Full down autorotation in the Robinson R44  

Looks like they have some kind of smallish wire/rod that might prevent the tail boom from hitting. Autorotations are always a gamble. A good skill to have, but practice is risky in lighter machines with lighter blades that have less stored energy.

The grass was asking for a trim.

Do not hit the man rotor against the tail, also.

This is the best autorotation video I have ever seen!

wow what a wise comment

Yes but no those skids are a good few grand and despite the name you'd rather not have them skid if possible

@@noodleboi6711 I believe you, nothing is cheap on any aircraft. Just like a titanium screw for medical purposes is 300x the cost of a normal hardware screw.

@@kw2519 i definitely believe you, I'm working as an aviation mechanic now but my moms a nurse and when she started to talk about the prices of the equipment around her I was always dumbfounded

@@noodleboi6711 yep, much like aviation, there must be a trail of paper for accountability. As well as making sure proper procedure is followed. Lives are very much at risk in both those fields.

@@noodleboi6711what's a skid mark on something when your life is in the line ?

Autogyros were invented before helicopters and fly by autorotation. Autorotation landings are not new to helicopters.

@@nocalsteve I'm sure that's what he meant.

Yes, Igor Sikorsky actually lived long enough to see people do this with his original invention. He must have been proud and impressed

Or have a mast bump

@@d.b.1176you won’t get mast bumping during an auto flare, because the disc is loaded. Mast bumping occurs during low G pushovers

I don’t think it was powered

​@@MoonmanSpacejamoh sure it was powered, listen to the engine sound, it was shut down after the flare.

The engine is idling but not powering the rotor system. Which explains why the rotor speed decayed rapidly during the set down.

@@MoonmanSpacejampractice autorotations, like this one, still have the engine running, at least on idle power, so yes, it is not quite the same as a full engine-off auto. But doing an actual engine shutdown for a practice auto, I don’t think the insurance companies would be very happy

@@othmanem3331that is actually the tail rotor sound, not the engine. Roughly 3000RPM. The tail rotor RPM varies in sync with the main rotor RPM. During the flare, it increases a bit, hence the higher pitch, but as the collective gets pulled up, the RPM drops, and so does the pitch of the tail rotor sound. The engine is on idle, hardly audible

Watch a 53 auto

Do you would like to buy one?

Amen 🙏 so true

...couldn't pay me to get in any 'copter; a loose formation of parts and bolts.

what did you learn on out of curiosity?

Several hundred hours in Robbies, if you treat them well, they will treat you well. Still has very good vertical crashworthiness compared to many other machine designs. Avoid low RPM, avoid mast-bumping, and you will be mostly OK.

There's nothing wrong with them outside of bad pilots.

R44

It is a maneuver that all helicopter pilots practice constantly. During training we learn to do it to a hover, which is a little bit safer, and depending on a number of factors you maybe able to do a full down auto as in this video. We hope to never need it, but it is practiced so much.

Bad pilots. Huey's lost masts from mast bumping and nobody called them deathtraps.

What 😂

Sounds enginey to me…

When practicing autos the engine is still technically on you just aren't introducing power back in until you've set down....

@@allthingsgilmour did he add power during the flare?

No, the rotors are disengaged.

It's like gliding in a fixed wing plane, the thing you do to make a safe landing if your engine dies. Obviously in this video his engine has not died but it is on idle with no power as he is just practicing and doesn't want to actually turn the engine off just in case. Basically you angle the blades to use your kinetic and potential energy to spin the rotors to slow down your descent and make a controlled safe landing with no engine.

@@OskarGibson So the blades keep turning even with no power? Thats the kinetic energy? hey thanks for the lesson man! 🤓

@@ScottyColoradoKid well yes and no, the blades do have some inertia and will keep rotating a bit but that won't last very long unless you as the pilot perform the technique of autorotation. The helicopter itself has forward momentum (kinetic energy) and height (potential energy) so you move the stick to change the angle of the blades (kinda like slamming it in reverse or opening a parachute) that makes the wind push the blades to make them spin. Instead of the engine making the blades spin, the wind makes the blades spin to slow down the fall (like a parachute) and you control it by controlling the angle of the blades (like a parachute you can pull the strings more or less to go more forward or more down). So the guy in the video was practicing an autorotation by putting the engine to idle/zero to pretend like as if it had died and made a very nice and smooth, safe and controlled landing by doing the technique called autorotation correctly like he would do in a real emergency if his engine actually died for real. In a plane if your engine dies it will just glide by itself and you mainly have to worry about navigating and choosing the right place to land, whereas in a helicopter it won't just do it automatically you have to actively control it but since it's a helicopter you don't need a nice long runway and can land pretty much anywhere. So if your engine dies in a plane your primary concern is navigating and looking out the window for a "runway" whereas in a helicopter if your engine dies your primary concern is controlling the forwards and downwards speeds of the aircraft and maintaining control and looking at the instruments; looking out the window would be secondary towards the end stage in the last few hundreds of feet (mostly, obviously one must maintain some situational awareness). Edit: you're welcome for the lesson bro, but I must admit I've never done it for real (yet), I'm just an IT guy (Linux sysadmin) but I studied math and physics and I have an interest in aviation and have done 8 hours in single engine propeller planes and 2 hours in gliders and 2 hours in helicopter and a few thousand hours in a simulator. Autorotation is not super easy and definitely would not be in your first lesson in a real helicopter so I haven't done it for real yet but I understand the theory and have done it in a simulator many times in the comfort of knowing that it is just a computer screen and I am not actually in a metal box with no engine about to hit the ground soon and if I don't autorotate correctly right now first attempt or else I may die or be permanently injured and the adrenaline has kicked in.

@@OskarGibson Wow! So I really like this one; the pilot auto-rotates all the way down and lands safely on this remote Hawaii beach; ru-vid.comvL_27Xdbz1Y

That is what I was just thinking about, aren't these known for cutting their own tails off despite there ASS?

Only if you're a bad pilot.

R-44

That's strange. Just did a google search and the result was "The R22 is the most popular training helicopter in the world because of its reliability, good manufacturer support and parts availability" What's wrong with google? I wonder...

OK Maverick

It's a nice smooth runway...you will slide more usually

Far from it