"My first helicopter training experience"

By Dave Keck

How was it? It was cool, of course.

When I landed (after going around due to a wind change) he was pulling the R22 out of the hangar. He is a really nice guy, not a pompous ass like his friend I was talking about. This guy was the owner. I think he's a rich guy that loves helicopters and just has this school for fun and something to do. He's got a pretty good accent from somewhere, but speaks very understandable English. He lives there on a big ranch. He told me helicopters were his passion. He's been flying them for 27 years. He has a Bell 222, Jet Ranger, Bell 47 and two R22's, one instrument and one VFR. He asked me what kind of experience I had and I said besides fixed wing I've done computer simulator and RC helicopters. He said he tried RC helicopters and blew 1000 dollars for 20 minutes of non-fun. He asked me what my intentions were for getting a license and I told him I was interested in getting an R22 someday. I'll tell him the truth someday...maybe. He said the minimum for a helicopter add-on is 30 hours by the FAA. He said the realistic normal is 40-45.

He told me about helicopters, everything he told me I already knew. Then we got in the R22 and he started it up. The Beta has an electrically actuated clutch. I was expecting the manual clutch that I saw in the Sporty's video. After the clutch is engaged you have to wait for spin up and the clutch light to go out. I was amazed at how much 2 per rev there is. We hovered out to the runway and he showed me how to hover. While he hovered he told me to just follow him around on the controls. After a while he would let me screw it up and he would correct it. It gets out of control in a hurry. After a while of doing that we went into forward flight. He let me take the controls at about 50 MPH and told me to go up to 70-80. It was pretty windy and that little thing gets pushed around quite a bit. I kept "leveling the wings" and correcting for pitch up and pitch down due to wind and thermals which started us porposing. He told me to just ride out those bumps and the porposing would not occur. He was right. :) It's like hanging from a pendulum and when we would rock to one side I would want to lean straight up, like what you are not supposed to do on a motorcycle. I never could get that right on a motorcycle either.

We flew around for quite a while and did turns to headings, I started getting the hang of that real fast. Sharp banking turns, cool. When flying with a crosswind the crab is really pronounced, that took an effort to get used to. We made an approach and I controlled that up to about 40mph where he took over for the transition.

We landed and then we did some more hovering, I started doing a little better at it. We took off again and we did an autorotation. Those are done a lot steeper than I thought they were done. We were at the 20 minute mark of the "Discovery Flight" and we landed and he said, "I don't think you're hooked yet". I said, "Well, show me how 'you' fly a helicopter, let's do some fun stuff". He said, "Oh, OK!" That was when the fun really started. We took off at a good clip and stayed about what seemed to me 1 foot above the trees hauling ass! He cranked it around and dove towards a clearing where one of his ranch hands was driving a pickup truck heading away from us down a road lined with trees on both sides. He said, "Let's get this guy" and dove down and buzzed him pretty damn close, we were below the tree line and he pulled up and cranked it back around for another pass. We buzzed the guy again a little bit higher and the guy was stopped watching us and smiling. He probably gets a lot of that. We headed back over to the airport and flew low and fast over the grassy expanse next to the runway. A jack rabbit took off across the grass and he said, "Alright!". We chased him around for a few minutes as he herded him across to the other side of the runway and he finally said, "I don't want to give him a heart attack" and we peeled off.

We did a bunch more low fast flying and steep turns. He asked me if I wanted to see anything else and I said "let's see a quick stop". We did one of those and he said that they were created by Vietnam pilots for getting into an LZ fast. He asked me if there was anything else I wanted to see and I couldn't think of anything, dammit! So that was the end of the flight. I got at least 10 minutes more ride than I paid for. I think he really enjoyed showing me the fun stuff. I asked him how long before I could begin to fly like that and he said maybe 20 hours or so.

He said I did very good and he said that my RC experience had definitely helped me. He said that RC most of the time can help you quite a bit and sometimes it can hinder you. I think it is a combination of RC and flying the X-Plane simulator that helped me. And I think I got to hovering the simulator so fast because of my RC experience. The simulator is what really helped me to not over control, and the RC is what taught me how to give an input for correction and immediately counter with an opposite input. I would say the Version 5.65 simulator is pretty close to being accurate, but of course it is still very different in many ways. I would say that what I have to learn is to recognize when the control input needs to be applied. I also need to be a little less hard footed on the pedals, I almost unwound us a couple of times; it was pretty windy too.

When we were done and shutting down, I realized I didn't notice the 2 per rev vibrations any more.

As he was putting away the R22 I was in the hanger looking at the other choppers. I asked him which one he liked best and he said "Oh that's hard! These are all my babies, I like them all differently. The R22 is very sporty; the R22 is a BMW Z3 and the Bell 47 is like a..." he went on to compare them all to larger models of BMW's. That worked for me. I asked him about the Bell 222. He said it's a very nice helicopter but it really isn't fun. He said "comparing the R22 to the Bell 222 is like comparing your Cessna 172 to a King Air. The Cessna can be a lot more fun than the King Air". That worked for me too.

If the R22 is a Z3, then I wonder what a Helicycle would be...

My next lesson is Wednesday at 3:00pm.

Dave

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