EOLs
Thanks for the note Savoia and I'm so glad you produced a good EOL to preserve my old friend, G-AYTF. I do have a piccy of her taken at Leeds Castle parked inside the moat when she was in the JPS all black & gold JPS colours, but having just moved home, it is in storage. But no doubt it was dear old 'Nobby Clarke's specialised EOL technique you learned that saved that particular day. And yes ... I do actually log every practice 'full stop to the ground' engine-off landing and having been instructing now since 1974, my log book has recorded 3,868 events as at 30 November. Oddly in my 14,250 hours, I am still waiting for the real thing ... and I bet it gets me when I least want it. But being three quarters retired, I may just get to beat the odds.
Back to the many EOL techniques discussed here. Naturally the use of any amount of 'up' collective drops the RRPM, but that doesn't take into account the advantage of combining the early use of collective with cyclic flare. Used by itself, a firm aft cyclic can ... as noted here ... take Nr beyond the max PFM limit, especially so at high a/c weights, but using the combined flare/collective method allows the pilot to use a firmer flare where the rrpm is held at the max Nr figure using collective. With good co-ordination of the two controls, a zero speed touch down can usually be obtained if there is any sort of breeze. At lower a/c weight, no breeze is necessary.
Like many of the 'old uns,' I've been lucky enough to take the old Fort Worth pilot course where the Bell aces showed me the Jetranger technique from 175 feet AGL and a zero ASI reading. Firm lever down gets the airflow under the horizontal stabilisor which pitches the nose down sharply without any cyclic control change by the pilot. Zero speed becomes 60 knots by 75 feet AGL allowing the standard flare recovery for a zero speed skids-on landing.
Bell also demo'd the EOL from a 40 foot AGL hover ... lever rapidly fully down and back up again at around 10 feet. Useful for the air photo pilots who get asked to manoeuvre low level.
'Elf n Safety ... Don't try this at home without a type experienced instructor. AND avoid a high speed run-on landing on the 206. Them pesky transmission lamiflex links attached to the M/R transmission are around $2,500 at the last count. The standard pre-flight check on the tell-tale 'spigot' will reveal all.
Keep the ideas coming please, Dennis Kenyon.