Originally Posted by
chopjock
SkyT
If I was trying to hover at high altitude without visual references and a non existent ASI, if my co pilot yelled "airspeed" "airspeed" at me I would probably wonder if I should increase or decrease it. On the other hand, if my co pilot yelled "airspeed too low" I would be able to respond quicker and in the correct manner.
Chop jock, I'm not sure what point you're trying to make, apart from find fault. To address your criticism:
Firstly, those of us who did this job knew the problems we were likely to experience and knew the calls we needed to make if things went wrong.
Secondly, the ASI wasn't "non existent", but it didn't read below 40 kts, due to pitot static issues and was well known on the type. If you had an instrument rating you would realise that from a hover attitude and zero airspeed it's really not possible to exceed Vne, the other end of the scale. We were all trained to recover from UPs on instruments, but not from fully developed VRS - we were trained to avoid it instead. In this case the HP was slow to realise we had actually entered VRS due to a lack of airspeed coupled with the very high ROD. I must add that it happened very quickly indeed and we were all very tired.