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Old 16th Nov 2008, 14:18
  #30 (permalink)  
chuks
 
Join Date: Apr 2003
Location: Germany
Age: 76
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VMC at night...

I am not a helicopter pilot but I sometimes go where the helicopter pilots go...

One obvious problem is that VMC can very suddenly change to IMC at night, when reading that recent accident report suggests that might be what happened. You are busy looking outside when suddenly all visual reference is lost. What now? You had better have a real good ability to make that sudden transition to instrument flight, perhaps even a quick recovery from an un-noticed unusual attitude. Thrilling stuff!

Another thing that report suggests that the pilot would have been in much better shape if he had pre-programmed his GPS with some user waypoints that would have put him on a safe track to his destination, sort of building himself a little non-precision approach if you will. That might have let him identify some visual reference points and keep oriented so that if he had to "throw it away" he could do that in a reasonably safe manner. The report reads as if the pilot became a bit lost and mis-identified his nearby destination.

I have noticed that when I do that then I get all wrapped up in trying to make what I see fit with where I "know" I am. Once I was becoming very indignant about those crazy Nigerians having planted a big tree right in the middle of a dirt airstrip, when it turned out to be growing on the main street of the village not far away. Oh. It sounds so stupid telling about that now but it made perfect sense to me at the time!
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