"Bill McClain" wrote in message
m...
And this got me wondering: Does anybody test to see how high up you
can successfully autorotate from? Is there an actual record for this?

Sounds like a self correcting problem. If you are too high to
autorotate,
you will very soon be much lower.

Ummm, yeah, I guess so, but...seriously, is it even possible to try
and keep the RPMs up by diving and turning...I guess WITH the

Yes.

direction of rotor spin...trying to maintain as much inertia in the
mast and blades before they lose so much torque as to be unable to
provide any lift to pull out of the dive and try to flare close to the
ground? I'm pretty much talking through my hat speculating like this;
I don't really know all that much about helicopters (other than that
I'm not all that keen on riding in one).

Any altitude the coptor is controllable at can be autorotated from.
During the decent the rotor is spun by the vertical air flow, storing
some of the energy in the form of rotation inertia in the rotor system.
Instead of the rotor pushing the air down, the air pushes the rotor around.
Doing this slows the helicopter some, but not enough to save you.
What saves you is that near the ground the pilot can take the energy
back out of the rotor system -by changing the blade pitch- to generate
lift and gently set you on the ground. Now obviously you don't want
to wait too long to do this but you also don't want to do it too soon
and not have enough stored energy in the system to reach the ground
gently. If you are really high when the flair is done, when you fall
again you can put the energy back into the system and do it all over.


The trick is not to flair too early, unless it's *really* early.