TC your UK source is simply wrong.
The usual American term for this condition is 'power settling', a description that sums up the potential predicament for the unwary pilot.
Nope. Not correct.
Mr Tucker provided a nice summary, however to correct his little anecdote, since I was trained by the Navy (and Marines) in the early 80's, by the early 1980's the Navy was teaching the same terms that Mr Tucker attributes to the Army.
Not wanting to let the Navy set the standard, the U.S. Army reversed the terminology in the 1960s. Army pilots in Vietnam used the term “settling with power” to refer to the vortex ring state and “power settling” when they were trying to get out of a tight landing zone with too many troops onboard.
The FAA uses “settling with power” in its discussion of vortex ring state in both the Rotorcraft Flying Handbook and the Practical Test Standards (probably because there are more former Army pilots in the FAA than former Navy pilots).
Sadly for his speaking somewhat outside of his experience, Mr Tucker has never bothered to read Navy flight training instructions.
For example:
2. Do not let the helicopter hover on the glide slope prior to the intended point of landing, as the risk of entering the vortex ring state will be greatly increased.
and later in paragraph 4
a waveoff shall be initiated to avoid the possibility of entering the vortex ring state. See Vortex Ring State, TH-57 NATOPS, Part IV or Chapter 11.
Source is the current Navy training manual for the TH-57 (a variant of the Bell 206), or current as of 2015.
NAVAL AIR TRAINING COMMAND NAS CORPUS CHRISTI, TEXAS CNATRA P-457 Rev (01-15) Pages 4-30 and 4-31.
The TH-57 NATOPS manual addresses vortex ring state, as does the ground training in basic helicopter aero.
You and quite a few others are simply wrong, due to being about 30 years out of date in what you think is true about what someone else teaches.
I wish to salute crab, and completely agree that in getting people to think about this, regardless of these bun fights over terms, we hope that rotary wing aviatiors will know the difference and know what to do about
:
- What VRS is, how one may approach or get into VRS in real flying, and how to avoid/prevent/deal with it.
- The problem of "Power Required Exceeds Power Available" and how to avoid that creating problems for you when flying.
I would also like to salute you, TC, for your long standing rants on VRS because whatever silly bickering goes on, you have never let up on the importance of making sure it never bites you. In aid of that, one has to know the phenomenon, know when one is exposed to that risk, and how to dealing with entry into it (ie, get out of this before it gets worse!).
On that we can all surely agree.