SAS- couple of interesting things from that court case.
1. I see that they only suspended the pilot's ATP. Does this mean that his Private and Commecial were still in force? Or, when you get your ATP suspended does that affect *all* of your certs? Never having had any certificate action (yet!) I wouldn't know.
2. The FAA got him for hovering nearly smack-dab in the middle of the H-V shaded area for the 206. I think it's noteworthy that they took into consideration that he didn't have good forced-landing areas underneath him. I think both of these things are important. Perhaps the FAA would not have gone after him so aggressively if: a) the operation wasn't conducted on a weekday when there were so many people around (to complain); b) if he'd had better forced-landing areas underneath; or c) if he was simply making an approach to a site that required operation in the shaded area.
Point taken, though.
The problem with making approaches that avoid the shaded area of the H-V chart is that helicopters typically don't fly out of airports. I don't know about the rest of you, but in my job a full 80% or more of my landings are to off-airport sites that require something other than a textbook "normal" approach.
And even landing at an airport prevents a normal approach. At an uncontolled field, if I "avoid the flow of fixed-wing traffic," (i.e. don't line up with a runway), I'll usually stay as high as possible so as not to fly low over neighboring houses, etc. This sets me up for a steep, perhaps curved approach to a taxiway or some other spot. At tower-controlled airports, sometimes the tower will say, "Remain clear of all runways," which then necessitates the same thing.
It takes deliberate thought. I "stop" and think to myself, "How am I going to get from here to there while not overflying those houses/hangars/airplanes whatever, and ending up into the wind?" I see a lot of pilots who do not seem to give such things much thought.
The truth is that we *do* infringe on the shaded area in most of our approaches. That's just a fact of life. However, I wish the manufacturers had made the edges of the shaded area "fuzzy" intead of a solid dark, impenetrable line-of-death. Because that is how some pilots interpret it.
I think the best bet is to strike a balance between, "NEVER fly in the shaded area!!" and "The H-V curve does not apply on landing." Do what you've gotta do to get the helicopter there, but don't muck around in the shaded area any more than you have to.