It is another example of dumbing down!

Gov off, autos to the ground, demonstrating the low g issue with the R22 (and how it is a non event when dealt with correctly) these are the exercises that should be flown by the student. If they scare a few off then maybe it will save a few lives! Anyone can do an auto to the hover, it is the last ten feet that make the difference on the phone call you make afterwards.

If you have been trained fully in how to deal with events in the air then you are much better prepared should the modern reliability of your equipment fail.

Having recently done a CRM refresher it was amazing to see how many recent accidents (f/w and rotary) would have been avoided had the pilots been less reliant on automatics and gone back to basics......trouble is it seems that some of the basics are not allowed to be taught anymore.

Train hard fly easy just about covers it me thinks !:D

Ok . So you are all brilliant at autos to the ground . Well in that case why would my insurance company give me a really good discount for not allowing them on any of my aircraft ?!! Listen , I have also done quite a few and even with top of the tree instructors / examiners the odd one has got a bit ugly . The undeniable point which I defy you to disagree with is this ....... Far far more helicopters have been written off practicing autos to the ground than have ever been bent by real engine failures !!! The chances now of an engine failure are tiny , especially in turbines . As a low time pilot you are far more likely to have problems from 1) off airport landings at private houses with difficult approaches ( not generally covered properly in the syllabus. 2) inadvertent IMC trying to stay 500ft agl ( again nowhere near adequately covered . 3) high winds and turbulence in hills ( not really covered at all ) .
But do we spend sufficient time on these things ?? No , we are fully locked into an out of date view that engine failure is the big gotcha ..... It's not . How ever much you cock up the last 5ft you are going to be very unlucky to kill yourselves. Getting it wrong in 1) 2) or 3) and you will probably become another statistic . You just couldn't make it up , it's crazy .

Nigel

The problem is The CAA, by removing it from the syllabus instructors have become lazy and incompetent. Lets be honest most people are taught by those trying to get up the greasey pole. Where is the experience and knowledge from a guy teaching you who could have done less than 300 hours ??????
I agree entirely about confined areas, I spend a shed load of time with students doing that. Again it is all about subconscious, if you know you can do it !!!!

nigel, i guess part of the point is that the ability to do a good engine off landing indicates a level of handling competance that might have a risk reduction spin-off. if a pilot has the competency to perform a good engine off landing then he can probably land calmly in a field under other circumstances rather than stacking it. He might not lose it when the wind changes etc

The learning process is being dumbed down so that the punctuation in the operations manual becomes more important than actually being able to fly. It is irrelevent where governor-off control is taught as long as it is taught. It is artificial to compartmentalise these training items to a system designed to be overseen rather than for the student's benefit.

Hi Nigelh,

As much as I will never fly a Robbie again if that 5ft you mention is arrived at , at around 90 knots then there is a little problem, when I was taught (in a R22) I was shown the eol after the 2 nd lesson,.. reason I asked what it felt like, the instructor showed me and power recovered at about 50 ft, MUch later when I was ready I was taken through my own again to PR at about 50ft, and again and again until it was a none event( strictly speaking) for I was doing it with the happy instructor covering my every action, I accept that in all the past few years I cannot remember one person saying here on Rotorheads that they had an engine conk out, there must have been one somewhere but not reported on here, after that I went onto the 206, where again I was walked through the auto down to,.. this time GL the different instructor again followed my every action ...but to say it politely it was a non event it was so utterly easy and no panic that I was impressed when my then instructor showed me the famous pick up and 180 then down with the residual energy in those big Bell blades.,,,:D

Whilst I am only a pleasure flyer I still think that sort of action should be done and understood by every Heli Pilot being trained, for the Donk may run out of Go Juice, then you would need to know what you had to do in order to survive, IMO.....:ok:

nigel don't you think that EOL training (and manual throttle control) means that pilot's will have greater handling competence? Perhaps having less accidents because they know how to fly.

Instead all the touchy-feely 'no EOL' and 'Gov Off is an Emergency, if it happens don't turn the throttle', Training Manegment Manual Audit and Safety Management Manual stuff seems to correlate with pilots not being able to handle safely anymore. Lovely Manuals all approved by the CAA, but aircraft littering the countryside recently.

First it was light/medium twins 6 in a row, now light singles 4 in a row. Follows the cronology of regulation introduction, strange.

Anfi

How synical , my SMS manual doesn't have among its 200 odd risks crashing however the caa asked what were the top risks to my operation. My top one was caa paperwork! Their own feedback obviously doesn't go anywhere as we are seeing currently in the number of crashes :ugh::ugh:

Autorotations to the ground, day & night!
 

Yes :rolleyes:

I actually tend to doubt that. I would agree that probably more machines have been lost to practicing autorotations than to engine failures, but would suggest that most of those had nothing to do with autos to the ground, and instead occurred by allowing sink rate to get high while having inadequate airspeed, or by misjudging the flare and striking the ground even when a power recovery was intended. The fact is that most autorotation training in the R22 is to power recovery, until the candidate is working on his instructor rating, and a large percentage of autorotation training accidents is in R22 training during primary instruction, to a power recovery. This has a lot to do with less experienced instructors, and a pretty unforgiving amount of rotor inertia in that particular helicopter, and little to nothing to do with trying to take the auto to the ground.

Additionally, when I think about the machines I know of first hand that were smashed up (about 12), none of them had to do with autorotations... It was tail rotor strikes dynamic roll over, LTE (with a subsequent roll down the mountainside), and running out of gas (which involved an autorotation, but they weren't practicing autorotations when they ran out of gas :ooh:

While I know all of those people first hand, I actually don't know anyone first hand who has trashed a machine while practicing autorotations to the ground!

It's not that small. I know a number of people first hand (8 that come to mind) who have had engine failures in singles (2 of those in turbines), including myself (but that was an airplane). And only two of those were really high time guys (but those were the turbine failures so I agree that piston power ups the chances a bit).

As for all the other things you think should be taught: I agree! I don't think it's an either or situation, though. A good training syllabus should be preparing pilots to deal with all kinds of usual and unusual occurrences.

As for whether we should be teaching touchdowns, I generally feel that at the private pilot level the student should have seen at least a couple by the time they get their ticket ( I usually demonstrate one just before solo and then again before they get their ticket ), just so they can understand the difference in the last few feet. By the time you get your commercial you should have seen a bunch and done at least a few yourself, and by the time you're an instructor you should have done quite a few yourself. Some of this depends on the machine. Certainly the R22 is a more difficult machine to take to the ground. An Enstrom, R44, or 206 is quite easy and involves minimal risk with an experienced instructor on board.

Shameless plug for one of my youtube videos on autos to the ground: https://youtu.be/8Tez1Npd0Gc

So to highlight the importance of this issue today while doing circuits in an R44 I had a gov fail with a runaway down ! For a split second till I realised what the fault was it did get the heart going :)

When did we get to a position where we started to think that teaching a student pilot how to manipulate a primary flight control (the throttle) was unnecessary?
I published an article about this subject last year, "Lost skills".

FFS, at no time has anyone ruled that "gov-off" training shouldn't be performed on Robinson piston-engined helicopters.

It is an acknowledged requirement of all EASA (at least) training courses of on such a type.

The important point is how and when in the course the training is performed.

I agree with Dick, we are losing too many skills, too much automentation:D

Govenor off training
 

I'm not sure how we had thread creep from the original question of govenor off to EOL to the ground. I think they are very different issues but I can certainly comment on govenor off training.

I had govenor failure in R22s, due to sensor failure, and I was able to comfortably diagnose the problem and continue the flight without fuss due to receiving the training prior to first solo. This training was then a fairly common recurrance over the years (including on Dick Sanford's most excellent course).

Thanks to the correlator, flying govenor off is a non-issue, if you have been correctly trained and fly appropriately.

Fly safe,
John