Okaaaaaaaaay.
I'm going to have to comment now.
I just can't stay silent any longer.
Let's start with a quote from the training material over at HC so you understand why I'm commenting:
"Managing Aft movement in the hover will be a little more challenging and dangerous. Essentially, backward movement is achieved the same way that forward movement is, but a couple factors keep it from being as simple, or safe. This first is that your helicopter does NOT want to fly backwards, every principle of its design make it want to fly forward. The second important factor in backward movement is the fact that you have greatly decreased visibility, increasing the chance that you will strike ground objects, and or lose control of the aircraft.
Practice moving backwards for short distances in the hover by lifting your nose slight above the horizon until you begin to see the ground move below you just slightly. You must keep your velocity from building too high, or you will crash, or be violently flipped around. As always, using your anti-torque and collective inputs to maintain your hover altitude and heading will be very important. You do not want to lose altitude while moving backwards and push your tail into the ground. This will most certainly cause the destruction of you and your aircraft. The key to successful backwards movement, will be slow controlled flight, and lot of practice in safe conditions.
Backwards movement is not a maneuver that is very practical, it will rarely be used in a useful way, but is one of many skills that can come in handy when called for. Under most circumstances, instead of flying backwards, you would simply turn around in the hover and/or re-approach your maneuver all together. (Most important part ---->) You should never land backwards or with backwards movement, as this will certainly cause loss of control and/or aircraft and passenger damage."
In short, there is no need to fly backwards fast enough that you need to know how fast you are going.
Period.
There is no need to have a gauge.
You should be judging your ground speed by
sight, not instruments.
Using two reference points and peripheral vision.
Watching the ground move.
If you are going faster than normal taxi speed,
it's too fast.
Best advice I give often here, learn to transition to and hold a hover
before landing.
That is the greatest skill you can develop for helicopter piloting,
ever. (Yes even in sim)
Land/hover pointing directly into the wind.
If you miss your landing spot, continue on until you can get into the hover.
Then slowly turn in place, and/or circle back to the landing spot.
It's like fixed wing operations in that regard, you over shoot the runway, you don't get to back up the plane, right?
You go around and try it again.
Only time I ever fly backwards is if I am trying to land on the smallest remote landing pads at the firetowers in the Orbx PNW scenery.
(EDIT: Okay slight fib. I've been known to take the Bo-105 out for a little "Red Bull" action from time to time...)
Then it's to make a small adjustment, over the pad while hovering.
And I always,
always, make sure I have slight forward momentum when touching down.
Haha, sorry, I had to get that off my chest.
Please understand, I'm a purist.
