion all the time is not possible. There is a huge difference between the theory and the practicability side of things!
Krobar, the correct term for the situation you are describing is: “servo control reversibility.” The hydraulic system is there to assist the pilot to overcome heavy controls when there is a lot of “load” on the rotor system, therefore you should not get it under low G or even negative G conditions unless the hydraulic reservoir is low on fluid, but that is an entirely different matter.
JimEli, the condition Krobar is describing as in stiffness of controls, is actually feedback from the hydraulic system that you can feel! So is the onset of Vortex, experiencing translational lift, approaching VNE, etc. it is all symptoms that you feel!!! So, your statement: “
Flying by feel? Isn't that how a blind man reads?
Is a bit scary for me, I don’t know if a want to take advice from a helicopter pilot that has NO FEEL for helicopters. By the way, low G in a teetering Rotor head is not such a big issue if the pilot initiates it with collective, and keeps the wings level, but if it is initiated with cyclic you can have problems, but the Squirrels doesn’t have a teetering rotor head, so I don’t know why you brought that in.
Anyway, Thanx again for all the comments, there are some useful ones, but I will however try to get more credible info from Eurocopter, and if I do, I will post it here for people that might be interested.
Again, the idea was never to push limits, but to find out exactly what they are.