Teaching Steep Approaches
September 27, 2020 — I went out and flew a couple of steep approaches into a confined area practice spot located just southeast of Auburn Municipal Airport (S50) in Washington state. I'm working on my "teaching while flying" technique here, and am happy to have you along. It'd been almost a month since my most recent training session (smoke from wildfires followed by PNW IMC) so this was part of my "dusting off the cobwebs" flight. You can check out some other segments from this flight as well.
There are many things to consider when approaching any off-airport landing. First, you’ll fly a high reconnaissance to gauge the suitability of the area for landing. You’re looking for people, animals, debris, obstacles, wires, and so on; but you’re also formulating a plan for both getting in to and out of the LZ. You’re also getting a feel for wind conditions, particularly on a steep approach, since you’ll be coming in with very little forward airspeed. This is where tail rotor effectiveness becomes more important.
You’ll be running through all of the above checks throughout the entire approach. If at any point something doesn’t look or feel right, go around and re-evaluate. There’s no shame in aborting the approach.
On short final, you will need to steepen up your approach and get your airspeed down to <25 kts. This is where ETL (effective translational lift) is lost, and settling with power (SWP) becomes a concern. SWP (related to Vortex Ring State, or VRS) is when you descend into your own downwash. Adding collective will increase downwash, and will make things worse.
You can avoid SWP by keeping your descent rate at or below 300ft per minute. You can verify that you are not settling by gently raising the collective while keeping an eye on the VSI needle. If your descent rate increases with additional collective, you are in a settling situation and need to get out of it immediately. Otherwise, you’re in good shape and can proceed with the approach.
In this 8 minute video, I make two approaches — one to the south, and one to the north. I was only able to do both directions because the winds were completely calm. The likelihood of running into a settling with power situation will increase significantly with a tailwind steep approach (think about it — your downwash is “following you” in this case).
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Disclaimer: Although I am training to become an instructor, I have not yet been certified. The contents of this video are not intended to be used as a substitute for actual instruction.
