My PPL(H) Rotary Diary
My first light aircraft experience was a 30 minute trial lesson for my 30th birthday.
I had received this as a gift and still recall the day when I took controls in a
tiny Robinson R22 at a flying school near to Leeds / Bradford airport.
It was a fantastic experience:
30 mins of great fun where I was shown a low and high hover, a couple of autorotations and even managed to get control of the pedals as we returned to base. I enquired about training costs to get my helicopter private
pilot's licence, the PPL(H), but it was too expensive at the time. I made a promise
to myself that one day I would learn to fly one of these amazing machines.
A few years later I was on holiday in Hawai'i. We decided to blow the expense and
signed up to take a one hour helicopter tour around Kau'ai, the green island. It
really was like flying around Jurassic Park, with incredible waterfalls and huge cliffs. We followed this a few days later with a two hour helicopter tour around the Big Island: volcanoes, real lava, huge lava flows, flying in and out of Kona airport. I was hooked again, and my desire to get the PPL(H) was as strong as ever.
At this time was was undertaking my PPL(A) and having had a few hours of training
in light aircraft I just knew that helicopters would be on my list of things to
do once I had qualified for fixed wing aircraft.
How much will this cost? Forty five hours of logged flight time, and as a PPL(A) holder I get a reduction of, I understand, six hours leaving 39 hours At £250 per hour lets call that a nice £10k to obtain the PPL(H) licence.
Reading The Diary
The diary is a warts-and-all tale of my helicopter PPL training which records each lesson from
day one right through to my successful skills test, just like in my fixed wing diary. As a student pilot you will
get the most value by reading from beginning to end in chronological order, but
of course you can jump in at any point.
I've categorised my diary into five sections
which provide me and the reader a more structured approach to reviewing my training.
The first section is all about Preparation and can be referred to at any time during
the training. It covers the syllabus and ground school experiences.
The flight training is divided into four parts. Part One covers the basics of flying,
leading to Part Two which which brings the basics together to enable me to fly a
'circuit' around an airfield. Once I'm proficient in flying circuits I can fly solo.
At this point I move onto Part Three which takes me through navigation exercises
culminating in my qualifying cross country exercise. Finally Part Four is all about
consolidation and getting enough hours in my log book to get me through the skills
test.