Kenny Keller and Hauser demonstrate two ways to escape vortex ring state in a helicopter. The standard push-forward recovery costs 500 feet of altitude; the Vuichard method, which raises collective and sidesteps into clean air, loses only 50 to 100 feet and works better at low altitude. Aircraft rotor direction determines which way to sidestep.
Questions this video answers
December 14, 2022.
About 500 ft/min (building toward ~1,000 ft/min in the demo).
Approximately 500 ft lost during the traditional recovery in the demonstration.
About 50–100 ft (or even less), depending on setup and recovery speed.
Pulling about 92% and later about 98% power were mentioned.
Chapters
Alright, trim string is dead. Ground speed is about six knots. Pretty darn close to zero. All right, so I'm just going to lower collective a little bit. Kind of simulate us getting into vortex ring state. There's 500 foot descent rate. There's our vibration. I'm coming up right, okay, we're going.
To get right back to that in flight video real quick. But first, helicopter checkride and top 10 checkride tips. Both Amazon number one best sellers. I have PDFs below in the description box. You can click them, download them, check them out. No cost. It's a PDF. Just wanted to let you know those are down below. So let's go back and do some flying with Hauser and see how it comes out.
Look at our power. Pulling 92%. I'm controlling the descent. Right. We're at zero. There's ground speed showing three dashes. We're completely at zero. All right, so I'm pulling about 98% power here because there's not a lot of wind. I can be in that, in the G2, I can be in that yellow for five minutes as long as I'm under 30. All right, so I'm holding here. Now the traditional method, if we start sinking, we're going to feel some of that vibration. We're going to see the VSI come alive. We're going to have little to no cyclic authority or even collective authority. As I lower the collective, kind of simulate us starting to sink here, I'm just going to do what we call the traditional method and I'm going to push forward. Alright, so I'm pushing down, maintaining heading there. We're getting some vibration. There's 500 foot descent rate. There's 600, there's 700 building. Alright, so I need to recover here. There's almost a thousand. So I'm just going to push the nose forward and just nice and easy, nice and gentle, build that airspeed. There's my airspeed indicator coming alive now. I'm going to start coming up on my collective and we're going to fly out of it. This method is great if you have altitude to play with. Right. So right now I just lost 500ft. I just lost 500ft right there. Recovering in the traditional method. Alright, so now what we're going to do is we're going to set up and I'll demonstrate the Vachard method. Each recovery technique has its time in place. If you have altitude, I would always go with the traditional build airspeed. If you have altitude to play with, then you get into vortex ring state, then just build airspeed to get out of it. The problem is some of those guys, some of those pilots, due to the nature of their work, are hovering in kind of the height velocity diagram, the dead man's curve there, where they don't have altitude. And that's because of the nature of their job. They're hovering at 200ft, doing line work or they're doing whatever, hovering at 200ft, where you know what, I just lost 500ft recovering there. Well, at 200ft, obviously I don't have 500ft to recover from. So they may want to look at the Vachard method in this aircraft in the G2 due to the count or to the clockwise rotating system. The Vachard method. I'm going to raise collective. The recovery technique, the corrective action is I'm going to raise collective as I'm adding right pedal and then I'm going to sidestep to the left. I'm going to actually put cyclic input to the left and I'm going to sidestep. Now. It's just not a little push of the left cyclic. It's a good input of left cyclic. To get out of that, what you're doing is you want to get rid of, get out of that downward column of air and completely get out of that. So your rotors are in that nice, clean, undisturbed air. The good thing about the Vachard method is that you don't lose a lot of altitude. You may lose only 50 to 100ft or even less, depending on how fast you set it up or how fast you recover from it. One downfall about the Vachard method is since you are side stepping in one direction, you better be aware of what's on your side that you're sidestepping to. So those guys working on power lines or towers or whatever, if they need to sidestep, they really need to make sure that there's no obstacle to your side to that side. So on the clockwise rotating system like the G2, we're sidestepping to the left in the counterclockwise. Nstroms, bells, MDs, you're going to be sidestepping to the right. So here we are holding. We're about 2,000ft here. So in order to kind of simulate this, I'm going to put us down on, push down a little bit on collective. Now again, to recover from this, I am going to raise collective, add right pedal, and then a good input on left cyclic. We're at 2000ft indicated. That's about 1200ft off the ground here in Indiana. I'm into the wind. I'm setting up for out of ground effect hover here at a little bit of airspeed still. Alright, so we'll be at 1900. That's where we're going to be and that's where we're going to start. Alright, Trim string is dead. Ground speed is about six knots. Pretty darn close to zero. All right, so I'm just going to lower collective a little bit. Kind of simulate us getting into vortex ring state. There's 500 foot descent rate. There's our vibration. I'm coming up right to get out of that. And again you're losing about 50 to 100ft. As a recap, I think there's a time and place for each. For each maneuver. The traditional method, if you have altitude, just push the nose forward, build that airspeed and then get out of it. If you don't have altitude to play with, then the Vachard method might be the recovery technique that you want. However, just be aware of what your side stepping into. Make sure there's no obstacles to your left or right side, whichever side you're stepping into. And there you go. Awesome. What do you think?
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