DB, please read again, without hurry, John Dixon's posts. Neither he, nor John E, advocate letting Nr decay to the point of no return. I am grateful for John's joining our discussion. The back and forth between he and henra raise again the issue of what the AoA and the loading on the rotor blades becomes. Their discussion reminds me again of the wisdom of what I was taught: Control Nr.
That's the prime directive.
As to Pete and Cyclic Back as a memory aid:
Pete, if you oversimplify something you may create negative reinforcement. There was a time when we called that "negative training." Your "cyclic back" mantra is no better a simple maxim than the "lower collective" mantra
since neither works in isolation.
Unlike our fixed wing brethren, the left and right hand don't influence different flight controls. They influence the same ones!
(G0ULI, work with us here, it's OK!
) EDIT to clarify: FW even the right hands left/right stick and fore/aft stick operate different flight control surfaces, while L/H operates power (and often the flaps ...) while in RW both hands end up influencing the flight controls rotating overtop one's head.
Pete, it isn't either / or. As a helicopter pilot and instructor with your deep experience I am convinced that you know better than to teach that those are independent of each other.
When something happens to your helicopter that you did not purposely initiate, do two things as quickly as you can. 1. Start the cyclic moving aft, and 2. Start the collective (or “lever” as I'm learning to say on this forum!) down towards the bottom. This must be a gut reaction, not a thought-out move on the pilot's part. DON'T take time to troubleshoot the situation before moving the flight controls.
False dichotomy.
You have two hands.
You can do two things.
Helicpter pilots work both hands and their feet with some frequency, particularly when flying below translational lift, but that skill set does not magically disappear when flying above translational lift.
Control Nr.
One can take any procedure and find faults with it. Is Cyclic Back needed every time no matter what the mode of flight? Of course not
Thank you, for qualifying the previous point you were making.
I am going to use your example of trading airframe velocity for rotor rpm. You are so right.
It's what I was taught by Navy and Marine Corps instructor pilots over thirty years ago. No big secret. Granted, IIRC all of the birds I flew were "high inertia rotor heads." My carping above aside, I appreciate your energetic crusade on Nr maintenance / restoration. It is much more time critical for the lower inertia head birds.
There are two hands on every pilot. Step 1: control Nr.
If the instructional community teach
how to control Nr, (you have two hands!!!!), and pilots learn to prioritize that and then get on with the rest, then that nasty region of decayed Nr where the jig is up will hopefully be prevented, and more people will walk away from, rather than be carried away from, accidents where it all goes wrong in a hurry.
SASless:
FWIW, we learned how to auto by doing run on landings to grass fields at Spencer Field, Whiting, back in the early 80's in the Jet Ranger. I think that's still in the syllabus. I don't remember doing full autos in the Huey ... I draw a blank each time I reach for that memory. I think they used to do full autos in the Huey at Rucker, but again, memory banks have lost that data. Been a few beers since our conference with the Army on that stuff ... hell, a lot of beers.
