How You Train is How You Fly My service in the Army gave me a great many tools for my career in law enforcement. Not everything that I learned crossed over well, but there were some core principles that did. One principle in particular applies to training; all types of training. I learned that how we train is how we fight—or more broadly, how we perform under pressure. There is no truer statement, and it’s bolstered by the fact that my training has gotten me out of more crap than I care to remember. This also applies to helicopter pilots; how they train versus how they are expected to fly. My job as special operations lieutenant includes managing my agency’s aviation section. The Osceola County (Fla.) Sheriff’s Office has four OH-58 light observation/attack helicopters that we keep flying through the Federal 1033 Program. I am not a pilot but I have maintained a love of helicopters since the days I used to jump out of them. In other words, it wasn’t a hard decision for me to attend our bi-annual emergency procedures training. I couldn’t think of a better way to observe and evaluate how my pilots performed than by flying with them and seeing firsthand how they react under emergency conditions. From a trainer’s perspective, what I found out after two days of intense flying surprised me. Apparently, if you’re taking standard helicopter training, how you train is not how you fly. The current set of emergency procedures training leaves a lot to be desired for law enforcement aviation. They take pilots through only a cursory routine that leaves them on their own in a real-world emergency. In my mind, the principle of “how you train is how you fight” surely applies to more than just firearms and tactics.
down. The pilot must ensure the continued rotation of the rotor blades to support a controlled descent to the ground. That’s a fancy way of saying if the engine fails, you have so many seconds to make a controlled landing or you turn into a lawn dart. Typically, autorotation training involves an airport so you can do your emergency procedures on a runway. Because we have special skids on our OH-58s, we get to train better than most by performing an autorotation that glides forward toward the runway, touches down, and then skids to a stop. In a real emergency, it makes perfect sense if you are near a runway. My problem with this technique is that in the real world, there never seems to be a runway around when you need one.
Unconventional Training Sgt. Harold Standridge is a former Army Blackhawk helicopter pilot and the aviation unit sergeant for the Marion County (Fla.) Sheriff’s Office. Through an off-duty gig, he conducted my agen-
For helicopter pilots, real-world
cy’s emergency procedures training. He started out with the typical set and then took my pilots to the next level. The premise for his training is that forward movement kills. He made a very convincing argument while using examples of recent helicopter crashes. It’s a no-brainer…what works on a smooth runway will not always work somewhere else. Think about it: If the helicopter’s skids get caught up on something, the helicopter will flip over. Sgt. Standridge trained our pilots in full down autorotation by teaching them to pick a spot, head there Conventional Training by any means possible (glide, corkscrew, Every helicopter pilot receives emerleft and right turns, etc.), flaring at the end gency procedures training that includes to stop forward motion, leveling off, and flying with stuck tail rotor pedals, a loss bringing the bird straight down. While we of hydraulics, and demonstrating how to never went all the way to the ground (the safely autorotate down. Autorotation is instructor would kick back power at the an exercise in the energy management of last minute), we still made all those twists a spinning rotor to cushion your touchand turns and flared at the end to a hover. Shy of crashing, it was as real as it gets. A runway isn't always available. I thought this type of training was the norm. I figured since we ground pounders use realism when we train, pilots must do the same. To my dismay, my 15 year plus pilots said it was the first time they had trained to this level. Let’s face it; pilots fly in support of road patrol units. If the aircrew is flying a search pattern in a sub-division at 1,000 feet and the engine goes south, they have approximately 12 seconds to land. In a subdivision, that may very well mean setting down in someone’s backyard. They need to train to that end, not do bare bones trainEmergency landing choices are usually limited and tricky. ing that merely constitutes a check on some form. 26
POLICE APRIL 2012