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.