Let's recap for a moment.
Until now we have found out, that the Vuichard technique isn't new. He has rediscovered it.
I searched for a paper he might have written, no luck. Which makes me wonder why, since there is a claim, that the Swiss FOCA was involved. Who knows, the experts there might not be as impressed as Vuichard himself, but keep quite.
Vuichard isn't a test pilot and
afaik, the Swiss FOCA does not employ one.
Neither is Tim Tucker.
To my astonishment, it suddenly became a hot topic and quite a few pilots describe it as the new thing to save lives. When you read the comments on the R&W website, one gets the impression Tim Tucker saved the universe single handedly. They almost worship him.
Helicopters crash more often due to SWP (that darn sudden power loss
pilots often report afterwards) than due to VRS.
If SWP develops into VRS you are out of luck with that technique. You already use take of power and now you want to go sideways demanding even more power from the already sweating engine.
Somehow it does not add up.
Personally I have done IVRS many times during initial and recurrent training and as a CFI (not as many as some of you, I am sure). It is sometimes pretty hard to get an R22 to drop out of the sky. The worst I ever saw had was about 2000 fpm (with a lot of air below me, not only 1000ft). That isn't a fully developed one.
Getting out of it was merely a matter of shoving the stick forward (yes, I have lowered the collective to keep examiners happy, but sometimes one just tries to do something slightly different) and that isn't new either, because some papers suggest exactly that to minimise altitude loss.
Thinking back, I might even have kept the stick very much to the aft, for keeping it in the IVRS. It might be possible, that without changing the position of the cyclic the R22 would fly it self out of it... probably and getting back in shortly after. This might be due to the horizontal stabiliser being behind the rotor disk.
Just once I had a real situation which I realised as a very, very early stage of IVRS. While approaching Palmer AK I got this feeling were all the controls become sluggish and the airframe shudders. A bit more speed down to the runway solved that. Interestingly the windsock on the left showed a head wind, the one on the right tailwind, which I saw later. But that is Palmer for you, where a headwind is a somewhat surprising occurrence that makes you uneasy.
While googeling for more information I found
THIS.
Reading that, it seems the author is pretty sure you can get into VRS with 300 fpm and overpitching (SWP) while experiments and the 206 chart suggest more like 800 fpm. Which makes me thinking, has anyone ever tried all the techniques in a controlled environment? I doubt that. Looking at an altimeter and VSI with all their lag and installation error does not prove a lot. I could even imagine a temporary effect on the instruments depending if you side-slip or not and with all the downwash hitting the fuselage, the standard instruments might not be very reliable.
The Vuichard technique might just be a variant of another standard technique I read about. In the early stage, just use a lot more power to fly out of it ... if you have. Nick Lappos suggested that the S 64 had so much power it would go upwards in no time at all. A B3 might do the same.
I personally think that the Vuichard technique isn't any better in getting out of it in a very early stage, when the ship just starts to shudder and the controls are all mushy, because when you shove the stick forward not to aggressively you don't loose a lot of altitude if any. In that moment the terrible plunge to hell hasn't even started. Waiting to let the VRS develop a bit more isn't real life. When the whole ship shudders and acts like a rodeo horse and the cows get bigger, even the most daft pilot must realise, that something went wrong a lot earlier. Or shouldn't he?
Having said that, I am immediately proven wrong. REGA had an accident lately, where VRS seems to be the culprit (rumour). The 109 K2 hit the ground pretty hard, tore off the undercarriage and landed on its belly, but stayed upright. It seems it was a tailwind approach that went wrong (stand corrected here, the accident report isn't out yet). Now imagine the pilot would have initiated a side-slip in that situation and hit the ground sideways? Not a nice picture. Depending on the weather and other factors, one will not realise what is going on and one might get quite far into IVRS without clear clues and the moment he does, it might even be too late for the Vuichard technique, if it helps at all. To suggest that the whole point is not getting into it, is correct, but not the reality. You only have to look at the wrong windsock once.
I don't know what the pilot did wrong, but I think he did one thing right. He flew his ship into the crash and it stayed upright. With the Vuichard technique he would have a much harder time to keep the ship upright. Flying sideways at high speeds descending to the ground isn't something I would like to do.
Since nobody ever tried to measure the different techniques and write down the results, we are all discussing something that is merely an idea with some indications from standard instruments without taking into account any aerodynamic and other effects on the helicopter or the pilot. To prove anything, I'd like to see some more evidence, please.
The standard technique is easy, works and does not need more power, while the Vuichard technique is more difficult to master and needs more power, which one probably does not have.
Let's look at another scenario. Imagine you are flying a load on the hook and during the approach you get into IVRS. Pickling the load would solve the problem immediately. Lots of power left but an unhappy customer. Using the Vuichard technique would let the load swing suddenly all over the place. Endangering people on the ground who thought, standing not in the flight path of the helicopter would be save. The pilot not only has to catch the descend, but also the swing of the load. Shoving the stick forward and going around using the predefined escape route more or less straight ahead (I know, it isn't always that simple) seems a lot easier to control. Even if he has to let go of the load, its impact point would be a lot more predictable.
Frankly, I wouldn't say that the Vuichard technique is bollocks, but neither new nor the best way to save my day. As a last resort it might be just the thing.