PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - AS332L2 Ditching off Shetland: 23rd August 2013
Old 6th Sep 2013, 13:36
  #1328 (permalink)  
HeliComparator
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Aberdeen
Age: 67
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OF many moons ago I used to fly the 332L - manually -EEEK! Nominated approach speed for an ILS was 110kts normally. At that speed, presuming the collective was set to the correct ballpark figure, it was by far the easiest to fly the glide slope on the cyclic. Minor adjustments to attitude would of course give slight speed variations, but within limits. If there was severe up or down drafts then some collective action might be required to contain the speed.

When I became an instructor, I found guys fresh out of flight school really struggled with ILSs because they were trying to control glideslope with collective and speed with cyclic. On many helicopters, and especially the 332L, you get a lot of interaction in pitch and roll when the collective is moved, and this was destabilising their flying. Once I had beaten the duff gen they had been given at flight school out of their heads, and got them to fly glideslope mostly on the cyclic, they suddenly found it easy.

However, as SAS correctly pointed out a moment ago, in reality a combination of cyclic and collective is required to control both glideslope and speed in these sorts of speed ranges. Its a sliding scale from (eg height) all collective at zero speed, to no collective at Vh, and vice versa for cyclic. And the same but in reverse for speed. I just wish ab initio flight schools explained this properly.
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