tut,
I belive with a helecopter if the engine fails you can still land?
How does that work? Surely if the blades stop turning you drop like a stone??
Or do the blades turn enough with the wind to get you down safely?
Cheers,
Dave.
ANOTHER Helicopter crash
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Titanium S1 111S (gla)
- Posts: 956
- Joined: Wed Nov 16, 2005 3:31 pm
Thanks Tut, I’ll have a wee look at that.
tut
tut
Another stupid question and again just for interest, I was told most twin engines won’t fly on a single engine, true? Presumably even if they wont fly on a single they will give you enough power to get down gently?In a twin engine helicopter an engine failure is the least of your problems, if you are in the cruise then about the only thing that is catastrophic is a main rotor failure. As with all aircraft outside of war, most accidents and fatalities occur when coming in to land.
Graham
As Shug says, Autorotation. In a single engined helicopter you are going to go down if the engine fails. However if you could still not land safely, then nobody would fly them.
You have a couple of seconds to push the collective lever down which takes the pitch off the blade, and puts you into a glide at around 1500 ft/min rate of descent. By then you are looking for a clear space to land in and turning into wind, and adjusting your speed, ROD to make the landing area.
The rest is judgement and hours of practice as once you have picked your spot, from about 50ft AGL you bring your speed back to zero which reduces ROD, level the helicopter, and around 20ft pull the collective lever up as hard as possible. This puts pitch and lift onto the main rotors, and if you have got everything right, you will do a zero speed cushioned landing.
Of course if you get it wrong, then too early your blades will fold up and you will bang in, too late, no lift, also bang in. However unless you f**k it up completely, you will probably walk away, or run if it looks like going up in flames.
If you have the equivalent of a football field to land in, then life is easier as you can do a run on landing which takes less skill.
If you are over water, then you should not be as you are in a single engined helicopter, however in the Royal Marines that is all we had, but they were fitted with floats, so same procedure but bang out the float bags at 50ft. As I found out, it does actually work.
In a twin engined aircraft there is no real problem in the cruise if you lose one, just carry out a single engine landing at an airfield. All commercial helicopters, and private ones too if the pilot sticks to the rules, can only be loaded upto the point where they can still safely take off if they have a failure after Decision Point, or put it back on the ground before that.
This is fine on terra firmer, but you have much less leeway landing or taking off from an Oil Platform. But dont you worry all you Offshore workers out there, most of the time the pilot will hack it safely if he is not too hung over, experienced enough, and keeps his eyes open........
tut
You have a couple of seconds to push the collective lever down which takes the pitch off the blade, and puts you into a glide at around 1500 ft/min rate of descent. By then you are looking for a clear space to land in and turning into wind, and adjusting your speed, ROD to make the landing area.
The rest is judgement and hours of practice as once you have picked your spot, from about 50ft AGL you bring your speed back to zero which reduces ROD, level the helicopter, and around 20ft pull the collective lever up as hard as possible. This puts pitch and lift onto the main rotors, and if you have got everything right, you will do a zero speed cushioned landing.
Of course if you get it wrong, then too early your blades will fold up and you will bang in, too late, no lift, also bang in. However unless you f**k it up completely, you will probably walk away, or run if it looks like going up in flames.
If you have the equivalent of a football field to land in, then life is easier as you can do a run on landing which takes less skill.
If you are over water, then you should not be as you are in a single engined helicopter, however in the Royal Marines that is all we had, but they were fitted with floats, so same procedure but bang out the float bags at 50ft. As I found out, it does actually work.
In a twin engined aircraft there is no real problem in the cruise if you lose one, just carry out a single engine landing at an airfield. All commercial helicopters, and private ones too if the pilot sticks to the rules, can only be loaded upto the point where they can still safely take off if they have a failure after Decision Point, or put it back on the ground before that.
This is fine on terra firmer, but you have much less leeway landing or taking off from an Oil Platform. But dont you worry all you Offshore workers out there, most of the time the pilot will hack it safely if he is not too hung over, experienced enough, and keeps his eyes open........
tut