Pilot Reaction
Helicopter pilots are most commonly taught to avoid settling with power by monitoring their rates of descent at lower airspeeds. When encountering settling with power, pilots are taught to apply forward cyclic to fly out of the condition or lowering collective pitch. While transitioning to forward or lateral flight will alleviate the condition by itself, lowering the collective to reduce the power demand decreases the size of the vortices and reduces the amount of time required to be free of the condition. However, since the condition often occurs near the ground, lowering the collective may not be an option; a loss of altitude will occur proportional to the rate of descent developed before beginning the recovery. In some cases, vortex ring state is encountered and allowed to advance to the point that the pilot may lose cyclic authority due to the disrupted airflow. In these cases, the pilot's only recourse may be to enter an autorotation to break the rotor system free of its vortex ring state.
Read more about this topic: Vortex Ring State
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