Collective check after flaring
 

I went out and tried this after reading Shawn Coyle's "Little Book of Autorotations". I cannot believe how good this works!!! When he said he had done one to the ground without touching the cyclic(after the flare) I figured it was worth a try! I just circled the cyclic after the flare and did a small collective check-the Brantly leveled perfectly and the cyclic stick did not have to be moved forward at all! I was extremely impressed with this. Seeing is believing it works great! As he points out the cg needs to be forward of the main rotor mast for this to work but the vast majority of helicopters are like this.

Sounds interesting. :ok:

Read also this thread and comments about 'checking' in the flare etc.

One of the instructors at the Bristow School in the 70's (Dick Tudor) used to teach this.

He would say "Give it one" by that he meant give it "one inch" of collective at the right moment. I only flew with Dick a few times, but his regular students swore by this technique. DFD

I was recently contacted by the 'other reader' of the book, and he was saying that the organization he was training with would not do the 'collective check at the end of the flare' and insisted on leveling with the cyclic.
This made me reflect that on some helicopters where the CG might be aft of the rotor mast that the collective check first might not be the best way to get the machine level.
So, beware!
The collective check first worked on the machines I've tried it in, but there may be others where it's not that effective.

Great book Shawn and in the Brantly it works to perfection!

I like the check because it acts to positively 'end' the flare and set you up to level, settle and cushion on.

The thing with the 'standard' R22 auto as taught in the Aussie civil flying schools I've had some contact with is that it's wishy-washy, and appears to set you up to have a fair bit of run-on speed, particularly in light winds. They do a fairly normal flare, but it all turns a bit lame at the end when the cyclic is pushed forward to level the skids without a check. It doesn't seem effective at retarding the forward motion.

The check, as I was taught it in military training and have used many times, seems to help get rid of that last bit of forward speed and get your vector going from forwards to down.

As I think we would mostly agree, hitting with a bit of vertical velocity is going to be more survivable than running on forwards on rough terrain.

Arm,
You describe the problem with just the cyclic pushover perfectly! In fact there is a video on youtube somewhere that shows Robinson factory pilots talking about people just pushing the cyclic over and "undoing" the flare by introducing the forward speed they'd just scrubbed off with the flare in the first place! I'm a big believer of this method. It just feels so much more controlled to me!

About 40 years ago I was chatting with an ex-RN R4 pilot who was part of the team at Beaulieu in 1944. Initially they practiced EOL's using only the cyclic in the flare - the collective remained firmly lowered during the whole auto, even during the touchdown......

Hmm...I had a student do that on me once in a Gazelle. We went charging across the engine off area at about 50kts. Good job there was nobody in the way. :eek:

I had a student who got confused about the use of collective to cushion the touch down after the flare/level was correctly completed. He re-applied almost full aft cyclic, instead, at about twenty feet....

EOLs were taught as part of the AAC Aircrewmans Course, although the QHI's hands were never too far away from the controls. Come to think of it, the same applied during my Pilot's Course too!

Hmm...I had a student do that on me once in a Gazelle. We went charging across the engine off area at about 50kts. Good job there was nobody in the way.[/I]


As an instructor, that was your fault --not his, and would you really carry out an eol that might end up running on directly behind another aircraft already on the ground in the engine off area?

This is such an interesting thread! I'm a newly minted private heli rating, I mean spanking new, and obviously auto's are very fresh in my mind. Strangely enough, I found it quite natural to put in a bit of collective right at the end of the flare, pretty much simultaneously with rolling the throttle back on (no full down's for U.S. private students, etc.) and just an instant prior to leveling the ship. This is in the R22. My instructors were not enamored of that practice, wishing me to roll on at the end of the flare, level and then start pulling on the collective. Concerns included using up valuable energy and ballooning. I did, however, tend to flare a bit more aggressively than most so rotor speed was usually up there, however ballooning was a real concern if timing was off. We worked quite a lot on moderating the flare and stretching it out a bit to let the ship slow down and keep the rotor speed where it belongs. I suppose it will all come together when and if I get to do any full downs. Practice ones, that is! I just started scratching the surface of commercial training and my commercial instructor is already having me do some full down precursor exercises, settling into run-on landings, so maybe towards the end, although my understanding is that commercial students don't do them either.

True. My normal reaction speed of slightly less than a nanosecond, was a bit slow that day.

Strange,

during my JAR-FCL PPL-H (in Germany) I did many full downs.
Same during my practical exam, and each and every yearly type rating refresh ever since. Small difference: Some TREs set the engine completely to idle, some held it up at about 2.000rpm ("just in case").

And back to topic: If I remember correctly (now i initially start really thinking about the details of the flare), I also give it a little collective. But I'm not sure. I surely will discuss it with my piloting friends.

Best regards

Spartacus