H125 (AS350) Settling with power/ LTE

Here’s a great video of a helicopter settling with power/ Lost of Tail rotor effectiveness!

END OF THE VIDEO THERE IS LANGUAGE BE CAUTIOUS

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Doesn’t this belong in #real-world-aviation @anon93248082?

Why yes… yes it does lol

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Looks interesting! I’ll just bookmark this so I can watch it later. I’m supposed to be in bed for school. Thanks for sharing Mark. 👍

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Go to bed! lol

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IFC’s got me hooked 😂

Can you explain a bit more in depth what happened that caused the Heli to lose control? I didn’t understand from the video.

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Me too, IFC and IF got me hooked! 😂

Say we all 😂

Sure! So let’s start with Settling with Power

Settling With Power

Settling with Power is literally what it means, Settling with Power. It happens when you are arriving into your final landing spot, You are slow (Slower then 30 knots) with a high descend rate (More then 300fpm) You descend into your down wash. Here’s a good example
At it’s simplest, it occurs when you need x amount of power to stop a descent but, for a lot of variable reasons, you have less than x power available. Increasing power results either in exceeding the engine or power train limits or stalling the rotor as drag increase exponentially and exceeds the power available to drive the rotor.

The slower a helicopter flies, the more power it requires:

When you get into Settling with Power it’s a very very very weird feeling.

LTE (Lost of Tailrotor Effectiveness)

We have 3 different situations which this can take place from straight behind (Weathercock stability) Where you have a tail wind, the wind will blow you around like a wind sock

Then you have Tailrotor Vortex Ring State, where your Vortex from the tail rotor is being pushed into your tail blade making it not able to be effective

Then you have Main Rotor Disk Interference where the Vortex from the main rotor is being pushed into the tail rotor

(Here’s a great video of losing tail rotor effectiveness
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqtCiQXse9U)

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Great explanation. One last question. What is the proper way for pilots to recover from this situation?

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For Settling With Power
Move forward out of the dirty air into cleaner air. But if you’re landing there really isn’t any recover just hold on and fly the machine until it stops

Here’s another awesome video of getting into Settling With Power

For Lost of Tailrotor Effectiveness
Gain airspeed

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