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Lesson 4 – 13th May 2009 – 4.00pm – 1hr 5mins – Total so far – 4hours 16mins

Sunday, June 7th, 2009

Autorotations today, but me doing them. Not the full thing down to the ground, just entering autorotations and holding them with correct rotor speed down to 500 feet and then we carry on flying normally.

I am now doing all the R/T as a matter of course, plus all the initial checks, including starting the helicopter up, shutting it down etc…..

Steve does all the low level stuff, hover taxi’ing, takeoff/landings, and I do everything else (the easy bits).

Today, we were number 2 for departure after a Cessna Citation and we were asked to take off immediately heading due north from the taxiway, which took us within 200 feet of the Emirates Tower at Newcastle. That was great, you could see all the controllers. I was tempted to give them a wave, but Steve would have not been happy with me taking my hand off the collective ;-)

Off we flew, north, past Morpeth. Absolutely gorgeous day, despite predictions of potentially gusty weather. Very calm ! Calmest it’s been.

So, autorotations. I flew us upto 2000′ and then we do HASEL checks (Height, Area, Security, Engine, Lookout), and then for the first one, I follow him through doing the whole thing first to get a feel for it. So, then we do another one, and I did the cyclic only. As soon as you have no lift from the engine, the nose drops and you need to pull back on the cyclic to maintain a 60knot speed. Then back upto 2000′ again, this time, I was doing the Yaw pedals. Without the torque from the engine, the helicopter veers a lot to the left so right pedal was needed to counte this and keep us in straight balanced flight.

Then repeat again, but with me doing all 3. I did it twice in total. On one of them (the first one I think), I let the rotor rotate too fast, but generally found entering an autoration straightforward(ish). Of course, if the engine ever did go, I’d need to instinctively do the maneuvre, PLUS find somewhere to land and land it, so this bit SHOULD be the easiest bit and should be stress-free because there’d be more to worry about should I ever need it.

I asked Steve, if he’d ever had to do a real one (and he has been flying heli’s for about 1300 hours I think) and he has NEVER had to do one for real. Reassuring !!! The R22 Beta has an AvcoLyoming engine and from what I have read, they seem incredibly reliable !!

To top off the autorotation lesson, Steve did a full one, all the way down to land, which was very impressive. We aren’t allowed to land away from a licensed airfield during training, so he could do everything apart from the final touchdown but I got the idea ;-)

Once he had it in a hover, he handed it over to me to do some more hover practice. It was “ok”. I was better than my first attempts, but not much improved on the great day of hover I had in Lesson 2 or 3. But, it could have been worse. Still needing Steve to save our lives when the hover was lost !

After the hover practice, we do a lookout to check we’re ok to transition to forward/climbing flight and lucky we did, as a pair of Harrier’s flew directly over us – exciting stuff. Could hear the roar through all the rotor noise and the headsets !!! I asked Steve if they often do that, and he said they often use us as target practice – GULP ! I wasn’t sure if he was serious or not. And I’ve had another experience with them in a later lesson (Lesson 8), so I think he may be telling the truth.

Flew back and arrived back in the vicinity of the airport at rush hour (5pm) and we’re greeted by some queuing. Couple of flights queuing for takeoff and a couple coming into land PLUS us. And the added stress that Marky Mark (the local eye in the sky) wanted our heli to do his commentary on traffic asap. The tower asked us to do orbits over the golf course, which I did, but kept slackening off on the speed every once in a while. After a while of going round in circles (orbits), it gets a bit dizzying, so Steve put us into a hover at 1000′ and that was much easier and allowed us to watch the takeoff/landings from a great vantage point :-)

I found the hover much easier to keep at this height, but probably because you can’t tell how bad the hover is ‘cos of the height you’re at !! ;-)

Here’s Marky Mark getting ready to life off……Notice the tail rotor. It’s a straight line, but it appears bent because of the speed it’s rotating….

markymarkheli2-1024x768

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Lesson 3 – 12th May 2009 – 12.45pm – 1hr 5mins – Total so far – 3hours 11minutes

Sunday, June 7th, 2009

Thoroughly enjoyed this lesson. It didn’t feel as exhausting as the hover lesson from the previous day. It was mostly practicing climbing/descending, climbing turns, descending turns etc..PLUS we got another 15 minutes worth of hover practice in !! :-)

The climbing/descending turns etc was all fine and event-free, and the hover practice was the bit I was really looking forward to and it went MUCH better today. From yesterday’s “How will I ever crack this ?” to “Yes, I can see it’s possible I might be able to crack it”. It was a big relief to me, and I felt good. Don’t get me wrong. If you’d seen my hover, you would have thought I was doing aerial aerobatics to music, but whereas yesterday I managed a ONE second hover, I managed a 30-second hover and that’s a LONG time when you’re doing it. Still, not there yet. I still lost it, and could maybe only get it back to hover 50% of the time. Steve saved the day, the rest of the time.

Another plus is I did all the R/T myself. I did have a bit of a scare though. Not sure if it’s my headset or me concentrating too much on flying the helicopter, but the Tower had told me I was “Number 1 to land”, which means I should be the next one to be given clearance to land, so we turned onto final approach, all lined up with the runway, where I heard “SOMETHING SOMETHING, Cleared to Land”. I didn’t hear our callsign (Northumbria ZERO FOUR), and nearly shit a brick thinking there was an Easyjet 767 right behind us. Steve quickly told me “don’t worry, that’s us”. Phew !!!

Steve found it funny – ha bloody ha !

So, great lesson. I am quietly confident that I will crack the hover now. It may take a while, but at least it’s a possibility !

Bonus today was that we did one autorotation. That’s what a helicopter does when the engine goes. Bit like a sycamore from a tree when it falls, it spins round. When a helicopter falls through the air, the rotor does the same and spins round itself. This potential energy in the spinning rotor can be used to safely land if the engine goes. So, Steve did a complete autorotation. Cut the power, enter autorotation, last second, flare, kick the engine back in. Very interesting maneuvre !

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Lesson 2 – 11th May 2009 – 11.40am – 60 minutes – Total so far – 2hours 6 minutes

Sunday, June 7th, 2009

What seemed like a very long wait for Lesson 2, but it was gorgeous weather finally !! Quite a bumpy lesson this one, probably thermals causing a bit of turbulence.

This lesson left me totally braindead. I have found this with helicopter lessons. It’s after Lesson 8 when I write this, and just in these few short lessons, I have found that some lessons, I come away calm as a cucumber, and others I am left with my brain going at 100mph trying to compute what occurred in the lesson. This was one of the latter.

So, this was the first lesson, where I did all the R/T ie….

Speaking to ATC to get ….

  • Permission to start the engine
  • Flight Plan Clearance
  • Taxi Permission
  • Takeoff Permission
  • Leaving the control zone
  • Rejoining the control zone
  • Permission to land etc….

I say “All the R/T”, probably a bit unfair on Steve, who had to step in when I had no idea what had just been said, but I probably did 80% of them.

Today was mostly focussed on straight and level flight, turns and climbing/descending. I think my PPL(A) from 25 years ago stood me in good stead here and they all went swimmingly. I think Steve thought it was going so well, he’d see how I was at hovering, so Steve asked me to fly down to this field and at about 300 feet he took over and got the helicopter in a hover. So far, so good !!

Now, he asked me which control I wanted to take. Now, knowing that they all affect each other, I thought, “I’ll take all 3″. Cocky Git !!

Well, could I hover, could I bloody hell ! I was all over the place. Steve was great in that he didn’t step in until the last moment, where not stepping in would have been dangerous, but he wanted me to try and recover from a lost hover. He would step in if I asked him too though, thankfully. I maybe recovered from one out of 4 hover attempts, he did the rest. Hovering (or attempting to) TOTALLY drained me !

There was one of the hovers where I managed to keep it in the hover for about half a second, maybe a second, that’s how bad I was !!! :-)

My thoughts were “How on earth am I EVER going to crack this ?”

He then let me have a go at each of the controls seperately. The pedals were easy enough on their own (in light winds), the collective, same. The cyclic was the tricky one, keeping the helicopter in the same spot was a bitch !

And together on lesson 2, it was too much, but I’m glad we tried it !!!

I asked Steve “how many people don’t crack this” and he said “Everyone gets it eventually”. It comes with a Eureka moment apparently. Albert Einstein I need you !

Thoroughly enjoyed the lesson.

Note to self – keep an eye on the collective. Collective effectively controls the manifold pressure (engine power) and it kept dropping without me realising, so need to keep an eye on this !!

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