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Flight 40 – 28th January 2010 – 1210 – 1 hour 6 minutes – Total so far – 40 hours 46 mins

Thursday, January 28th, 2010

It’s good to get back in the saddle. Was surprised how much I missed my helicopter lessons.

Thankfully, the weather was perfect for it. Nice cold temperatures meaning high performance from the engine, and good visibility, with no precipitation.

I had in mind what I wanted to get out of today’s lesson. I wanted to leave it thinking “Oh yes, I can still fly a helicopter” and I achieved that, so am happy.

I arrived at the flying school early (10am) for my 11am lesson. I had decided to take a couple of exams today, the last 2 theory ones. I did some last minute revision, but was surprised about how much I had remembered from previous revision. Scores on the doors :-

Human Performance – 95%

Radiotelephony – 93.33333%

Well pleased with that. All theory exams done, just the radiotelephony practical exam to do PLUS the helicopter equivalent of the driving test ! The end is in sight.

So, today’s helicopter was G-DOGI (Doggy as it’s affectionately known). It was in a hangar next to where the police helicopter operates from, so a bit of a trek in the cold to get to it.

The great thing was I got to fly it from there around to the flying school at no cost to me ! So, takeoff, some precision transitioning (or fast taxi at least) and then landing. Loved it.

The takeoff went “ok”, but then the initial hover showed my lack of experience for the last 3 months, but I was pleased at how quickly I got the knack again.

Once filled up, I started her up again or at least tried to. But it wouldn’t start AT ALL. Steve was booking us out, and I couldn’t work it what I was doing wrong. I knew it was something stupid, but just couldn’t figure it out ! I rang Steve and he said he’d be there shortly.

Well, before Steve returned I realised that the rotor brake was still on, and that was the cause of it not starting. It started fine without the brake on ;-)

Once I’d started it and all the checks were done and I had the clearance, Steve returned and we headed off north. Past Morpeth, we did a vortex ring exercise. We were at about 2300 feet, and Steve asked me to enter a hover. Once in the hover, we entered vortex ring and then came out of it by gently increasing speed and powering away. Then onto the plateau where we did some autos, some quickstops, quite a bit of precision transitioning (fast low stuff, love it). We finished off with an auto to powered recovery into the hover. It went “ok”, but I could tell I was out of practice and Steve could too. But, I wasn’t disappointed, in fact, I was quite pleased that so much of his training was still in me.

I have a tendency when doing “autos to a hover just above the ground” to keep the nose high for too long, whereas I should be levelling out. I know why, but it’s only just dawned on me. At no point, am I thinking of landing it, and although we don’t ever land it (when practising an auto), I need to think and do everything as if I was going to land it. With that in my mind, I feel sure I’ll do it to Steve’s (and my) satisfaction next time. On the way back, we had a good catchup. Steve also slipped in a “small criticism”. Apparently, I’ve been hovering too low. Wasn’t aware of it, but he wants it about waist height for added safety, so I’ll work on that next time too.

So, all in all, a fruitful lesson. My helicopter head is nearly fully back on, more practice required.

I’ll try and get a lesson in next week (weather permitting).

I took video of both flights (PLUS atc), so all being well over the next couple of days, I’ll edit and upload that.

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Lesson 35 – 28th September 2009 – 1110 – 1 hour – Total so far – 36 hours 28 mins

Monday, September 28th, 2009

Didn’t expect to be flying today, but I managed to get a lesson in.

The weather looked bad for lunchtime and afternoon, but Steve rang and said we could fit one in, in the morning. And we did ! Quite a challenging and fun lesson.

Order of the Day was :-

  • some VOR work
  • Autos to Powered Termination at 5 feet
  • 180′ Autos
  • Confined Area Practice

When I went out to check G-MAVI over, the windsock was limp. Surface Wind = Variable, less than 3 knots. Boy, would that change !!!!

The Lightspeed Zulu headset is really paying dividends these days. Today was a good example of it being worth the money. I heard everything that was said, not needing to ask Steve “what did they say ?” at any point.

So, 25 departure, right turn to Morpeth. The winds may have been calm on the surface, but it was like riding a bucking bronco at 1000 feet. I normally like to go upto 2300′, but the cloud prevented us going higher than about 1500′. At times we skirted the cloud, which is so much fun !!

With VORs, what you’re supposed to do is to TIT.

T une
I dentify
T rack

Once past Morpeth, Steve Tuned the VOR to St Abbs VOR, and we tried to listen to the morse code to Identify it was St Abbs and then we tracked some radial. This went fine. Conveniently, this led us to the plateau where we did a 180′ auto to a powered termination at 5 feet. By this time, the wind had really picked up. Over the plateau, it was showing as 20 to 30 knots, which makes for a much easier ending to an autorotation. It’s the first auto I’ve done which felt good – NOT perfect, but it felt good. We’d have been alive at the end of it, for sure, although Steve may have chipped one of his nails ;-)    Would the helicopter have been ok, well, not too sure about that ?! 50/50 !

I felt I did the entering fine, the throttle fine, maintaining rotor rpm fine, hitting the spot fine, the flare went really well, AND the pop too. The only negative is once I’d done the final flare and POP (of the collective), I didn’t push the cyclic enough forward to get us level for the final (cushion to the ground). In hindsight, I think this is because I know we’re not going to land, so I’m doing it with a view to ending in a hover. But I need to do the steps as if we were going to do the final level and cushion that we would do if the engine quit for real. Will work on this next time.

With that done, we did a very entertaining 360′ turn. The wind doesn’t half make it hard !!!  Steve spotted some fast jets in the distance. My mind was too much on the 360′ turn to see ANYTHING. We did another 360 and I could see them this time.

With them in sight, we headed off to do some confined area approaches. We did two, each to a different confined area. They went fine, although the surface wind was no quite turbulent, so it made for quite challenging moving around the confined areas once down.

With the confined areas complete, we headed back with a view to doing some more autos on the way back. Not one of the autos did I remember to do the fake Mayday call. It’s not that I forgot, more that I was concentrating on the actual flying of the autos. Will try and get the Maydays in next time.

These remaining autos were to a 500 feet recovery. We did two max range ones. That’s where we take rotor rpm to 90% (gulp) and maintain 75 knots. Slight change to the recovery in that Steve said to lower the collective, do a little flare to bring rotor rpm back up and then power away. Worked ok I think.

With all of that behind us, we side stepped back to the field and we rode the horse as it jostled us around the sky. It really was quite a ride. :-) We were asked to do some orbits to allow Tower to get some flights away and 1 flight in. Here is a gps track of the whole flight and you can see the 2 orbits on the right hand side (just to the North west of Seaton Burn (bottom right). These were 2 turns in the air, but you can really see how the wind made them 2 turns in totally different spots. Shows the wind direction quite well.

Screen shot 2009-09-28 at 15.11.10

Once the last flight was in, we headed closer to the field and did another orbit waiting for a departure and then we were given our cue.

The windsock, that was previously limp, was now horizontal and the wind was nicely down the centre of the runway (very kind of it), so it took about a minute (or two) to fly from one end of the runway to the end !!

The taxi’ing back from the runway to the parking spot was a riot !!!!  You’d think I’d been drinking (it should be on the video !). It was like the helicopter had a mind of its own. But, Steve let me take it all the way back in and the landing wasn’t bad considering. 7/10, better than some of the ones I’ve done with NO wind (and they’re easier).

Great lesson. Felt like a lot of stuff really came together.

There may be a chance on Thursday of a cheap lesson as we pick up a brand new helicopter (for the school) from somewhere near Stratford and bring it up. Fingers crossed for that. Be nice to see a different part of the UK (from the air).

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Lesson 30 – 11th September 2009 – 1134 – 1 hour 6 minutes – Total so far – 31 hours 22 mins

Friday, September 11th, 2009

Yesterday, after the lesson with Steve I was confident that I could have done another lesson had I booked it. I was refreshed and ready to fly more.

So today, I had booked 2 lessons but I was so exhausted after one, that I called it a day. Why ? Because we did Confined Area Landings, and I found it VERY mentally draining.

Today’s lesson was with Scott. I normally fly with Steve. Scott and Steve have quite different training styles. Steve’s cool, calm (and fun) approach gets the best flying out of me (Yes Steve, that’s my best ! ;-) . Scott’s full-on approach is more challenging and although I probably learn more, I get flustered and don’t fly at my best, but I do enjoy the challenge immensely.

So, today’s lesson and another beautiful day for it. Hardly any wind at EGNT. Scott was there as I did the pre-startup,post-start checks. I was doing his checklist flow, but forgot about switching the radio off before starting. A good habit to get into in case I fly an older model where the starting current can blow the radio.

For some reason, Tower had a problem hearing me. We weren’t sure if it was my headset or Tower was doing something else when I called for clearance. Later transmissions seemed to be heard fine. Although, Scott had problems hearing me. Will need to keep an eye on that. Or probably better to keep an ear on it !! I think we sorted it later by me pushing my volume up, but it’s a bit of a blur.

We taxi’ed to Foxtrot and were asked to Line up and Wait on 25. That’s a first for me in a helicopter.

No sooner had we got in position than we were given the “GO”. Once we were on the climb after the initial turnout, it was instrument time. We’d forgot the goggles, but to be honest it didn’t make any perceivable difference. Once you focus solely on the instruments, the scanning you need to do stops you looking out anyway. The only downside is you don’t know how much your peripheral vision is helping you out, but I didn’t feel like it was helping much.

So, we did climbs, turns by instruments and they went fine. I think I stayed within 100 feet of any altitude and the headings were +/- 15′, so I was happy with that. At this point, I was feeling in control of everything and on top form mentally.

As the flight progressed, the headset problems left Scott a bit frustrated. I was struggling to hear him over the radio banter. I think I needed to tweak some headset knob, but we were too engrossed to bottom it out, or at least I was. His frustration with my headset, started getting me on edge and my performance started to wane a little.

Once we’d done the instrument flying, we concentrated on Confined Area Landings. Scott had done an excellent and extremely thorough briefing before we even took off and I felt full with information, overflowing even. But, often, things are easier when you actually do them.

So, confined area landing as far as I can remember, involved a recce circuit to work out angles of approach the confined area, and possible departure angles. Then a lower circuit (approx. 1,000 feet) to look for any obstructions etc..….

Then an approach with an abort decision altitude to attempt a landing, but with a decision to abort if anything untoward is spotted.

On one of the downwind legs, we rolled back to 53 knots, maintaining level flight and recorded the power required, which I think was 17.5 MAP. Take that away from 23.5 MAP (max continuous for today), gave us 6inches MAP to play with. Ample for a confined area approach. The first attempt, I had misunderstood and thought we were going to go around, so I was too high to get in, which is what Scott wanted. With me now understanding we were going all the way in to a 5 foot hover, we did a tight circuit for a second attempt.

It felt quite a shallow approach given the steep approaches I did with Steve yesterday. My understanding after yesterday’s lesson was that it was a steep approach, but Scott had me come in quite shallow. But, we made it this time, although I did lose balance which nearly required Scott’s intervention. He was at full alert for a second before I got it under control. Not even sure why it got out of balance. Weird. I was pulling collective, which normally requires left pedal, but I had needed to give right. Bizarre !

Anyway, we came to the hover in this kind of dip in a hill and we had raised ground all around us. It was great. We then did some pedal turns, but cleverly, he had me move the helicopter to the right, before giving right pedal. In this way, we’re sure that the tail rotor isn’t going to hit anything as we’ve just come from the place the tail rotor is going to turn through. Then when we’ve done 90′ turn, we rinse and repeat until we’ve scanned the whole area. It worked a treat and the tail rotor didn’t hit anything ;-)

With the area now clear for departure, we needed to work out how much power we had available. I think we were showing 23.5 to to hover in ground effect (IGE), leaving only 1inch of MAP to spare, so we ideally needed to do an on-the-skids takeoff. But as we hadn’t landed, this wasn’t possible, so we had to do an IGE transition. It worked a treat and we headed back to Newcastle :-)

On the way back, we had a nice view of a Tornado streaking past. Hopefully, I caught it on video. Will check tomorrow if I get time. Steve was with his student at the plateau at the same time we were there and both helicopters were flying back at the same time. And I think Steve’s student had the better view of the Tornado, which isn’t necessarily a good thing ! ;-)

We followed Steve’s helicopter back and although it wasn’t quite a formation landing, we were only half a mile behind them on Base Leg and down the runway which was neat.

We taxi’ed back and then I did a shitty landing, rating of 4/10 on the dp landing scale. There was sideway’s movement at the just wrong moment, so I had to lower the collective to plant us on firmly, avoiding Dynamic Rollover.

All in all, a hectic, very taxing, but thoroughly enjoyable experience. I’ll need much more practice at these, but Scott was very complimentary about the first attempt, which was well received. I always think I’m doing worse than I am. I think it’s because I’m not flying my best with Scott generally. I haven’t done a good landing with him yet !

I’m writing this and sense myself being far too self-critical, but that’s me. It’s the way I improve I think by critiquing myself harshly. Always nice to be told that it’s gone well though.

Lesson booked for everyday next week apart from Thursday.

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Lesson 29 – 10th September 2009 – 1125 – 1 hour 6 minutes – Total so far – 30 hours 16 mins

Thursday, September 10th, 2009

The whole of the UK enjoyed a magnificent day of September sunshine today due to a massive high pressure system. It was gorgeous for flying. As smooth as a mill pond !

The order of the day was mainly instrument flying. It’s an area I feel quite comfortable with, probably due to my fixed wing days.

So, slightly different start to the flight as Steve accompanied me out so I could test my headset in various different helicopters and different radio/helicopter headset combos. It worked swimmingly in each. With that complete, he headed in and I did the startup checks.

The Lightspeed Zulu headset felt great on, a real comfy fit and when ANR is switched on, a lovely calm settles in your ears, quite an eery silence. Even with the rotors turning, it was a huge improvement on a school headset.

Usual startup done, the headset had their first real test. Normally, I am straining so much to hear what’s being said, that there is a sense of slight panic as I try and catch every word Tower is saying to me. Today, I could hear them so clearly, I could actually _listen_ to what they are saying even if it was different to what I was expecting. And that happened..…

I had got the QNH from the ATIS, and it was a very high 1038mb. When Tower gave it me with the taxi clearance, they gave it me as 1033mb. Now, normally, I would just be so grateful to have understood what they said that I would have repeated it back to them. But today, I had the wherewithal to ask them to confirm the QNH was 1033mb. They corrected the QNH to 1038mb and I was chuffed that the painful purchase was already paying dividends.

As Steve did his final walkaround under the fast-spinning rotor, I did the final “Low RPM Horn” checks and we were ready for off once he’d took his seat.

Steve wanted me to do all the checks once in the hover (lights out, temps etc in the green) and then record “power required to hover” and state “CoG and Controls feel fine”. I did that. Before I even took off, he checked I knew the maximum Manifold Pressure we could tax the engine to. It was 24.5 for 5 minutes, because of the high pressure system.

Short Taxi to Foxtrot with Steve now onboard. The hover lift was fine, and so it should have been with the Surface Wind less than 5kts. Today, I had decided I was going to do things more by the book. Hold altitudes, follow taxi lines etc etc…. Normally, I don’t tax myself too much and enjoy the moment. But, as I found today, I can do both.

For the first time, once we were cleared for takeoff, I didn’t skip the corner (over the grass) as I normally do, we did a precision transition, akin to fast taxi following the taxiway line (ish), turn into wind and off we went. It was so smooth today. Today’s are the kind of days you don’t want to come down.

At 500 feet, I had Scott’s FREDATT (Fuel, Radion, Engine, Direction, Altimeter, Trim & Transponder) checks running in my ears, so I did them.  And then off we flew to the North. Initially 2300ft but once out of the zone, it was instrument time. We first did a couple of turns (180 degree at 15′ rate). They went fine, and then it was time to put the goggles on. They are goggles that allow you only to see the instruments and a bit of land either side of the instrument pedestal, but nothing that would help you fly. I suppose if you see blue sky either side of the pedestal column, it’s a clue to commence panicking.

I had to remove my headset to put the goggles on – WHAT A RACKET !!!!! I’ve never removed any headset before in a helicopter, and blimey, you can tell why you need them. So with the goggles (and headset) on, Steve gave instructions. First off a 180′ turn to the right (15′ rate), whilst maintaining the current height. And then same in the other direction. They went fine.

Then we did a climbing 180′ turn and a descending 180′ turn. Again, they went fine, although I did notice they were getting sloppier and I could sense I was losing concentration. But, they were safe.

We ended up at about 3200 feet and Steve suggested we leave it there as he didn’t foresee any difficulties with instruments and for us to do some autos, but first he suggested going upto 4000 feet to see what it looks like from that altitude.  Off we jolly well went to 4000 feet and WOW !!!!!! There were a few clouds about and we were above them. That’s a first for me in a helicopter.  It felt awesome. I suggested to Steve that we land on one as they were nice firmly shaped puffy ones, but he didn’t seem keen. :-)

Once past the clouds, we did a 180′ autorotation with me doing the throttle again. They still feel so new to me (autos). Whereas it doesn’t tax me much to fly the helicopter generally, even to hover now is RELATIVELY stress free, but autos seem to need 100% cpu cycles. So, HASEL checks then collective down and roll off the throttle. I rolled it off, but they crept back on because I hadn’t rolled off enough and the governor was kicking in. But, eventually I got it to a steady 70-75% rpm. We were nicely in autorotation, now the turn. Whilst the turn was under way I called the fake mayday. I seemed to get everything out. Pretend to turn the fuel off, the magnetos, the master switch after first pushing the ident button and we were down to picking a field to land in. With that picked, we came out of the auto at about 1000 feet and proceeded to the plateau. Just as I write this, I have remembered that I forgot to “check above” (for the climb away) which is the last thing I’m supposed to do in an auto. I did remember cancelling carb heat. Note to self!

So, once at the plateau we practiced a steep approach. 30 knots indicated and a steep angle of approach. I was aiming for a certain point, but overshot it by about 50 yards, but I’m good with that. It was good practice keeping 30 knots and the high angle of approach. Apparently, these skills will be used shortly for Confined Area Landings shortly.

Once in the hover at the plateau we did a hover taxi back along the plateau, a 180′ yaw and then we did a practice quickstop. That went ok. It was then time to head back to the airport.

An uneventful trip back (we like them) and a chance to catch up with a bit of chatting. We were asked to report overhead Stannington, which I did, and then to report base leg. A bit farther on and before I had chance to report base leg, Tower advised us we were number 1 to land, to report finals and be aware of an Easyjet who was entering the zone from the south and who would be coming in behind us.  So we kept on the speed (about 90kts). I said to Steve, it would have been better if they’d let us join midway.

Steve :- Ask them Dave. Say “Northumbria01 request midjoin”
dp :- Tower, Northumbria01 request midjoin

And we got it, which basically meant we didn’t have to cross the numbers at the bottom of the runway,and we could cut the corner and “land” midway up the runway. We did that and transitioned to a taxi just before Foxtrot and then taxi in. We didn’t even get chance to fully vacate before Tower was granting the Easyjet landing clearance.  All good though !

The landing was ok. It wasn’t a dp spesh i.e. up and down 10 times, but neither was it a 10/10 like I have done before. It was an 8/10 in my book. I went down to land and sensed sideways movement and then pulled up and went down again for a toe landing. It felt like the front skids touched down first and then the rest gently touched down after that. It felt very safe and I was pleased.

So, great lesson. Days like today are meant for flying. I would have had another lesson, but they were fully booked. I’ve turned my single lesson tomorrow into a double. Already looking forward to it !!!

Video to follow

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