"The OTHER Kevin in San Diego" skiddz "AT" adelphia "DOT" net wrote in
message ...

What I've been told over the past few months is full down autos are
not required for PPH, but will be required for the commercial ticket.
I think they (full downs) should be taught starting on day one. If
the noise behind me stops for some reason, I want to be able to walk
away from it. Seems to me if you can auto without balling up the
ship, your chances are pretty effing good you're going to unstrap and
walk away.

Right now, the consensus between us students is that we have the
skills to save our lives, but the helicopter will be a write off and
we'll probably end up in the hospital.

I've heard the same thing about PPH students. Are they "changing" the rules
for commercial pilots? If so, I think that's a good thing.

I agree that "full downs" should be taught from day one. I've never liked
the idea of my first full down auto being the one that's "for real!" I've
always kept an eye out for anything related to helicopters in the news and
I've seen, as I'm sure we all have, "many" news reports of helicopter
crashes through the years. The thing the worries me about modern training
is that, in the past 20 to 25 years, virtually all the autorotative landing
they've shown on TV have resulted in the loss of the aircraft. Most times,
the pilots/passengers walked away from it but the aircraft, as you say, was
a write off, and these were supposedly relatively high time commercial
pilots and not students or low time private pilots either. The "one" ship I
remember seeing that was still on the skids was an MD500 (don't remember the
exact model) and it was still missing the tail boom.

I guess my point is that, while I've heard all the rhetoric from helicopter
pilots about how they can put it down in someone's back yard if they have to
or only touch down at 5 to 10 mph with no problems, most of them don't seem
to be able to do it. Now, it's very likely that the news folks aren't
bothering to tell the stories of the helicopter pilot that safely landed his
aircraft after the engine failed. If it's not all bent up, it's not worth
reporting. Still, I can't help but get the impression that most folks could
use "a lot" more training in this area.

Fly Safe,
Steve R.