Need Helo. pilot input!

My buddy was a US Army Chinook crewman years back. We got into an argument about the Huey and Chinook, involving autorotation efficiency of each helo. I thought that the Huey (which I've flown in as a passenger) would be a better helo to be in in case of an in-flight emergency, He insisted that the Chinook would be a much better craft in which to find yourself in the event of an inflight mulit-engine failure. Who is right? I told him that the Chinook would drop like a rock, while in a Huey, you would have at least half a chance.

The short answer. It depends. The UH-1H is single engine. If you lose it during cruise flight, you have to autorotate to survive. The CH-47 has two engines and dual engine failures are rare. Even with a single engine failure, you could have serious problems, depending on your gross weight, airspeed, attitude and altitude. I have autorotated Hueys to the ground on numerous occasions at varying airspeeds and altitudes. They are generally forgiving as long as you have adequate airspeed and you maintain a steady autorotative state (rotor RPM in the green, a/c in trim and an adequate airspeed (68-93 KIAS) as I recall. The tricky part is near the bottom when you have to determine when to decel and hoping your landing area is as good as it looked at altitude as it does at 50 feet AGL. Keeping the aircraft aligned and the aircraft steady on the skids will keep you from doing an ass over tekettle routine on the ground.

I have no flight experience with the CH-47 but have sat in the jumpseat on many occasions, to include practice autorotations. They felt more like a steep power on approach to me, but I'm sure it's a completely different feeling behind the controls. I can tell you that the AH-64A Apache drops like a rock in an autorotative descent. Apache crews practice single engine failures at an out of ground effect (OGE) hover extensivley because that is the flight profile they are in the most(during battle position opns). It's a tricky airspeed over altitude manuever that requires a cool head and some finesse at the controls to complete the manuever within standards. It's a real hoot to do under the Night Vision System.

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