My First Lesson
Wow This IS Hard!
Saturday, July 01, 2006
Flying Hours Today 1:00, Total 1:00
Exercise 3
Hover with 3 controls for 30 seconds
I've always been interested in helicopters as they represent, to me, the ultimate flying machine. About 8 years ago I had a short 30 minute trial lesson as a gift and was awestruck at how agile and flexible the R22 was. Ever since that day I've wanted to learn to fly a helicopter and experience the wonder of hovering at 2000ft to take in the scenery.
Learning to fly helicopters is perhaps twice as expensive as learning to fly fixed wing aircraft and so I took the PPL(A) route first in order to find if I had the aptitude and desire to fly and gain my licence. As my PPL(A) training came to an end I promised to myself that as a treat I'd go for a lesson in a helicopter for 30 minutes and so, after many months of deliberation, I was ready.
After initially booking a 30 minute slot I had a change of heart and went for the full hour. Perhaps this was me admitting to myself that I knew deep down that I wanted to learn to fly rotary machines and that I'd be having many more lessons.
The helicopter flying school is based out of Sheffield where I do my regular flying, and they also fly from Tatenhill. So I arranged to take my first lesson from Tatenhill as I would be travelling home from the Henley Regatta on that day and I also have fond memories of Tatenhill as one of the land-away's on my PPL(A) cross country exercise last year.
I had made good timing en-route to the North and arrived at the helicopter flying school with a newspaper in hand as I would inevitably have to sit and wait for a couple of hours before my scheduled afternoon slot. Fortunately, for once, I didn't have to wait at all. There had been a cancellation and I was ready to go. The weather was fantastic. A hot (for the UK) dry day with blue skies and great visibility after the morning haze had lifted. I walked to the R22 with my instructor and we completed an A-Check. I'd actually covered a lot of this a couple of weeks ago at Sheffield when I was taken with another student to do a complete pre-flight check after the helicopter had been grounded due to a Telatemp indicating an overheating bearing.
The instructor had also asked if I wanted to have my door removed as the glaring sun would make for quite a greenhouse effect in the small cockpit. I thought it would be fun to fly with the open air next to me so agreed and watched as the starboard door was removed. It was then time to get on board. As the door would be open everything had to be secured or locked away - there can be no risk to watching things fly out of the window and into the tail rotor mechanism as the effects could be catastrophic. 32C temperature.
As a PPL(A) pilot the instruments were introduced to me without going into the full detail. The machine we used had an on board GPS but no radio nav aids. The engine used is a Lycoming similar to ones I'm used to and the familiar carb heat lever, mixture controls etc. were all there in front of me. Other useful gauges were the carb heat temperature gauge, the fuel tank gauges (which are quite accurate in helicopters) and the engine and rotor RPM gauge which actually show a percentage of RPM rather than actuals. The engine monitor shows a measure of manifold pressure rather than RPM, but the 'business' part of the guage is in the familiar 20-25 unit range - just like the RPM in a PA28.
Finally I was shown the balance ball and hidden behind the GPS, the technical string which indicates balance when in the air to concur with the ball.
We took off, almost vertically, and although i've flown in helicopters before it is still a strange feeling.
A very short hop to begin with, over to the fuel pumps to refuel using AvGas 100LL the usual stuff. Fueled up in the main and auxiliary tanks. Then take off and my helicopter flying began.
Flying with the door open seemed a good idea in the heat. However at 1500ft or so it felt positively frightening. Just a flimsy belt holding me in from a huge drop. We flew over to xxx reservoir and I was asked to 'fly us around the reservoir'. I took control of the cyclic and and recalled just how fidgety helictopers are. It was much more difficult to do than it looks. The instructor makes everything look so easy. It didn't help that we were flying right hand turns around the reservoir. It meant that the helicopter was banked to the right and the view to my right was one of a 1000ft+ drop. Scary. I knew that by the laws of physics I wouldn't be falling out of the door space but it still made me a little nervous.
The instructor took over and showed how it should be done. It was like learning to fly all over again, I'm thinking that I'll never be able to fly a helicopter this well. After completing the tour of the reservoir we returned to Tatenhill. I could see the airfield and so guided us there - using only the cyclic at this time. We hadn't discussed the pedals or the collective. I could see the airfield in the near distance, perhaps 5nm distant. It was nice to be able to see the field without having to worry at this time about alinigng for approach, overhead joins etc. I could just fly straight there.
My instructor demonstrated an autorotation from around 2000ft, targetting the triangle of grass at Tatenhill. Wow. I recall this from my original trial flight some 9 years earlier, great fun but frightening at the same time. With many things in flying it is one of those things that is so unnatural and common sense dictates that this isn't something we should be doing.
Let's now do some hovering. With intermittant breaks to give myself a rest and also to relieve some of the power on the helicopter as sustained hovering isn't something we should be doing for the sake of the engine.
There are four controls to consider: the pedals, the collective, the cyclic and the throttle. Fortunately the throttle is controlled automatically by the governor so I could discount that and only concern myself with the other three controls. So that would be easy then!
Hovering between 5ft and 10ft off the ground I was first given control of the pedals to keep us pointing in the same direction. Looking to an object in the distance e.g. a wind sock.
Sensitve movements.
Then collective - the up/down control. Small movements. Again, use a reference and parallax view. Lag is there.
Now collective and pedals. Wow, things are getting tricky.
Try the cyclic. Extremely senstive, dynamically unstable, lag. What more would you want. Well, you might want to take into consideration the yaw effect and pedals. then cyclic then all three!
Pedal, Collective, Cyclic. Inherent instability "Dynamically Unstable", and how! Don't wait to chase it, be feeling the helicopter instead. Very small movements. Pedals a few seconds later collective then cyclic. Managed 30 seconds hover by end of the lesson - quite extraordinary for a first houre. Then got tired mentally. Very, very difficult. If you think you are too slow, it needs to become a subconcious feel.
Hovering in a helicopter for the first time is an exhilerating experience. To me it is the closest thing to real flying like a bird (but I have yet to try gliding!). I was hooked, like the stories of addicts who are hooked on an illicit drug from the first try I just needed to get my next 'hover-fix'. I couldn't stop thinking about hovering and so after less than a day of reflexion I was on the phone to book my next lesson. I was on the slippery slope and going to embark on a helicopter training programme.
As with fixed wing flying there is a lot of practical flying but also a lot of theoretical knowledge to study. So it was back to visit Amazon for the two helicopter bookes (the Trever Tohm's equivalents), and also the xxx book. I also bought the R22 pilots handbook as I found the equivalent book for the PA28 very useful during my fixed wing training.
My instructor also recommended that I buy a second log book so I now have a fixed wing log book and a helicopter log book which has a single entry in it. I also bought a helicopter knee board which is about 2/3rds the width of a fixed-wing knee board. There isn't much room in an R22 so even the knee board has to be reduced in size as every inch of space counts.
Second log book bought and now being used.