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Old 13th Feb 2003, 02:54
  #57 (permalink)  
FlyAny
 
Join Date: Oct 2000
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I taught in the U.S. Army sixteen years before the moratorium on touchdown emergency procedures and, subsequent halt of those in all but approved schools. Didn't do TD autos again till I began training civilians.

I will never believe there is any argument or philosophy that replaces the benefit for touchdown autos. We did day straight-in, turning and, low-level (entry alt of 50') autos to the ground. Both hard surface and sod (I prefer sod). We did night straight-in autos to touch down. During the period of time that the "Night Hawk" phase was taught before NVG training, we did night autos with out landing lights.

If EOL training doesn't provide anything else, it provides the confidence that prevents greater than necessary apprehension and, errors comming from that apprehenson.

With out exaggeration, I don't know how many hundreds touchdown autos I've done in H269A's, OH-58's and, UH-1's and, I believe, with out question, that every EOL can be done safely if the instructor will only remember to only do them on the days the conditions will allow (yes, engines quit on bad days but, we have to accept that we can only teach so much), do them to a good surface and, be there for the whole maneuver (if the instructor isn't up to speed for the maneuver or, can't recognize the need to recover when things MIGHT be starting to go bad, he shouldn't be in the maneuver).

Two last points:

The qualification for stopping touchdown emergency procedures training in units was that the accident rate went down dramatically during the moratorium on touchdown emergency procedures training. (Read as: the child birth rate drops dramatically among women who enter convents)

The qualification for teaching EOL's is the rate of unsuccessful completions of actual EOL's as given above.

MY opinions, and happy to have em.
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