Mainly just copium for the pilots. Helicopters aren’t like airplanes where you have glide time and altitude to decide what to do after something bad happens. If you watch fixed winged ejections there’s usually about 30 seconds to a min after something goes wrong before the pilot decides to bail. Helicopters go from everything being fine, to a debris field in seconds.
It’s more about altitude than the ability to glide. Helicopters can do what’s called Auto rotation, which means they actually can glide. If the blade seize up however, they can’t autorotate. Helicopters fly a lot lower than most airplanes though, so they can’t glide as far.
Wow. I’d be nuts to fly one of those things. 6000 VVI sounds like suicide
With the collective firmly held down on the bottom stop, things happen very fast. The helicopter is descending in a hurry, as in 4,000 – 6,000 feet per minute. Do the math, if you are at 1,000 feet and the descent rate is 4,000 feet, you have one quarter or a minute – 15 seconds – to find a place to land.
You shear the blades so they shoot outwards. I couldn’t find an irl testing video, but here’s a render.
https://youtu.be/a1kr651en7g
Now you have blades shooting away from the helicopter at a high speed which could kill someone.
Mainly just copium for the pilots. Helicopters aren’t like airplanes where you have glide time and altitude to decide what to do after something bad happens. If you watch fixed winged ejections there’s usually about 30 seconds to a min after something goes wrong before the pilot decides to bail. Helicopters go from everything being fine, to a debris field in seconds.
It’s more about altitude than the ability to glide. Helicopters can do what’s called Auto rotation, which means they actually can glide. If the blade seize up however, they can’t autorotate. Helicopters fly a lot lower than most airplanes though, so they can’t glide as far.
Autorotation is mostly copium as well.
Explanation
Wow. I’d be nuts to fly one of those things. 6000 VVI sounds like suicide