Today was Exercise 16 and 17. (Simulated Engine Off Landings and Advanced Autorotations).

CAA Inspection going on at the flying school today, so quite a busy place. It was the HP R22 today again as G-MOGY is due her 2200 hour overhaul and G-MAVI is having some engine work done.

We wheeled her over for fueling, and Steve let me do it. I’d remembered from last time to get the rotor in line, but as we pushed it, the wind caught the rotor and it started turning, so tip number 2 —-> Hold your shoulder in such a way the tail rotor doesn’t move, and if it doesn’t move, the main rotor can’t move.

Once fuelled up and pushed back, Steve left to check her out as I did all the checks, started her up etc…..

Runway 25 when we left, right turn to Morpeth after the car park. Magnetic compasses have a tendency to overread or underread depending on which direction you’re turning through, but I can never remember which direction they under or over read. Steve gave me a good way of remembering it…..

Nippy North, Sluggish South.

Nice one ! So, if you’re turning onto a northerly (or near northerly) heading, then stop the turn when it reads 330/340 and then the compass should settle to about North. It worked !

We went upto 2400′, and we’re tootling along quite happily. I was scanning the instruments and noticed we had ZERO oil pressure. I immediately told Steve and his response :-

Steve :- 20 Seconds

dp :- ? (puzzled look)

Steve :- It took you 20 seconds to notice that the oil pressure had dropped to 0.

He was pleased that I had noticed fairly promptly, so I was pleased. He’d pulled a fuse out.

I’ll have to watch him in the future. I suspect other such tricks up his sleeve.

Once we were close to the plateau, we did the Hasel checks (Height, Area, Security, Engine, Lookout), apply carb heat and we were doing Advanced Autorotations. So, a typical auto goes like this…..

1. Lower Collective fully, Throttle engine down
2. Lots of Right Pedal to counter lack of usual torque
3. Cyclic Back so nose doesn’t drop too much and to maintain 60kts
4. Control RPM (stop it getting into the red (too high or too low)
5. Wait until the ground is 50′ feet away
6. Flare (until Zero ground speed)

Now, then at this point, Steve always says “Pop” and I thought he was throttling up the engine again AND at the same time pulling the collective. So, when it came to my turn to do the whole maneuvre, the first bits went fine and we positioned for our forced landing, and then Steve had said I would be doing the final POP.

He constantly talked to tell me when to do it, and at the appropriate time, I flared, and opened up the Throttle and pulled the collective. It turns out, I wasn’t supposed to do any throttle work. The correlator sorts that out automatically. So apparently, (I was too busy to witness it), our revs went “quite” high !! And the subsequent hover was a bit erratic for about a second.

So, we did it again, and this time, I just did the collective, no throttle and I think there’s a 80% chance we would have lived, maybe 20% chance the helicopter would have been in good nick. I was too high and hadn’t flared strongly enough for the low wind speed that there was today.

The next one was better still. 95% chance of survival and 40% chance of a good helicopter remaining. No doubt, we’ll do plenty more.

What we then went on to do was advanced autorotations. In a nutshell, the standard auto detailed above has quite a shitty descent rate, probably moving 10 m forward for every 100m you’re dropping, so not much of a glide.

But, by altering the speed you fly, you can get more or less range.

Medium Range = Speed up to 75kts
Short Range = Speed to anything as low as ZERO knots, remembering to allow time to speed back up again as the speed will be required for the flare.

There’s also a maneuvre you can do to increase range even further. It sounded VERY risky to me, and that is to reduce rotor RPM to about 90%, giving more lift. Less than 90% and you’re in the danger zone and you risk the blades folding up, and then it’s death for sure, hence my worry. So, we did one of these, but all I was bothered about and focussed on was the rotor rpm. We were on or slightly above 90% and we’re getting a good gliding angle (by helicopter standards). I am sure as we flared, the low rotor rpm horn went off and that always puts the shits up me. But Steve wasn’t phased.

Anyway, we did various different advanced autorotations and then a fake landing and then we flew back. Runway 25, but the wind had changed and it was Runway 07 for landing. Another bit of non-standard flying which was fun back to the parking spot as there was a Dash a/c behind us on final approach, and then my landing today was MUCH improved over Wednesday when I made a right arse of it. I’d had a word with myself and didn’t fart on as much.

So, good lesson. Next lesson booked for Monday, and it’s more solo work. I’m flying to Morpeth and back on my lonesome after doing it once with Steve, so look forward to that.

I also managed to transfer Steve’s video footage that he kindly took with his phone camera of my first helicopter solo liftoff and landing. Here it is….

So, here’s the liftoff. Not very pretty at all !!! Major Yaw to the left on liftoff. But then the clearing turn is “ok”, could be worse, definately could be better.

It’s a bit grainy, but he got an excellent shot of me with the biggest smile I have ever seen on my face after I had landed for the final time on the first day of solo’ing. Here is that clip……

Thanks to Steve for getting the footage !