If you lose the tail rotor in flight is it possible to control the helicopter?

Answer 1

Yes. You must maintain forward speed to let the air resistance act as the tail rotor to keep the tail behind you. If you slow down, the helicopter will start to spin out of control. You must land the aircraft at high speed like an airplane and allow it to slide to a stop

You only need to cut power if you are hovering, then you must autorotate to land

Answer 2

If you are in forward flight the tail rotor isn't doing much anyway, the vertical fin is keeping you straight.
You would need to keep all power settings the same and not make any drastic changes. If you apply more power you will rotate one way and if you reduce power you will rotate the other way. You need to keep forward speed by heading down to the ground and try to keep it straight by adjusting the power and do a run on landing onto the ground.

If it happens in a hover you need to reduce power quickly to stop rotation of the helicopter because it will want to spin, then as you near the ground pull up on the collective to slow the descent rate.
Losing TR in a hover is alot more dangerous and may result in serious injuries and aircraft damage.
There have been several tail separations in flight where the pilot has safely landing the aircraft.

Answer 3

Tail rotor is there for directional control in a helicopter. Incase of loss of tail rotor the pilot has no control over the directional control. the helicopter spins viciously in the direction opposite to the direction of main rotor. the only action which can be taken is autorotation.

Answer 4

To a degree you may have some control depending on how much of the tail you lost too. If the tail rotor shaft just fails and you no longer have anti torque control through the pedals a run on autorotation will get you down OK. We practice those all the time. But if the whole thing separated from the aircraft and maybe took the ninety degree gear box with it then you have a real center of gravity problem. All bets are off in that case. Sorry to all that said it's an uncontrollable situation. Many times it's plenty controllable. graham got it right.

Answer 5

Like GILMEISTERA says, it can be done. With some helicopters the tail rotor is doing virtually nothing at any reasonable forward speed. It'll be a very quick run-on landing without any delay, but it's certainly possible.

Strangely, I've seen this happen (from the outside, I'm glad to say), with a switched-on pilot who ran it on beautifully, needing basically only some paint on the skids apart from the tr gearbox. I also saw a guy lose his tr while hover-taxying and the aircraft spun around like a top before he managed to dump it on the deck. Aircraft was a write off, so were his underpants, but he was okay.

Answer 6

if you lose the tail rotor completely - it is not working, then the onlz option is to shut down engine/s/ and autorotate. when there is no power from engines, there is no need of tail rotor.
if you lose just the control of tail rotor blades pitch, it usually sets its own preset basic pitch and allows you to fly forward in certain speeds.
our helicopter flies forwards between 20-30KTS and 120-130 KTS without tail rotor control.

some helicopters are a little bit twisted - sea stallion or Hind and have a fin+rudder shapped tailboom, which produces certain ammount sideward power which enables then to consume less power through the tail rotor. thus in forward motion this fin would backup the tail rotor to some extent.

autorotation is highly recommendable.

Answer 7

Not really. If the pilot is quick and competent he can set up "Autorotation" when the rotor blades are effectively unpowered and gliding. However the drag in the bearings and gearbox will start the craft rotating fairly quickly, defeating any attempt to select a landing site. The best that can be expected is a hard landing on whatever was below.

Answer 8

Yes it is, but ironically, you have to cut the power to the main blades and de-clutch them from the gearbox.

The tail rotor is only used to counteract the rotation cause by the engine turning the main rotor.

If you cut the power to the main rotor the helicopter will drop like a stone (for a short while), but it will then start to auto-rotate (similar to a sycamore seed). You can they control the descent with the yoke.

Answer 9

I'm not sure, but i believe that if you cut the power to the main rotor, then the body of the helicopter will not enter a viscious spin. The blades will still retain momentum and allow the helicopter to land with reasonable ease? But if im wrong....then im wrong

Answer 10

yes it's called an autorotation as long as you have speed the wind will push the blades so you can make a controled crash landing