HC
Thanks for the reply. I can understand the company requiring the use of the "safer" autopilot approach it protects them should a pilot make a manual approach and have a problem.
I am, however, still concerned that helicopter flying is becoming too like fixed wing where there seems to be a disconnect between managing a computer environment and the outside world.
Things do go wrong - the Air France Atlantic crash being an example. The handling pilot had circa 3000hrs, if you take off say 600hrs for hands on training and he does 15hr trips Paris/Brazil where he is handling pilot then he gets 80 trips of which he may get 10mins manual flying/trip about 14hrs. No wonder he didn't use power/attitude/trim to stabilise the a/c he just pulled back on the side stick with tragic consequences.There have been too many autopilot influenced crashes which were totally avoidable, I don't want that to creep into the NS environment.
Don't misunderstand me I am a great fan of using the modes in bad weather. I remember well doing single pilot night shuttles with cloud base near minimums and having my track on radar so I could position at 1500ft long finals to the rig and engage either speed or rate of descent along with the heading bug and motor down my approach track monitoring rather than flying - at the bottom aids off land on manually-no problem. I could, however, do it all manually if our pimitive coupling threw a wobbly.
HF
Last edited by Hummingfrog; 28th Aug 2013 at 11:22.