Full downs taught before CFI or not?

[West Coaster]

How do you bend a training ship doing hovering autos? Start at twenty feet?

 

Is this a serious question?

 

A helicopter under power can crash during a perfect landing, so how is a power off auto from a few feet perfectly safe? Hovering autos can lead to disaster even faster than ones from altitude, because some people show a cavalier attitude towards them.

[Hedge36]

Is this a serious question?

 

Hovering autos can lead to disaster even faster than ones from altitude, because some people show a cavalier attitude towards them like yours.

 

Don't assume a cavalier attitude. I'm not a CFI and I always felt that hovering autos were no big deal - hence the question.

[West Coaster]

Sorry if I got barky. Try to look at everything you do in the machine as a big deal, or one day it'll bite you in the butt bigtime.

 

Story behind the photo is an excellent example. Student and instructor doing hovering autos, student with about 3 hours in helicopters. After a good brief in the classroom and again in the machine, the instructor demos a few for the student. One last final brief goes like this,

"When I chop the power off, you correct yaw with right pedal, keep it over the spot and cushion with collective."

What the student heard in his mind was this,

"When I chop the power off, you correct yaw with cyclic, keep it over the spot and cushion with ccollective."

 

The instructor, having done this with hundreds of students thousands of times got a little complacent. It bit him in the ass, and snapped his collar bone. A simple mis-communication ruined everyones day.

[Hedge36]

Copy that.

 

Three hours seems a little low for that, though, doesn't it?

[West Coaster]

Probably was a little early yes, instructor admitted that. Plus he now goes thru the motions with the engine off before doing it for real... just to be sure the student gets the mental picture.

[Hedge36]

Probably was a little early yes, instructor admitted that. Plus he now goes thru the motions with the engine off before doing it for real... just to be sure the student gets the mental picture.

 

Got it.

 

I guess each of us finds some part of this stuff we do a bit easier than others. For instance, I find full-downs and hovering autos MUCH easier than, say, power recoveries. One of the reasons I'm nervous about being a CFI is that I'm afraid of the kid who has a hard time grasping the things I find easy

[Darren Hughes]

My second lesson doing hover autos, we practiced some at the ramp before leaving the airport. I was starting to get comfortable with them as we were coming down light as a feather for most of them. We were heading out to the practice area and had done a couple of autos from altitude on the way.

 

We got out to a little dirt runway that we'd use for various things such as hover practice and decided to do a few more hover autos. My instructor, without thinking, and because of the autos on the way out, chopped the throttle just as hard as she would while giving a simulated engine failure at altitude. Needless to say we got a lot more yaw than I expected. I stomped on the right pedal to correct the yaw, and with the same force yanked the collective up into my armpit. Before we knew it, we had climbed up to about, god-knows how many feet and started to head south fairly rapidly. I think we bounced about 3 or 4 feet back into the air after hitting the ground.

 

The only thing that saved us, I think was the fact that we had zero movement over the ground and the helicopter came down squarely on the skids both the first and second time. My instructor looked over at me, as white as a ghost, and couldn't stop apologizing. We got out and checked the wee R22 thoroughly and were very surprised that nothing was bent. It was a quiet flight home! A few months later, she told me she almost quit that day, but she had learned her lesson and never dropped her guard after that one.

 

Two things another instructor told me right after I got my CFI;

1. Bad things happen faster the closer you get to the ground!

2. Never forget, the students always trying to kill you!

[jehh]

True, but did you consider that crashes in real engine failures would increase with a decrease in autorotation practice? Further, it still isn't a reasonable comparison. How many helicopters are destroyed in power recovery autorotations? Why not stop practicing all auto's because there are far more crashes in practice, then in real engine failures?

 

Frank Robinson said just that in 2005 during my visit to the Safety Course... His comment was that even power recoveries were causing too many accidents, so stop doing autos altogether...

 

He presented some interesting stats that made a really good argument, wish I had written them down.

[Tenacious T]

Two things another instructor told me right after I got my CFI;

1. Bad things happen faster the closer you get to the ground!

2. Never forget, the students always trying to kill you!

 

 

3. Don't throttle chop a student on their second lesson!!

[Gerhardt]

I just learned something here. I would have loved to have done full autos to the ground, but was never allowed to do anything but power recoveries. One thing that I never knew was to treat it as a hovering auto at the point I was doing the power recovery. I just assumed that since I was coming in with slow forward movement and slowed descent at the flare that I would level the ship and it would continue the forward track. At the flare-and-level I'm already putting in quite a bit of pedal to maintain track. But I guess it never occurred to me that "had this been an actual emergency"...that I'll need probably full right pedal those last few feet to keep track as I pull full collective to cushion the landing.

 

It's one of those things that makes sense once you think about it, but unless you're told you just don't know.

[heli.pilot]

I just learned something here. I would have loved to have done full autos to the ground, but was never allowed to do anything but power recoveries. One thing that I never knew was to treat it as a hovering auto at the point I was doing the power recovery. I just assumed that since I was coming in with slow forward movement and slowed descent at the flare that I would level the ship and it would continue the forward track. At the flare-and-level I'm already putting in quite a bit of pedal to maintain track. But I guess it never occurred to me that "had this been an actual emergency"...that I'll need probably full right pedal those last few feet to keep track as I pull full collective to cushion the landing.

 

It's one of those things that makes sense once you think about it, but unless you're told you just don't know.

 

In a real auto you won't be needing a bunch of pedal input at touchdown -because the motor is not running! No added torque equals no added pedal input. That was about the hardest transition for me (from power recoveries to full downs) - NOT adding all the pedal I was used to adding with a power recovery.

[Darren Hughes]

3. Don't throttle chop a student on their second lesson!!

 

I probably should have been more clear. It wasn't my second lesson, but my second lesson in hover autos(probably lesson number 10 or 11 or something like that). And even the the throttle chops(fast roll-off) weren't that severe when entering a regular auto from altitude with 65kts airspeed. With the roll-off in the hover, she tended to go a little easier as I hadn't done that many up to that point, and she forgot herself after the autos from altitude on the way out.

 

 

I just learned something here. I would have loved to have done full autos to the ground, but was never allowed to do anything but power recoveries. One thing that I never knew was to treat it as a hovering auto at the point I was doing the power recovery. I just assumed that since I was coming in with slow forward movement and slowed descent at the flare that I would level the ship and it would continue the forward track. At the flare-and-level I'm already putting in quite a bit of pedal to maintain track. But I guess it never occurred to me that "had this been an actual emergency"...that I'll need probably full right pedal those last few feet to keep track as I pull full collective to cushion the landing.

 

It's one of those things that makes sense once you think about it, but unless you're told you just don't know.

 

If you're coming down on a smooth hard surface like a runway, it's always nice to have a little forward movement upon contact with the surface. Especially if the head-wind is below 10kts. If coming down onto rough ground or any unfamiliar terrain, forward movement should be at a minimum, if not zero, as the chance of a skid digging in are greatly increased. But I'm hoping most people don't practice full-downs to random places where they don't know what the surface is like. That would be almost as dangerous as practicing off-airport autos at night. You never know what you're gonna get.

 

Ooh, and you won't have full right pedal in, but you will have a lot.

[C.R.O.]

In answer to the original question, I was shown my first full down during my private stage 1 check, which was good to see at that point. The first full down I did was during my commercial at the Robinson course. Ofcourse, I did many more during my CFI training.

 

As for hover autos, I second West Coaster's attitude regarding hover autos. Hover autos happen quick, and there is quite a bit going on, and quite a bit a student can do wrong. And you have less than 1 second to fix it.

 

So important to learn, so stressful to teach.

[coloheli]

Through my private training I have only been shown one full down. I was on the controls shadowing my CFI. For the rest , even with some of my quick stops, recover than steep to the ground. The school where I go the CFI has to have 500 and been ok'd to even teach autos. I can understand that, but it can be kinda a pain for scheduling.

Edited December 13, 2008 by coloheli

[brushfire21]

BTW, several schools out here specifically teach ALL autos to the ground every time. I think maybe Western in Rialto may be one of those?

 

Goldy

 

Your right Goldy about Western, but I am sure there are other smaller schools as well that do full downs. It seems its the smaller schools with higher time CFI's from my observation.

 

But as far as full downs go, when I was doing my PPL, the training depended on the lesson plan and which customer (students or pilots requiring yearly EP's). But full downs are taught at the PPL level, but an instructor is on the controls the whole time and its usually the two primary instructors that do the fulls downs.

 

For the pilots flying the H500, most all of those auto's seemed to be tailered to the type of flying the pilot is doing (LE doing slow orbits or OGE hover for example) and then a simulated engine out followed by a full down. Other EP's are practiced as well, along with full downs at night.

 

Everything from zero speed auto's just out of the H/V diagram to the normal straight in auto as well are demonstrated/taught numerous times, but most auto's in training are done to a hover at the student PPL level with a handfull that are full down, at least in my experiance.

 

Aircraft used are the S300/H500 for reference.

[Spierman]

My first full down was the result of a power recovery without enough power. The engine did not respond as quickly as usual and it was too little/too late when it did. It may have been a blessing though, because it came out just like the text book, and I got to see one before my PPL check ride. I believe we should be doing full-downs with students from the beginning.

[Darren Hughes]

My first full down was the result of a power recovery without enough power. The engine did not respond as quickly as usual and it was too little/too late when it did.

 

Unfortunately that is not an unusual occurrence. Which is why we should be bringing our power recovery auto's all the way down to 3-5 feet instead of 200 feet like PhotoFlyer mentioned earlier.

 

I remember one CFI recommending power recovery at 35 feet(or telephone pole height as he sometimes put it) until the Boss heard him say it once. I can tell you now, it was the last time he said it after the boss was finished with him! He thought it would be safer as there was less chance of a tail-strike!

[Goldy]

I remember one CFI recommending power recovery at 35 feet

 

Guess he never had to recover from low rotor RPM...I can hear the Chief Pilot now....when did you learn to do 35 foot hover auto's ??????

[Darren Hughes]

The 35ft hover auto, AKA; THE SPLAT!!!