R44 down Rio de Janeiro

[AnFI]

Hillberg

A tail wind

do you mean a tail wind or do you mean negative airspeed ie Flying backwards through the air ... in which case you could just turn 180deg and be flying with positive airspeed and yaw stabilisation from vert stabilizer, also at airspeed less power is required and so you cannot run out of the anti torque you might need ... or do you mean inadvertently zero airspeed?

pulling max pitch

Do you mean Collective lever hard against the TOP CONTROL LIMIT or do you mean lever at Full Throttle Operation...

With a full load

Does it make any difference what the load is if you have the lever at MAX PITCH?? (I suppose it does a little...)

and.....

Does the High DA make much difference to yaw control - since the engine and TR both perform proportional to Density?


At MAX PITCH and at High DA (low engine power?) with the RRPM already at 90% (and being at max pitch presumably decreasing rapidly....? ) the last of your worries is yaw - since you are crashing anyway for other reasons - but I still think the TR is powerful enough to counter any yaw short of actually having to crash to prove the tail rotor inadequate...

This guy in Brazil may have had any number of reasons to be unable to control his yaw - pax interference, wide shoes, object jammed in control run, mis-rigged pedals. BUT running out of T/R authority ain't one of them.


I think (almost) all pilots will have a similar problem to this when they encounter whilst inexperienced the extreme unexpected yaw of an unexpected tail wind catching them out. Most are lucky ....


In Yorkshire arriving at minus 20kts whilst not expecting it would be a schock ... that type is very stable into wind - the windier the better - the simple common pilot error of arriving downwind - makes the type very unstable in yaw at negative airspeed.

There are so many yaw incidents - Auz, redhill120, swansea120, gazelle, rio, irish wedding, - there might be some advatange into recognising a cause and helping people with some helpful advice - like:


some ideas....
Fly with the 'relative wind' on the nose - ie crab as required to prevent need for sideways and backwards airspeeds....
Dont be shy to use the pedals more aggressively if you need to assert yaw control.
If you don't understand what they are doing then be calm, smooth and respond slowly if you need to.
Stay level with the stick - regardless of the yaw rate.
Keep the height with the lever.
It's probably not a T/R failure.
It's probably not an Engine Failure.
Don't just give up and crash.
The lever controls your height and the cyclic keeps the disk level - you'll figure out the rotation eventually....
Don't misdiagnose engine failure, if you hear the horn - be smooth.
If you really have run out of pedal and it still just keeps yawing - then gently reduce the lever a little - and see if it helps - don't crash.
Are you sure you are using full pedal and still spinning?

Get more experience - soon