Precautions

Rotorcraft Flying Menu >Helicopter Emergencies >Dynamic Rollover>Precautions

The following lists several areas to help you avoid
dynamic rollover.

1. Always practice hovering autorotations into the wind, but never when the wind is gusty or over 10 knots.
2. When hovering close to fences, sprinklers, bushes, runway/taxi lights, or other obstacles that could catch a skid, use extreme caution.
3. Always use a two-step liftoff. Pull in just enough collective pitch control to be light on the skids and feel for equilibrium, then gently lift the helicopter into the air.
4. When practicing hovering maneuvers close to the ground, make sure you hover high enough to have adequate skid clearance with any obstacles, especially when practicing sideways or rearward flight.
5. When the wind is coming from the upslope direction, less lateral cyclic control will be available.
6. Tailwind conditions should be avoided when conducting slope operations.
7. When the left skid/wheel is upslope, less lateral cyclic control is available due to the translating tendency of the tail rotor. (This is true for counter-rotating rotor systems)
8. If passengers or cargo are loaded or unloaded, the lateral cyclic requirement changes.
9. If the helicopter utilizes interconnecting fuel lines that allow fuel to automatically transfer from one side of the helicopter to the other, the gravitational flow of fuel to the downslope tank could change the center of gravity, resulting in a different amount of cyclic control application to obtain the same lateral result.
10. Do not allow the cyclic limits to be reached. If the cyclic control limit is reached, further lowering of the collective may cause mast bumping. If this occurs, return to a hover and select a landing point with a lesser degree of slope.
11. During a takeoff from a slope, if the upslope skid/wheel starts to leave the ground before the downslope skid/wheel, smoothly and gentlylower the collective and check to see if the downslope skid/wheel is caught on something. Under these conditions vertical ascent is the only acceptable method of liftoff.
12. During flight operations on a floating platform, if the platform is pitching/rolling while attempting to land or takeoff, the result could be dynamic rollover.