Greetings folks,
I was talking to a friend of mine recently who was telling me that downwind autorotations are practised by certain schools. I had never heard of the practise, and wasn't sure if he was having me on.
However, he insisted that they were possible by carrying out the following movements:
Enter autorotation as per usual, except in a downwind heading. Once you begin to flare at the end of the auto, instead of applying pedal to keep the machine straight, (as you would in a normal auto) you let the torque rotate the helicopter around 180 degrees, where you
then apply pedal and some forward cyclic to arrest your downwind speed, and carry out a cushioned landing with collective as per usual.
I was arguing that the rotation from downwind to upwind would result in a low rpm situation as at some point your airspeed would drop to zero in the transition from 'backwards' to 'forwards' flight, and not enough time to bring it around fully into wind.
Has anyone ever heard of this procedure? There is a pint riding on this by the way!
