Originally Posted by
r22butters
Its always the internet "pilots" bragging about how "experienced" they are who say the textbook is wrong,...always!
In the real world, I have never met a pilot who thinks SWP is anything other than VRS!
,...but carry on God's gifts to aviation!
Your ignorance and inexperience is showing. My memory is that we taught VRS as 'settling with power' in 68-70 US Army. I was taught to teach it in exactly the conditions of VRS, including the application of power accelerating the descent. It was hard to reliably induce the fully developed state in a TH55, as zero airspeed is hard to determine at the altitudes we did this. We, the pilots in my cohort, interchanged the terms until the late '70s early '80s when the recirculating rotor down wash was broadly taught. This I think lead to the confusion.
My memory may be wrong, but VRS signals subtly that something is happening, vibrations and uncommanded attitude changes and then when in the fully developed VRS, the aircraft feels 'sloppy', less crisp in response. SWP seemed to be more normal aircraft response in the descent, you ran out of power (or NR in the Huey) . We didn't intentionally fly into full SWP, but demonstrated it with power limitation.
Final point: In the real world, I have never had a textbook defined issue in flight. One teaches somewhat simplistic, defined issues in primary instruction to teach the most appropriate resolution clearly and emphatically. The flying part of the instruction is especially simplistic in my opinion, insisting on specific airspeed, altitude and approach procedures as though that kept hobgoblins away. It ain't that clear and easy when you're working the line...