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Lesson 23 – 6th August 2009 – 1440 – 50 minutes – Total so far – 25 hours 14 mins

Thursday, August 6th, 2009

Gorgeous weather today. I had, in my mind, an idea of what today’s lesson was going to be, namely some low level work (quick stops, autos and the like). It wasn’t to be, but I thoroughly enjoyed the alternative.

Steve suggested to maximise the weather and get a solo cross country in – Alnwick and back. Winds were mostly easterly and light – Runway 07 in use.

I plotted the course, and Steve went through the routing and features, which was helpful. 14 gallons of fuel required to allow for delays, taxi’ing, and I left with about 19 on board, so I was good to go.

I decided to use my iphone as the nav plan. It allowed me to easily time the legs and see when I should be arriving at the end of each leg.

Once we’d filled her up, we moved her well away from the bowser and other aircraft – a wise move !!! Actually, we’d have been ok for the liftoff, not so sure about the return bit though, but more on that later.

Permission to taxi to Foxtrot was granted with the clearance and I was asked to hold, which I did into the light wind. My first thought was to put it back down again on the ground, but then I thought that a bad idea as it’s good hover practice. After about a minute of waiting, I realised that I’d cocked up one of my checks. The door was open (my door). So, I had to put it down to close that. Silly me – done it before too. Need to ensure I do the checklists and don’t get carried away with the excitement of being solo.

With the door shut, Tower were on the blower asking me to perform a northerly departure straight away as they had an inbound. I was ready and I was off :-)

2300 feet was the intended altitude and i’ve realised that if I want to hold a certain altitude and I concentrate on it, I can do it, but when I want some sight-seeing or to check the map, then it can drift off.

With only me in it, I was maintaining more than the 75knots on 21 manifold pressure, more like 80-85 knots, so I arrived early at Morpeth, and similarly early at Alnwick. It took about 15 minutes to Alnwick. Quite a calm, non-turbulent flight.

Once at Alnwick, I travelled west for a bit over the golfball radar thingamajig, and then back to Alnwick. Then I took up the heading back to Morpeth, and mosied on back.

On the way back, I noticed that the Oil Pressure had gone into the red. Steve had gone through what to do in loads of scenarios before I left.

Steve :- If the clutch light comes on and stays on for 8 seconds or more, pull the clutch fuse out, and land immediately

He went through a similar spiel for every possible scenario you could think of.

Apart from this one, sod’s law !!!!

But, I was high up, circa 2500 feet, and I had the time to think it through logically. My thought process went something like this….

David thinking :- ok, it’s something to do with the engine, so if that stops, it won’t stop the rotor going because of the sprag clutch. ok, ok……erm……Pressure is high, too much oil, nah, there was only 4.7 litres in. What’s the oil temperature ? It’s fine ! Oh, that’s good, maybe it’s a faulty instrument

At this point, I gave it a good bang. And nothing happened. But then about 20 seconds later, it came out of the red, and into the yellow, top of the green.

And relax……….

To be fair, I didn’t relax, and was on high alert for an engine failure just in case. I kept a very beady eye on the Oil Pressure. It did go back in the red again, but because the oil temperature was fine, I wasn’t overly concerned.

Steve had told me to ensure I was at least 2000 feet over Eschott (another smaller airfield). I was keeping my eyes peeled, and saw a light a/c (Cessna) which was quite close, but we’d seen each other, or at least I’d seen him/her, so there never felt like there was any danger there. Hopefully, that will be on the video that I’ll put up tomorrow.

I reported back to Tower once at Morpeth and was asked to join left base, which I did. I was number 1 to land, reporting finals. Before I had chance to report finals, I was cleared to land, but asked to expedite the landing as someone was on 4 miles final (behind me).

So, I kept the speed on and it ended up being a fast approach, 80/85 knots. I’d forgot to cancel carb heat, not drastic with just me on board, thankfully.

I ended up doing quite a high flare, with very little collective pulled and a 15 feet high taxi (should be 2 to 5 feet) to get out of the way of the incoming. Steve suggested that i was quite within my rights to say “negative” to the request to expedite my landing. I am definitely too polite at times.

Now, this is where it got messy (in my book). I knew where to park, Steve had told me and the taxi and turn went fine, but then I started doing my “fart around for a minute” landings. I think the fast “transition to taxi” had made me tense. I could sense I was holding the cyclic very tightly, never a good sign and not something I generally do any more, but obviously, I did today.

Well, as can be seen by the video that I’ll put up, it wasn’t pretty to look at, but it was safe. I was up and down like something that’s up and down a lot !!

Eventually, I was down. For a second, I thought I’m going to do that landing again, so I can end on a good note, but then I remembered the oil pressure issue and thought better of it.

So, really enjoyable flight. Next flight, next friday. I’ve booked one for wednesday too, but there’s an appointment with kp on wednesday, so I’ll need to cancel that one.

Lesson 21 – 25th July 2009 – 1455 – 1 hour – Total so far – 22 hours 59mins

Saturday, July 25th, 2009

Well, I was gutted last night when I learned that the Carlisle trip (planned for today) wasn’t going ahead for various reasons. I found out when I was half-way planning the routing, just to make things even more frustrating. But, all is not lost, with a great lesson taking its place.

Sunderland International Air show is going on today at the seafront, so Newcastle Airport was hectic traffic-wise with all the departing show traffic. But, Steve said he could do a lesson nonetheless, so I went to EGNT.

He was still out on a trial lesson, so while I waited I planned the routing for a trip I wanted to do. Steve had said that the next lesson would be some navigation to a certain spot. I was keen to do some more autorotation practice, so I had planned a lesson in my head, that involved a navigation to Esh Winning (where we live), and then on the way back, I’d hope we’d do some autorotation practice.

I put the idea to Steve and he was very happy with the plan. He told me to book out via Blaydon VRP, which I did and then went out to check over the helicopter.

It was great being out on the General Aviation (GA) Apron as all the fast jets for the airshow were there. There were F16s, RAF Hawks, Apache Helicopters, a Chinook taking off, some aerobatic planes taxi’ing. It was awesome. I took some video footage today of the GA Apron, and hopefully will post the edited highlights tomorrow. I also video’ed the whole flight today with a helmet cam, but that will need heavy editing, so again, hopefully tomorrow, that’ll be up.

So, I went out to check out the heli. It was VERY close to the bowser (about 10 feet from the rotor blade, and VERY close to a beautifully decal’ed Hawk (probably about 10 feet too). As I was doing the checks around the heli, the pilot was in the Hawk, prepping it for departure. He’d started up and taxi’ed off before I’d finish my checks. I think word has got around about my hovering skills ;-)

Busy on R/T today. I asked for startup, and was granted that straight away. Whilst I was waiting for things to get upto speed, I called for clearance, but was asked to “Standby”. 5 minutes later, Steve arrived, and still no callback, so Steve suggested a reminder call, and it worked, and we had clearance to go.

Once upto speed, call for taxi. I didn’t think Steve would let me liftoff so close to the bowser, but he did. Thanks Steve. I was pleased when we were clear of it. We taxi’ed past 4 fighter jets (2 on the left, 2 on the right), an Apache Longbow helicopter (I think) and a light a/c who’d taxi’ed ahead of us. And we hovered next to Foxtrot. Typical polite dp, I just hovered next to Foxtrot, thinking the light a/c was first and he should go first, but Steve just said to tell Tower we’re ready for departure and sure enough, we were given immediate takeoff clearance. Footage to follow……

For the first time ever, we headed south ! Exiting the zone overhead Blaydon (Visual Reference Point). And then following the headings I’d worked out to get us to Esh Winning. Although I did set the headings and fly them, I was too much in awe of seeing the geography of the south of Newcastle to properly do the navigation. I had forgotten to time the legs, and was just navigating (with Steve’s help), by the 2 (bloody) big aerials between Newcastle and Esh Winning.

It took me 40-45 minutes to drive to the airport, it took 13 minutes to fly it in a helicopter. Straight line travel is awesome !

I’d warned kp that I was due (and what time), and she’d tipped off Tommy and Eileen (our neighbours) so when we overflew Esh Winning, I could see Tommy and Eileen in the drive, but couldn’t see kp and Michelle and Freddy who were visiting. I purposely had flown a safe height (probably about 800 feet agl), so they were just dots, but because I was looking for kp in the front garden, I didn’t see them waving in the back – I was too much concentrating on the flying.

We did a 30 degree turn out of Esh Winning and headed to the Windmill Farm at Tow Law, where we started the first of many autorotations. The first one was a simple (no turns) job. I was pleased that I controlled the rotor rpm correctly, and would have made a field into wind fine.

The next one was a 90′ turn autorotation. Again, that went fine, and then I think we did a 180′ turn auto somewhere near Kielder reservoir. That went fine too.

It wasn’t all good though. Although I had done what I told myself I MUST do, AVIATE then COMMUNICATE. I had totally AVIATED correctly, but had forgotten to do the Mayday call. But Steve did it each time, so it gradually sinks in to me !!!

I’ll get that next time.

A lot of learning to fly helicopters is getting so comfortable with something that it requires zero thought, that you can then concentrate on something else. For example, hovering used to take 150% of my CPU cycles to do it badly and now I can do a half decent job on 20% of my CPU cycles. In fact, at times, I’m not even thinking about it, which is great.

Once i get to that stage with auto’s, I’ll be able to do the Mayday call no bother.

So, all the autos went well. These were all autos with powered recoveries at about 300-500 feet.

Once we were getting close to the Newcastle Zone, we stopped doing them and I made the call for rejoin instructions and we were told to hold overhead the Tyne Bridges, which we duly did. The reason for the delay was the most sophisticated fighter a/c ever built (Typhoon) was on final approach and for some reason he had priority landing ;-)

With him down, we flew onto left base leg for Runway 25, and then unusually Steve said something to Tower. I couldn’t hear what he said, just as he can’t hear what I say to tower, because of the headset setup G-MAVI has. We can hear each other without having to push any buttons (live setup I think he calls it), but it means we can’t hear what each other say on the radio.

It turns out he’d got permission to do an autorotation final approach to a powered recover at 5 feet and I’D be doing the whole thing. So exciting !!

I’d asked Steve before we left, if he’d mind if I call out what I’m doing and when I’m going to flare. Normally Steve does a running commentary, saying “Not Yet, Not Yet, Not Yet, Flare” as we come in without engine power.

I thought if I did it, Steve would feel more able to relax knowing that I WAS going to do the flare at the right point.

So, as we were coming in with a very fast descent rate, I was calling out “Not Yet, Not Yet, Not Yet, Nearly going to Flare, Flaring Now” or something like that. I did the flare and the flare (I thought) was good. We ended up with zero ground speed and zero vertical speed, so all was left was the final cushion. So, as Steve says, it was then time for “Pop”, pull the collective up and recover to a 5 feet hover. Well, there was a bit too much yaw, but that was my bad. Overall, I was really pleased with it. Steve later told me that the rotor rpm went a bit high. I have NO idea why it did this, so will have to ask next time.

This was the first time I’d done the whole thing from entry to recovery with no Steve input. As Steve later said, it’s a good autorotation if you can walk away alive and he said we would have done. Good enough for me.

The final bit was the best bit. The GA apron was still chocka block and the Hawk was back, meaning I had 10 feet (if not less) either side of me to get the heli down. Steve let me do it, credit to him. I went in nose first, and then had to do a 180′ yaw. It felt very close for the tail close to the fence and the bowser. Not sure if it will feel that close on the video footage. We’ll see…. But, I did the turn and landed it. It was a hard landing, but Steve said it was safe and it felt safe. But I didn’t fancy farting on for one of my 30-second kiss-of-a-touchdown landings with so little room for error.

So, great lesson. Loved it and the first one was some video to watch back.

Next lesson is more navigation, but more thorough next time. We going to (or I should probably say I am going to) navigate to Seaham, Durham Tees Valley airport (passing overhead), then Hexham then Newcastle.

Not sure when this week, but I’m already looking forward to it !

Lesson 20 – 20th July 2009 – 1445 – 1 hour 20 minutes – Total so far – 21 hours 59mins

Monday, July 20th, 2009

Some last minute Air Nav revision in the morning and then a windy ride in on the bike for the exam and a lesson.

Straight into the exam, which involved plotting a route darn sarth somewhere and then answering loads of questions (25). 92% score (2 questions wrong, 1 of which was stupidity on my part), but am happy with that.

Steve was out giving someone an air experience ride, so I chatted with some other pilots, which I always find intriguing.

The lesson plan for today was extensive………..

  • Simulated Forced Landing (with Mayday call)
  • Autorotations (normal + 180′)
  • Steep Turns
  • Precision Transitions
  • Quick Stops

Think that was it, but we did even more than that :-)

Quite windy today. The METAR said 13 knots, but it felt a bit blowier than that at times. Surprisingly smooth trip given the winds.

I booked us out today (a first), and then went to get her started up. When I asked for startup, that was approved and they threw in a clearance too all in the same conversation. All good.

Taxi to Foxtrot and a request from ATC to expedite takeoff. So, no nicely nicely following the taxi line, it was straight over the grass, transition and away clearing the runway asap.

Off past Morpeth, and then the first of 2 autos. The first one went well. It only involved a left turn to get into wind. Once we were nicely setup to land in the field, I did the practice Mayday call. The Mayday call was a good one in my opinion, got everything in. And we could easily have landed in this huge field that we lined up with. All good so far.

The second attempt was, how can I put this, DIABOLICAL !!

We climbed back upto about 2000′. Steve did his “Engine Failure, Engine Failure, Engine Failure.” I rammed the collective down and quickly assessed that we needed a 180 degree auto to get back into wind, and I started setting that up, got us into a turn, and then the mistake I made was forgetting the flying and doing the Mayday call. Well, the flying went to pot. I hadn’t realised that we were WELL out of balance, I also saw the airspeed indicator reduce rapidly to show very LOW airspeed. Steve’s favourite saying and it’s a good one to know….

Steve :- Airspeed is MONEY IN THE BANK.

Well, we were next to skint (penniless) !!

My natural reaction was to nose forward to get some airspeed, but that wasn’t the problem. We were so out of balance that the pitot tube wasn’t pointing in the direction of travel and was misreading our true airspeed.

When we finally got rebalanced, the airspeed increased dramatically and speedily to about 85 knots. Steve reminded me about the balance and then I corrected it all, but all of this happened so fast that the Mayday probably got as far as the third rendition of the word Mayday and that was it.

So, lesson learned from this …………….  Aviate THEN communicate.

I shouldn’t have worried about the Mayday call until I was flying correctly.

Great learning experience though.

On the plus side, I did a much better job of controlling the rotor rpm. It got CLOSE to the red on one occasion, and we had a low rotor rpm horn moment, but I felt in control and recovered from these issues.

So, all in all, only a little disappointed in myself, despite the second atrocious attempt.

We then flew towards the plateau and did some Steep turns (30 degree). They went fine and I kept within 100′ of the altitude for 2 out of 3. We then did a couple of 45 degree turns. They were uneventful. We pulled some G there !!

By this point, we arrived at the plateau and we did some of the funnest flying you can do in a helicopter, aka precision transitions. We must have done about 4 or 5 of them. Steve did the first one to demonstrate.

Hover taxi’ing is slow as you remain below transitional lift (approx 12 knots). So if you need to taxi a long way and get there on the same day, we do this precision transitioning, basically we fly fast enough for transitional lift (approx 30-50knots), but very low (about 30 feet). The important thing is to start it into wind, and FINISH it into wind, despite probably flying with the wind along the way. So, we spent about 10-15 minutes darting around the plateau very fast, very low. It felt absolutely awesome. The best bit was when you’d be flying with a tailwind at 40 knots, but a groundspeed of 60 knots and then you’d do a big turn at the end back into wind and you can literally feel the ground speed just DROP AWAY to next to nothing, as then you are flying at 30 to 40 knots INTO a wind of 20-30 knots. It felt great.

When we’d done these, we did a real one as if we were going to land at a certain point, and then did a fake landing. Loved it. As we came into (fake) land, there was a low flying bright yellow Sea King at our height but about 1/2 a mile away. We’d both seen each other early on, a new experience for me ;-)

Once we’d (fake) took off, I tried to do a 360′ clearing turn to check for any other a/c, but it was VERY ugly with the winds being so strong. But, Steve didn’t step in and I got it back, although I think he nearly stepped in at one point.

I asked Steve to do a 360′ clearing turn so I could see how it should be done. I learned some stuff which I’ll apply next time.

We then did some more precision transitions but this time with some quick stops. Steve demo’ed and then I did 2 or 3. They are lots of fun too.

And then it was return to base time.

Bit of a queue to land, so we were asked to hold over the northern boundary of the airport (close to the tower). The wind was at least 30 knots at 800 feet, so we could enter a near hover by flying at 40 knots into wind. So much more fun than dizzying orbits.

We had to expedite the landing, but Steve didn’t step in which was great.

Final landing and then shut down concluded a great lesson.

Double Lesson – 13th July 2009

Monday, July 13th, 2009

Lesson 18 – 13th July 2009 – 1420 – 36 minutes – Total so far – 20 hours 9mins
Lesson 19 – 13th July 2009 – 1510 – 30 minutes – Total so far – 20 hours 39mins

I know I’m going to sound like a record, but great lesson(s) again !!

Quite a few CBs around (Cumulonimbus (Thunder) clouds)), but very isolated, so we could still proceed.

First lesson of the day was for Steve and I to fly out of the Control Zone (via Morpeth), do a couple of autos and then fly back – but with a difference. The difference was that Steve wouldn’t say a word. Sounded like the perfect lesson ;-)

No Steve talking, no Steve “jokes” – :-)
Noone to remind me about important things – :-(

So, with enough fuel for both lessons (R22 Beta, not HP model), we took off. I was about to hover us at Foxtrot awaiting departure clearance, but no sooner had we started (hover) taxi-ing than we were given clearance to take off (Runway 07). For the first time, I thought I’d try a transition and turn onto the runway, in basic terms, a bloody fast taxi. This is the fun fly by the seat-of-your-pants kinda stuff. All went well.

We were off. Steve not saying anything didn’t last long ;-)

Steve :- “Are we climbing Dave ?”
David :- “We are climbing Steve and by that you mean…………..” (trying to think what I hadn’t done)

I’d set the trim, I’d set the transponder………erm……..

He meant the speed. I was going 75knots, but standard climb is 65knots.

Sorted.

Bit annoyed that he’d had to remind me, but heigh ho.

We continued up to about 2200 ft. Although Steve wasn’t talking to me, I was telling him my thought patterns so he didn’t think I was flying aimlessly. I’d say I was going to 2200feet. Later on, he said that when there are CBs around or rain clouds generally, that I should fly lower. He was dead right.

Once out of the Control Zone……………

Steve :- Where is the wind coming from ?

I answered correctly.

Steve :- Practice Engine Failure! Engine Failure, Engine Failure, Engine Failure
David :- So, do you want me to do what I’d do if the engine failed.
Steve :- huh huh (yes)

So, I did the auto down to about 500 feet and a power recovery. He’d picked an awkward spot, which meant I had to do a turn and I forgot to check the revs during the turn, Steve had to step in.

But, we made the field.

Power Recovery and then Steve explained what he meant by “Engine Failure” (repeated 3 times). What he meant was, when he says it the first time, that’s when the engine has failed, I need to take action by the 3rd time otherwise it was too late. Well, I was happy now I understood it and laughing at how stupid I must have sounded to Steve.

The next one, there was no dilly dallying. No sooner had he said Engine Failure than we were dropping out of the sky like noone’s business. The collective has never been pushed down so hard, well not by me anyway ! :-)

This time, ‘cos of the wind it had to be a 180 auto. We would have made that one no bother, but again I forgot to check the rotor rpm during the turn.

But, I think something has clicked now with autos. We’ll see next time we fly  if that’s the case. In real life, if the engine did go, you wouldn’t worry about the rotor rpm, the more the merrier.

So, with the autos done, we returned to base, Steve told me where to put it down.

At which point, he got out and said he was going to book me out and I should shut the heli down, recheck the helicopter fluid levels and then await his return.

15 minutes later, I was starting her up again but on my own. It’s such an exciting experience being on your own, hard to put into words. I love it.

I got the clearance for startup, started her up, got the departure clearance, and then did the post-start checks. Now, this is when things went very differently to how it normally goes. Normally what happens is that when _I_ am ready, I say I’m ready for taxi and then I taxi to the Hold and then _I_ say I’m ready for departure.

But, it was VERY different. There was a light a/c in front of me to depart and I knew there was a big jet (not sure if it was Easyjet) also heading for the start of the runway. So, in my head, I’m after those 2.

So, I did the last checks and was ready for the off.

Tower :- Northumbria01 (that’s me), taxi to Foxtrot, Runway 25.

Well, this took me by surprise, but I was ready so………

dp :- Taxi to Foxtrot, Runway 25.

Off I went to Foxtrot, then………….

Tower :- Northumbria ZERO ONE, you cleared for takeoff, Runway 25. Surface Wind blah blah….

Well, I replied to say fine with that, and as I taxi’ed out to the runway, I could see the light a/c about 400 m down the runway, waiting for me, and behind it, at the very start of the runway was the big jet. I felt like a VIP.

I don’t think I was getting preferential treatment because I was on my own, I think it was more because of vortex wake. I give off the least, on a par with the light a/c and the big jet leaves a 5 or 6 mile wake vortex, so if it was any other order, it would have took much longer to get the 3 a/c off the ground.

The flight was uneventful apart from the dodging of rain showers. I went through a couple and dodged a couple. All good fun. Once past morpeth, I ambled for 5 minutes and then came back. I could see a big shower over the airport – a real downpour, but the visibility was such that I could see through it and by the time I got there it would have passed so I rejoined the control zone.

I was number 2 to some commercial airliner, and the passing shower had left the runway Wet Wet Wet, but the air was weirdly very calm. The hover taxi, the final hover and the landing were great. I was dead chuffed. I could have lined it up more with a line, but I thought if Steve was watching, he’d be fretting if I parked it too close to another a/c, so for his heart’s sake, I left a bit of space.

So, all good.

Next lesson not yet booked, but probably friday, and I hope to get another exam out the way (Air Nav). I think we’re doing Practice Forced Landings. I’ll have to brush up on my mayday calls.

dp :- Mayday Mayday Mayday, the engine’s stopped like, we’re ganning doon like a stone.

Yes, that should do it !!