Nick, old boy,
Such thin skin for a Yank! I do believe you were only slightly off-base. The "foolish" comment was directed at the other person who initially postulated that a UH-60 needs a vertical descent rate of 2500 fpm to get into VRS. What rot!
And speaking of rot, check out the video of your "wildly spinning" Sea King. It did no such thing, Nick, and I'm quite surprised at your efforts at hyperbole or perhaps faulty memory. The bird settled straight down with only a slight right yaw moment set up. It hit the ground, if you recall, at about ninety degrees to the right of its initial heading.
And I did not speculate that a *downdraft* causes or caused VRS, what I said was that an UPDRAFT could cause it! Below ETL, an updraft does not have the same effect as it would when the aircraft is above ETL.
It's lovely that the UH-60 has such good vertical maneuverability at a hover even OEI. You must consider it SuperCopter! But what you're assuming - where you go wrong, in fact - is that the performance of the rotor is as predictable as the performance of the engines. Silly boy.
And as for your suggestion to go out and try to excite VRS, my response would be the same as it's always been: I have done it. But what might excite it on one day might not on another. There are too many variables. It's not like an airplane wing, where we know that it will always stall at predictable speeds.
That is my only point.