A short instructional video by Kenny Keller (with Danny Martin) demonstrating helicopter autorotation techniques. The clip explains common misconceptions about engine failure, shows 180-degree and straight-in autorotation maneuvers, and emphasizes maintaining rotor RPM and proper setup, collective and airspeed control, and flaring before touchdown.
Hey everybody, this is Kenny with four Wayne helicopters again. But not in the car, driving down the road, not in the trailer, out in the beautiful sunshine. Nice, shiny, freshly inspected and clean aircraft. Hey, what we're doing today, Danny Martin and I is going to go out and we are going to shoot some video on auto rotations. People seem to think that helicopters, the engines quit and then they fall out of the sky. I've heard people say, oh gosh, I don't want to go on a helicopter because when the engine quits they just drop. Well, they don't drop. So this is for the people that are interested in learning a little bit about auto rotations and maybe some stuff for people that are flying too. Maybe we'll talk about a trick or two that might make auto rotations a little easier for you. So Danny and I are going to go out, we're going to do a little bit of filming, shoot some autos, and you guys will see this all later when we're going to put together a little promotion for our ground school get started. Nick, Logan and I had a big conversation this morning and we're ready to go. We'll get things fired up, so stay tuned and we'll see what happens. And what we're gonna see here is Kenny's gonna do a proper lift off. He's gonna ease it up, he's gonna be a few feet off the ground. Then he'll do another hover auto rotation, Hold off the throttle, set it down just as easily on the ground as you would if you had power. It's. Now, here we go folks. We're going to show you a 180 auto rotation. Basically what that is is when you're downwind and you have an engine failure and you have to enter an auto rotation, you locate your wind direction and then you turn and do your auto rotation of course toward the wind. You always want to maintain your RPM with your rotor, your rotor RPM with the collective. And here comes Kenny for a 180 automatic. And Kenny's entered his auto rotation, maintaining his rotor RPM with the collective, making his 180 degree turn to where he gets faced into the wind. Everybody thinks that when your helicopter engine fails that you're going to fall straight to the ground. And that's untrue. What we're going to show you here is a straight in auto rotation. Kenny's going to fly in and he's going to simulate total loss of engine power. He's going to enter an auto rotation and he's going to maintain his rotor RPM with this collective and with the air blowing through your blades. And the key to a good auto rotation, of course, is proper setup. Maintain your rotor rpm, your airspeed. Here we go. And he's entered his auto rotation. He's just idling it to the ground. Coming through. Once you get to treetop level, you start your flare, as you can see, and then you roll back in your power and you're safely on the ground.
