Fareast Driver, I always maintain there is no substitute for experience and you must have it by the bucketload, having read you CV post.
I must therefore revisit your comments and force myself to find some merit or reasoning in them. I have to say you have not made the job easy!!
I am surprised that you seem unaware that so many CFITs have occurred also to Military pilots. I hope you can see from my last post that there are no stereotypes in these events.
I have never, ever witnessed a pilot over relying on the AFCS. in fact what I see is the absolute polar opposite of this. Under reliance, spawned by poor systems knowledge and inadequate basic AFCS and recurrent AFCS training is what I see, every day, every training mission.
All offshore types have different AFCS systems with different capabilities and different traps for the unwary. Like any system or machine it is only as good as the person using it. In terms of training for these systems one size definitely will not fit all.
The latest Eurcopter DAFCS is light years ahead of anything else being produced by Sikorsky and AW. Provided the aircraft is coupled in IAS, or ALT, or V/S or indeed any combination thereof, the aircraft will not descend below 150 feet, OR reduce AS below 60 KIAS, without overridding actions from the pilots.
For you Fareastdrriver, who likes to fly manually. No problems. Even completely uncoupled the collective is still guarded for you by the DAFCS. Thus power is protected AEO which means you do not have to look inside to pull power any more. Just beep up and the collective stops at the first limit.
OEI and this power protection morphs into NR protection. Look outside to avoid all the obstacles and just pull like crazy until you hear the low rpm Beeps. Relax and the collective motors back down to maintain exactly the required OEI reference NR.
Fareastdriver, the EC225 will pay her respects, even to your Luddite appetites allowing you to enjoy your manual flying in a power/NR protected bubble.
This is the future. This is what we need. This us why the EC225 is so important right now.
However, even the EC225 cannot fully protect the passengers from poor crew training as graphically demonstrated in the ETAP ditching. Someone up front has to engage the DAFCS to deploy the flight envelope protections.
A perfectly serviceable EC225 with full flight envelope, power and NR protection HANDFLOWN INTO THE SEA BY EN EX MILITARY PILOT because he failed to deploy the one thing that would have saved him, one tiny little button 24 inches from his face.
And what about the co-pilot sat next to him. He stated that he knew the approach was f*cked up but felt incapable of doing anything about it. All he had to do was say "I have control" and press one tiny little button 2 inches from his left thumb and he could have immediatley closed his eyes for 10 f*cking minutes and they would have been home for tea and medals with only a bruised ego and and interesting FDM trace to explain.
Can you see it now Fareastdriver?
Can you understand now what this thread is about?
Manual flying is the very core of the problem. Too much of it, in ****e weather, at the most inappropriate ends of the flight envelope. Sadly this is aided and abetted by too little time spent learning the automatics AND most appallingly, if adequate time was spent learning the automatics THE AIRCRAFT WOULD NEVER, EVER end up at the edge of the envelope in this first place.
Do you see it now Fareastdriver!!
There is none so blind that cannot see!!
Last edited by DOUBLE BOGEY; 14th Sep 2013 at 13:01.