Nick I do not know you and have never met you but I think I would like to.
Big respect for 170' earning his living doing things that leave very little margin for error.
I left SEH flying a long time back and when asked by friends why I do not fly privately (on my wages only a SEH is feasible), I simply say "I will probably kill myself because those necessary skills, and courage to use them, have long gone"
I remember doing my first big twin Type Rating. The beautiful and forgiving S61. Training in the old SIM in ABZ and stressing out my Instructor by generally panicking and doing things far too quickly as he slowly and surely weaned me from my inappropriate SEH habits.
However, some things never change, like physics and the theory of rotorcraft flight. Therefore I am somewhat dumbfounded by the bizarre reaction some Rotorheads have to the most simple of concepts.
NR when lost, only comes back by trading energy. The best source of energy is airspeed. In the OGE low speed hover, the immediate need is airspeed to avoid landing heavy. Nicks HoV curves are exactly what this is about so why do some posters get so upset with this. We all know it!!
For MEH pilots like me, the Glasgow crash may prove to be a critical point on how we view flight in the sticky parts of the envelope and in particular, our continued training schedule to develop fully those skills and instincts we may all need for when the 10 to the minus 9 event occurs.
A while back I did a lot of police flying in BO105s and AS355s, spending a lot of time in the OGE hover. I never really considered a double flameout as a real possibility. I don't think we were taught to consider it, rather relying heavily on the OEI concept and escape routes should one donkey stop.
I had two power losses in a BO105 over Leeds at night. The first was caused by my inadvertent beeping down of RRPM, while all time wondering why the NITESUN was not moving. (Both identical coolie hats side by side on the collective).
The second was caused by my large Bobby moving his helmeted head back, fitted a few days prior with a hard visor cover, neatly slotting number 1 power lever into the idle gate while I was keeping station on the PURPs through my RH window.
In both cases I vividly remember the poor little 105, plummeting (P&J readers know this word) towards the houses with me blubbering something like WTF!! and simply not comprehending what was happening. Probably a full 5-10 seconds in both cases before I eventually did the right thing.
(For the second case.....thank you Eric, wherever you are for eventually pointing to the little red lever and issuing those immortal words "Is owt tae dooo wie thar lever" as I scraped across the rooftops at VTOSS.)
Good times spent in blissful ignorance of the probable true horrors that faced poor Dave and his crew that night.
DB