PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Vuichard technique for settling with power?
Old 22nd Nov 2015, 16:21
  #145 (permalink)  
Rotorbee
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Europe
Posts: 434
Received 22 Likes on 13 Posts
No wonder. VT was in probably every Swiss magazine. Since it is a Swiss technique, it must be better than anything else ever invented elsewhere. When it comes from Switzerland, it is from a higher authority. Therefore a Swiss pilot must use it if appropriate or not, or else ...

When you look at the following picture, there are a few clues, that he did a good job.
http://www.snoop.ch/img/5117761424968557.jpg

He landed on the grass and the wheels just broke of. The landing must have been pretty hard, but not hard enough to bend the blades to touch the tail boom. If at all it was IVRS at a very early stage with a pretty low sink rate or he had just not managed to get out of it with a lot of power. Not a lot of forward speed either, because the wheels are still there and no sliding marks. An almost perfect hard landing.
Another picture. The windsock in the back shows a wind which is perpendicular to the helicopter. If the wind did not turn until that picture was taken, that would be a side wind.


He PROBABLY came in fast (knows the corner, did that every time, not the stable approach with a slow deceleration one does to an unfamiliar place) and during the "breaking" with the nose high, things got ugly. That would be at or below hundred feet (assuming, no facts except experience). He probably even was in a turn toward the pad which is in the background.
In that moment trying to do a side-slip would be suicidal, especially using the power pedal. Adding power, yes, levelling the ship, yes, flying uncoordinated, God no. He wouldn't even had time to use VT, because he would have to level the ship first and then try to fly out of it. For that it was definitely too late.

He might have f***ed up the landing but it looks to me, that's a pilot who knows how to save his ass.
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