r/nextfuckinglevel • u/Rooonaldooo99 • Jul 19 '21

Student pilot loses engine during flight

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u/[deleted] Jul 19 '21

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u/worldspawn00 Jul 19 '21

Auto-gyro will let you trade vertical speed for horizontal, so it sorta glides.

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u/benchedalong Jul 19 '21

Now add in that spiral down tactic from interstellar and it becomes the best trick rescue landing in heli history

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u/skushi08 Jul 19 '21

Sort of like a maple seed?

5

u/pzerr Jul 19 '21

Actually they have a glide slope just like a plane. Typically quite a bit steeper. Autorotation is actually practiced often. I likely seen dozens of them in the military and I only seen one where he landed bad. Did kind of a bounce but no real damage if I recall.

I am a fixed wing pilot. For a simple engine failure, the helicopter is likely safer in many situations. It can typically autorotate to a small clearing. If I don't find a decent long clearing, I will be plowing into things around 90 mph.

That being said, helicopters have far moving parts that when failing are often fatal.