Autorotation is when a helicopter loses power to its engines and the rotors begin to spin due to air resistance. Pilots can then safely land the helicopter because of this
But I just don’t understand how it works. Surely if the helicopter is falling then the air will push the rotors in the opposite direction to how they normally spin and that won’t create lift? Can someone explain?
In: 2
If you look at the blades at minimum pitch, they are adjusted to do autorotation, aka, the blade is pointing down.
In powered flight you increase the pitch to go up. In autorotation you slam the collective control down and you have “reversed” the blades to be pushed by the air coming from below, from your fall, (instead of the usual pushing air down to go up).
The rest is pilot skill. As you need to use the yaw pitch and roll controls to fly a bit nose down to convert your fall into a down&forward flight, then trade the forward momentum into lift during the final flare.
Been there as a passenger in a demo, pretty cool and safe.
If you are not familiar with helicopter collective control, watch a video. It’s easier than explain it with words.
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