#71 Avoid | VORTEX RING STATE | or whatever you call it

This is day 71 Coffee with Kenny and I'm really bummed Netflix canceled The Punisher Season 3 Today pursue your passion. Is your passion to be a safe and prudent helicopter pilot? Then you should be avoiding sailing with power, power settling, vortex ring state, whatever.

You want to call it.

Let's just talk about that situation where you settle in your downwash. And if you're close to the ground, this could be an accident, even a fatal accident. Why is it doing that? I'm Kenny Keller, creator of Helicopter Airline Ground School and let's do a review first, how to stay out of it.

Today I want to cover the general safe rule for flying your helicopter approach. And this is a general rule. It's not anything in a reg anywhere and it's kind of conservative, but that's okay. In order to keep yourself out of sailing with power, always keep a minimum of 30 on your airspeed until your rate of descent is below 300ft per minute. If you follow this, you will not get into sailing with power. It just plain won't happen. If you have all three of these flight situations together, this can cause you to get into selling with power. Take away any one of those three and you're not in it. So let's break these three down just a little bit. Rated ascent 300ft per minute or greater. If you are at 300 or higher on your VSI as you're flying your approach, that's number one, using 20 to 100% of available power. Meaning you are using power, you're not in auto rotation, you are using available power. Airspeed less than ETL. Effective transitional lift. Remember that ETL occurs somewhere between 16 to 24 knots. So if you're at 30 or above, again, you're not in that zone. So there is a little bit of fudge factor figured in there, but that's to keep you safe. So remember, if you always keep 30 on your airspeed until your rate of ascent is below 300ft per minute, you will not get into selling with power.

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Avoid it. Power settling, selling with power, vortex ring state. You can go down the comments if you want to argue over that one. We're going to cover that in an upcoming webinar with Taz Christman, 2018 Flight Instructor of the year, where he's going to talk about the differences between countries and the differences between what people call it. But let's just stick. If you want to argue in the comments, go ahead. I'm not going to get on that argument since we've got that webinar coming up soon. What I just really wanted to hone today was avoid it. Understand that if you use the General Safe rule for flying approaches, always keep 30 on your airspeed until your rate of descent is below 300. It's never going to happen to you. And yes, there's a little bit of a fudge factor built in there with that, but that's why you call it a fudge factor, right? It's a method that you can use to always make sure that you're safe. And the number three comes up so many times in training. I was thinking this morning, you know, I did that series of videos, helicopter Threes, seven years ago now, over seven years ago, I'm thinking maybe we should reshoot those. I've had people actually ask about that. Avoid sailing with power. Use the General Safe rule for flying approaches. Always keep 30 on your airspeed until your rate of descent is below 300ft per minute. And you will not again with sailing with power. We've talked about it a lot in the past. Just a week or so ago, I did a video on the Bouchard recovery, which I've just started kind of monkeying with, and that you should learn as a pilot today. You should know the way the FAA has taught us for years. But the Richard method is also a very popular method to use, and that can be utilized in at times where maybe the traditional method may not help you. So understanding what it is, but avoiding it is key. And also knowing what to do if you get in this situation. I will tell you, my examiner of many years, I've heard him say it over and over again as a helicopter pilot today. One thing that's going to bite you in the ass is selling with power if you don't understand it and you don't know how to avoid it, or if you don't know how to get out of it. So let's agree on that one, right? Let's agree on there is a problem when flying a helicopter where you could settle in your own downwash and it could get you in a dangerous situation and could be an accident, even a fatal accident. You know, as pilots, we need to review, not just learn something one time and then move on. So I thought, you know what? Today, since things have settled down after the big cell, I thought cut. Let's cut. Let's cover selling with power again. Vortex, ring, state, whatever you want to call it. Let's revisit it today. It's been a wild two weeks, man. This big. The big celebration ended last night and this month with the seven year celebration and my birthday and heli expo, it has been wild, crazy. I'm kind of wore out and it's a good wore out, right? It's fun. Coffee with Kenny's been amazing but I feel good that kind of the pressure is off and now we can get back to the daily business and get back to the morning videos in the kitchen. I've done some remotely at the airport and on the road recently because the things have been crazy. But I really just really like these morning especially on a day like today because this is Saturday. Saturday is my favorite day of the week. Hope you have a great Saturday. Hope you have a great weekend. Thank you everyone for all the wonderful feedback and comments. Seven year celebration has been awesome. Please subscribe to our channel, click the button so you can be notified each day when we do our daily video and of course of other things that may be coming up in the future. So do us a huge favor like subscribe and we will see you in the next video. It.