Kenny Keller demonstrates how to use S turns during autorotation to land a helicopter in a small spot. Starting at 1500 feet and 80 knots, he executes the maneuver with real-time commentary on timing, scanning, and flare technique. Practice with an instructor first.
An S turn would be simply, let's say you're flying along real world, and let's say that little square in front of us right now, we had to get in there because we had an engine failure right now. And everywhere else was trees. But that square, something that's not in the pts. Some instructors will teach you some, maybe not IS S turns because you're going to go out and you're going to learn straight ins and 180s and 90s and all these other different things. We understand training to a standard and we believe in it and we do it and we teach it. But we also want to try to give you some scenarios to make you think that, give you options to think outside the box. Because if that engine really quits, you got to do whatever you got to do to try to make that spot, whatever spot that may be.
All right, so here we are set up. We're at 1500. We're cruising 80. Everything's looking good. What I'm going to do is I'm just going to delay my entry. You can't really see five because it's a turf Runway and it's covered with snow. But I've got my spot picked out, which we were. We landed on it earlier. So we've got some marks down there now kind of where the fence line starts there. And I'm just going to delay that entry and we're going to do a couple S turns to try to hit that spot. Here we go. And two, one. Come to the right. Got my scan going already. Good. Coming back. Left a little bit out of trim. Get my airspeed going. Coming back to the right.
Flare.
Throttle's coming back in ice.
Very nice.
I don't.
Hopefully you can see that in the camera. Those. The marks were in the snow. And he.
I am about 1. I am less than a fuselage length away from where we sat down. Nice. Actually, it's right here. See him Right outside my window here. So I'm very nice. Less than a fuselage away from where we landed earlier, Less than where I wanted a touchdown. You know, in real life, you might be in that turn all the way down to 50ft above the ground and then finally straighten it out and flare. So. And that's kind of what happened. There we were, you know, I kind of made that last minute turn and then we flared right there at the bottom.
That was nice. Perfect. If you haven't done those with your instructor yet, ask your instructor to do some S turns again. It's giving you some food for thought. Another tool for your toolbox. Something you could do if you ever really had that engine failure. Go down below to grab that free PDF of the Helicopter Maneuver Guide brought to you by Helicopter Online Ground School.
Sam.
