Flight test variances (1 Viewer)

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The aircraft body rotates because the engine is turning the rotor, but it's mounted to the aircraft body. Action-reaction.
Power off , the engine is not trying to rotate the rotor, there's no torque to react to.

When in autorotation a helicopter is just a autogyro . Haven't you ever noticed autogyros have no tail rotor, just a rudder.

I went thru 89-90 hrs. of rotary flight training, but got kicked out, ironically, for flying a red-X aircraft. We did autorotations about every day during early training, some all the way to the ground.

During autorotation, the tailrotor is still turning, because it connected thru the geartrain to the main rotor, but you'll have it at neutral pitch, unless you want to turn.

If you're slow to take out left pedal when the power was cut, the nose would tuck, a TH-55 would go inverted possibly if you were way to slow to take out left pedal , or really screwed up and kicked in more left pedal. Going inverted in probably any helicopter is fatal. You main rotor will flex up and cut you're tailboom off, which would also destroy the main rotor of course. It had never been flight tested to actual inversion, but the tendency to nose tuck was noted.

We lost a student and instructor from my own training company at just after solos. They determined from crash evidence that the helicopter went inverted.

I had the privilege of experiencing a engine failure myself,(solo)f at about the 80 hr. level of training. The throttle jam nut safety wire failed, or wasn't installed, the engine suddenly went to idle. Lucky me, I was over this enormous soybean field in Texas, I autorotated, hit the ground so hard that I thought the helicopter was going to tumble over forward. But it settled back on it's skids.
 

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