Flying a Helicopter

 

Helicopter Flight on 4 Jan 2023

History

I wanted to start the new year off with a new experience, so this is the story about that adventure.

I guess I must be odd in that unlike most people, I have no bucket list of things I want to do someday. I’ve always had varied interest and when I found something new, I would find a way to make it happen. This was even through the lean years of being an enlisted guy in the military and low paying jobs. One constant in my life is since I was 6 years old, I’ve always loved anything aviation oriented. By The Way, anything aviation oriented is also usually very expensive.

When I graduated High School (barely!) in 1965, all my friends were going on to college plus the Viet Nam War was going full throttle. I knew I wasn’t going to college as indicated by my lack of interest for anything academic (terrible grades in High School). My parents were getting worried that I would soon be drafted into the Army and be in the Viet Nam jungle shortly thereafter. Yes, the draft was active in 1965 and unless you had a college deferment or married, that was your future.

Finally, my dad asked what I was going to do, I had no answer. He said I had to do something and asked, “What about Spartan School of Aeronautics?” I had no idea what that was but soon found out it was a school in Tulsa, OK, close to my home where you learned to be a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) certified aircraft Airframe and Powerplant (A&P) mechanic. This hit me like a ton of bricks, and I immediately said that was what I wanted to do. Considering my history in High School I was unsure how well I would do in another school, but I was enrolled in their 14-month program and started my formal aviation career.

All my classmates were much older, and most were military veterans. I was the youngest one in the class but soon found that I made better grades than anyone in the class. I finally realized that I was not as dumb as I thought but that I just had never found anything that interested me, so I did not apply myself. Towards the end of the 14 months, I received my draft notice. I was able to get a deferment for several months so I could finish school, but I knew my future involved a green military uniform.

Even though I had several months before I had to leave for boot camp, I still had to go to the induction center for physical examination and testing. Surprisingly, I made fantastic scores on my aptitude tests. In fact, they said I could pick any military skill I wanted. While looking at the list I said I wanted Warrant Office Helicopter Pilot! This was at a time when helicopters were being shot down every day in Viet Nam with full coverage on the evening news. I went back home to finish school in anticipation of entering the Army within a few months.

With all this going on, I also decided that I would get married at 19 years old. I understand that this was another of my poor decisions but not sorry because of the two great kids that resulted from that decision. The immediate impact to my life was that my new family convinced me that flying helicopters in Viet Nam may not be wise considering I now had a wife and the survival rate for helicopter pilots was not that great. I completed school, received my FAA A&P license then went to the US Air Force recruiter and joined the Air Force. This was another one of those life decisions that changed my future although I have many times regretted that I did not fly helicopters back when I was 19 years old.

Once again, I surprisingly found that due to my high aptitude scores, I had the option to select any career field I wanted in the Air Force. Since I already had been trained as an aircraft mechanic (FAA A&P), I decided to expand my aviation expertise and selected electronics as my career field. Another life changing decision that would pay off years in the future. I did not get to select the actual type of electronics and ended up being an Electronics Counter Measures (ECM) technician on B-52 and FB-111 aircraft. ECM is another name for radar and radio jammers. My equipment would be used to jam enemy radar/radios so the aircraft could go into a hostile environment and get back out again. This was classified equipment so I had a Secret clearance and again this would be important in the future. I hated working on jammers. I worked both on the aircraft and the shop where the equipment was repaired. The problem was that civilian aircraft usually don’t have ECM gear (joke) so I saw no pay back for a future civilian career. I wanted to work on navigation equipment or even communication equipment, something that would expand my marketability.

Where this ECM experience did pay off was due to my Secret clearance. Over the years I had several orders for Viet Nam, but they were always canceled because of my training on the FB-111 aircraft which at the time was the most sophisticated aircraft in the USAF. They did not want this knowledge to be in Viet Nam where I could have been captured and forced to reveal how this ECM stuff worked. Pretty farfetched but that was the concept.

During this time, I also got my FAA Private Pilot’s license. This took a long time because I could only afford to fly maybe 1 or 2 hours a month and it took a minimum of 40 hours to get your license. I did get it with the minimum hours and flew all over New England where I was stationed at the time.

After my 4-year enlistment was coming to an end, I had to decide to either get out or reenlist. I knew there was no way I would stay in if I had to continue to work on ECM equipment, so they gave me another list and said, “pick something from this list and you will be cross trained”. Another watershed moment in my life. There on that list, mid-way down the list, in bold letters on the list was “Air Traffic Controller”! (Probably wasn’t in bold letters but it did catch my attention). I didn’t hesitate and said I want THAT!

I spent the next year going to Air Traffic Controller school and then started working in the Control Tower on my next career adventure. BTW even though I was still in the USAF, military controllers still must receive the FAA Air Traffic Controller license. I was starting to accumulate a lot of FAA license by this time, i.e., FAA A&P, FAA Private Pilot, FAA Air Traffic Controller. I would eventually get both the FAA Commercial Pilot and Instrument license.

I spent the next 4 years as a military Air Traffic Controller then got out after 9 years in the military and became an FAA Air Traffic Controller for another 5 years. The most interesting thing about this is that in 1981 I was fired by President Reagan and the FAA because of the Air Traffic Controller Strike. Lots of people have strong opinions about the strike but unless you know the history, you really don’t know the facts of why I would even participate in this event. Just another watershed moment in my life.

I then found myself out of work and for about a week on the run from the US Marshalls who were determined to put me in jail for striking against the US Government. They didn’t find me and finally the Justice Department dropped all charges because I had been fired by the President, I could not go back to work which was what the Marshalls were trying to make me do. Ridiculous I know but that’s the facts.

Emotions were running high in the general population so when I would go for a job interview (for any type of job) I would either get cussed out for striking against the government or get lots of questions about what was going on. I was about to take a job managing all the janitors for a big hospital when by chance I saw a help wanted add in the paper for a flight simulator technician. I had never even seen a flight simulator let alone worked on one, but I went in for the interview anyway. I was lucky that I was interviewed by the head of the test team who would take a new simulator that had never been powered up and bring it up to full operation. He never asked me any questions about electronics, my simulator experience or anything related to flight simulation. We talked for several hours about the Air Traffic Controller strike, aviation in general and my history up to the present. A couple days later I was offered a job as a Flight Simulator Test Engineer! BTW at only a couple thousand dollars less than I was making as an FAA Air Traffic Controller. All my previous experiences and training convinced this guy that I could pick up the necessary skills to work on a flight simulator but had more expertise than most people in this job on general aviation knowledge. Another watershed moment in my life.

From 1981 to 2018 (37 years) I worked in Flight Simulation, starting as a lowly Test Engineer and ended as the Technical Director and Chief Engineer on the C-130 Aircrew Training System working for Lockheed Martin. I performed hundreds of major modifications to numerous flight simulators to keep them concurrent with the aircraft. I also had the opportunity to fly dozens of different full flight simulators including business jets, airliners, military fighters, and cargo aircraft and even the tilt rotor V-22 Osprey, but I never got to fly a helicopter or helicopter simulator. BTW I don’t have an engineering degree but have at one time had numerous engineers working for me. My skill set is that I know something about everything aviation related. This proved invaluable as I managed multiple complex modifications to full flight simulators working with many different engineering disciplines.

Now why did I want to go fly a helicopter at 75 years old? Remember back at the start of this story when I was 19 years old and going into the military? I wanted to check that box and to see if I could do it. The answer is yes, I can and now for the details of my first helicopter pilot experience.

My wife, Liz, and I met in 2004 and it immediately became evident that we both loved adventure. Since that time, we have had many experiences including, white water kayaking/rafting, sailing, mountain biking and travel. She likes traveling much more than I do so when she had the opportunity to go to Egypt with her niece, I urged her to accept, and she is currently having a great time there right now. I like going to new places, I just don’t like setting in an airplane for 11 hours to get there! It took her around 21 hours and 3 different flights to get to Egypt!

Before she left, she asked me what I was going to do while she was gone and for some reason I said, “I want to go fly a helicopter”. My surprise was that she thought that was a great idea. I started looking for a helicopter flight school near me and quickly found that there are not a lot of them to be found. Helicopters are more complex than aircraft and therefore much more expensive to buy, maintain and operate. I found one in Tulsa, OK at an airport where I worked (and was fired from) as an Air Traffic Controller in 1981. I contacted the school and scheduled some training time with the helicopter instructor, Lacy. Liz left for Egypt and a couple days later I drove to Tulsa for my helicopter training.

I was to receive training in a Roberson R44 Raven 1 which is a 4-place helicopter with gas engine. This helicopter was almost new and looked like it had just come off the showroom floor. Lacy, my instructor, was exceptionally knowledgeable and pleasant to talk with. She asked about my experience and my goals for the flight instruction. I explained that I was not planning to pursue helicopter flight training to get a license but wanted to have the experience of having hands on flight on a real helicopter. She said she would make sure that happened.

My son Jeff had gone to the flight school with me to take video and pictures and even mount a GoPro camera in the helicopter. While talking to Lacy, she asked Jeff if he wanted to go with us on the flight. He immediately said, “no way”! I asked if he had ever even been in a helicopter, and he said no. I have flown in numerous helicopters but never in the front seat so I told him he should go for the experience. Lacy and I must have shamed him into it because he agreed to go and be our in-flight camera man.

Lacy and I performed the pre-flight inspection on the R44 and then got in to perform the pre-start checklist. Jeff got comfortable in the back seat, reluctantly I must admit. BTW it was barely above freezing but aircraft (and helicopters) love colder air and perform better than in hot environments. We all put on headsets with hot mic intercoms and prepared for engine start. Lacy let me do the checklist plus I was in the Pilot in Command seat which for helicopters is on the right side (aircraft is on the left side like a car).

Helicopter Flight

I will briefly explain the controls in a helicopter:

I had watched a number of YouTube videos of people flying this type of helicopter so had a good working knowledge of the vehicle and how to control a helicopter, but I had also determined that it was significantly different from any aircraft or flight simulator I had ever flown. One of the best analogies I got from the videos was flying an aircraft was like putting a marble in a round bottom bowl and move the bowl around. When you stopped moving the bowl, the marble would go to the bottom and be stable. Aircraft are made to be stable in flight. Helicopter flying was like putting the round bowl upside down and putting the marble on the top of the round bottom. The marble was never going to be stable, and you had to keep moving the bowl to keep the marble from rolling off! This made me very apprehensive about my upcoming flight.

The above analogy is exactly what I experienced. Every aircraft and simulator I had ever flown was relatively stable if trimmed properly and you could take you hands off the controls for short times to perform cockpit tasks. I found the helicopter to require constant adjustments to the controls to just keep it flying and especially during hovering. Of course, I’m totally inexperienced flying helicopters so it would certainly get easier with practice. Lacy made it fly and hover rock stable so I’m sure I could reach that level of skills given time (and money).

One important point I want to make now is that all the controls of this helicopter (I assume on all of them) are extremely sensitive. It only takes movement of 1/16” to make adjustments in most cases. In fact, I was told to lay my arm on my leg and use only my fingers on the stick to make flight adjustments. During the prebrief, Lacy emphasized that you DO NOT use big control movements on a helicopter.

Controls from easiest to hardest to control:

               Rudder or torque pedals, since a helicopter doesn’t have a rudder – The pedals control the pitch of the blades on the small propeller (fan) on the tail of the helicopter. Because that large turning blade on top generates a lot of twisting torque, without the fan in back the top rotor would turn one direct and the fuselage (and occupants) would turn the opposite direction with disastrous results. The tail fan counteracts the torque of the top rotor. As you add more power to the top rotor, you must compensate with more thrust for the fan on the tail. An airplane has rudder pedals, but no torque from a top rotor so the pedals are used to fly a coordinated turn along with the ailerons on the wings. In the helicopter during forward flight the pedals are used to keep the fuselage in line with the direction of flight and not used for making turns. In fact, there is a string taped to the front of the windshield that is used during forward flight for this purpose. Perfect is with the string in line with the center windshield post. If the string is either side of the vertical post, you use opposite pedal to bring it back in line with the post. This changes once you get into a hover. Now the pedals are used to make flat turns of the helicopter. The first control that I was given was the pedals while Lacy kept the helicopter at hover. I was told to make a few left and right turns then she told me to keep it pointed at a nearby hanger. It took a couple of tries but I picked this up quickly. I should note that later while in forward flight I kept trying to use the pedals to make a coordinated turn and the string would go off to one side until I quit doing that.

               Collective/Throttle – This is a lever on the left side of the seat with a motorcycle throttle on the end where you place your hand. If you twist the throttle to the left, the engine powers up and twist to the right, the engine powers down. If you pull the lever up it changes the pitch of all the blades on the top rotor at the same time (collectively) and the helicopter goes up, push the lever down and the helicopter goes down. Sounds simple but let me make it more complex. As you pull up on the collective, it requires more engine power so the throttle must be increased at the same time. It is a fine balance of engine power and the amount of collective being applied. I was extremely worried about this control until I found out that most modern helicopters and especially this one has an engine governor that maintains this balance automatically. As you pull up on the collective, you could feel the throttle twist to increase engine power, FANTASTIC! This was the second control I was given, and I picked it up quickly. Important point again is it takes only slight movement of the collective to make it go up/down.

Cyclic – This is a handle that can have two configurations. Lots of helicopters have a stick in front of the pilot’s seats between their legs that perform this function. On this helicopter it had a center post between the seats and a ram horn on each side that put the control between the pilot’s legs but coming down from the center post rather than up from the floor. Confusing but look at the pictures to understand the design. The Cyclic controls the pitch of the top rotor blades but independently. This helicopter has only 2 blades so if you move the cyclic to one side, one blade would pitch up and the other blade would pitch down. It is much more complex than this simple explanation. The Cyclic can move forward/back, left/right and all points in between. Cyclic is used to change the angle of the total rotor system with reference to the fuselage. Push the Cyclic forward and the rotor tilts forward and the helicopter flies forward. Push the Cyclic to either side or back in a hover and the rotor tilts that direction and the fuselage will move sideways or backwards. If in forward flight, the whole helicopter will turn in the direction controlled from the Cyclic. This was the hardest control to conquer. It took extremely little movement to make the helicopter start to move and that’s why you use only your fingers on the control. Ham fisted movement of this control will not have a happy ending as Lacy stressed several times.  It was manageable during forward flight, and I got where I could fly like being in an airplane. Once we went into a hover it seemed to get even more sensitive. It took me several attempts to figure out what I needed to do. On my first two hover attempts after several seconds the helicopter would start going into uncontrolled oscillations and I would tell Lacy that she had control. She would get it back into a stable hover and give me back the controls. BTW this was when my son Jeff in the back seat was expressing his displeasure with the flight. On my third hover attempt I finally got it into a semi-stable hover, and I could see the errors I had been making on the first two attempts. Lacy finally took the controls back and we moved the 50 feet to the helipad where we landed.

               Instruments – Although not actually controls they are very important for helicopter operation. In an airplane I could use engine sound and visual out the windshield to keep the airplane flying. Instruments are only occasionally used for normal flight in an airplane. In a helicopter I found that I was watching my instruments much more than I would in an airplane. I could not tell if I was climbing or descending so I kept watching the Vertical Speed Indicator (VSI) and the Altimeter. The engine power is critical in a helicopter, so the Manifold Pressure Indicator was another one I kept watching. The Engine/Rotor (ER) indicator is used to make sure there is enough engine RPM to maintain the Rotor RPM. The ER and Manifold Pressure are controlled by the throttle governor, but I still kept an eye on them. Interesting that there was no Turn/Bank Indicator that is used in airplanes to make coordinated turns. Helicopters don’t make coordinated turns, so it wasn’t needed.

               Interesting observations – I was surprised on how hard it was to recognize that the helicopter was going to do something I did not want it to do. In a hover, you must constantly move the Cyclic to balance the vehicle to hold it stable (remember the marble analogy). I could not recognize that it was going to become unstable until it had gone so far that I would overcorrect and then it would go even further the other direction. Result was I would get into an oscillation that could eventually end in it becoming uncontrolled. I’m sure this would come with experience, but you get no normal ques of motion like you do in a car or even an airplane to let you know that you are in a turn. I think you just learn to feel the motion and automatically react with minute Cyclic corrections. From what I’ve read and seen on videos, it can take several hours if not more to get this skill, so my .7 hour of training just scratched the surface. Lacy did say I did great but maybe she was just saying that to be nice. It was still a terrific blast and sorry I didn’t get this rating when I was actively flying.

Helicopter Flight on 4 Jan 2023

History

I wanted to start the new year off with a new experience, so this is the story about that adventure.

I guess I must be odd in that unlike most people, I have no bucket list of things I want to do someday. I’ve always had varied interest and when I found something new, I would find a way to make it happen. This was even through the lean years of being an enlisted guy in the military and low paying jobs. One constant in my life is since I was 6 years old, I’ve always loved anything aviation oriented. By The Way, anything aviation oriented is also usually very expensive.

When I graduated High School (barely!) in 1965, all my friends were going on to college plus the Viet Nam War was going full throttle. I knew I wasn’t going to college as indicated by my lack of interest for anything academic (terrible grades in High School). My parents were getting worried that I would soon be drafted into the Army and be in the Viet Nam jungle shortly thereafter. Yes, the draft was active in 1965 and unless you had a college deferment or married, that was your future.

Finally, my dad asked what I was going to do, I had no answer. He said I had to do something and asked, “What about Spartan School of Aeronautics?” I had no idea what that was but soon found out it was a school in Tulsa, OK, close to my home where you learned to be a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) certified aircraft Airframe and Powerplant (A&P) mechanic. This hit me like a ton of bricks, and I immediately said that was what I wanted to do. Considering my history in High School I was unsure how well I would do in another school, but I was enrolled in their 14-month program and started my formal aviation career.

All my classmates were much older, and most were military veterans. I was the youngest one in the class but soon found that I made better grades than anyone in the class. I finally realized that I was not as dumb as I thought but that I just had never found anything that interested me, so I did not apply myself. Towards the end of the 14 months, I received my draft notice. I was able to get a deferment for several months so I could finish school, but I knew my future involved a green military uniform.

Even though I had several months before I had to leave for boot camp, I still had to go to the induction center for physical examination and testing. Surprisingly, I made fantastic scores on my aptitude tests. In fact, they said I could pick any military skill I wanted. While looking at the list I said I wanted Warrant Office Helicopter Pilot! This was at a time when helicopters were being shot down every day in Viet Nam with full coverage on the evening news. I went back home to finish school in anticipation of entering the Army within a few months.

With all this going on, I also decided that I would get married at 19 years old. I understand that this was another of my poor decisions but not sorry because of the two great kids that resulted from that decision. The immediate impact to my life was that my new family convinced me that flying helicopters in Viet Nam may not be wise considering I now had a wife and the survival rate for helicopter pilots was not that great. I completed school, received my FAA A&P license then went to the US Air Force recruiter and joined the Air Force. This was another one of those life decisions that changed my future although I have many times regretted that I did not fly helicopters back when I was 19 years old.

Once again, I surprisingly found that due to my high aptitude scores, I had the option to select any career field I wanted in the Air Force. Since I already had been trained as an aircraft mechanic (FAA A&P), I decided to expand my aviation expertise and selected electronics as my career field. Another life changing decision that would pay off years in the future. I did not get to select the actual type of electronics and ended up being an Electronics Counter Measures (ECM) technician on B-52 and FB-111 aircraft. ECM is another name for radar and radio jammers. My equipment would be used to jam enemy radar/radios so the aircraft could go into a hostile environment and get back out again. This was classified equipment so I had a Secret clearance and again this would be important in the future. I hated working on jammers. I worked both on the aircraft and the shop where the equipment was repaired. The problem was that civilian aircraft usually don’t have ECM gear (joke) so I saw no pay back for a future civilian career. I wanted to work on navigation equipment or even communication equipment, something that would expand my marketability.

Where this ECM experience did pay off was due to my Secret clearance. Over the years I had several orders for Viet Nam, but they were always canceled because of my training on the FB-111 aircraft which at the time was the most sophisticated aircraft in the USAF. They did not want this knowledge to be in Viet Nam where I could have been captured and forced to reveal how this ECM stuff worked. Pretty farfetched but that was the concept.

During this time, I also got my FAA Private Pilot’s license. This took a long time because I could only afford to fly maybe 1 or 2 hours a month and it took a minimum of 40 hours to get your license. I did get it with the minimum hours and flew all over New England where I was stationed at the time.

After my 4-year enlistment was coming to an end, I had to decide to either get out or reenlist. I knew there was no way I would stay in if I had to continue to work on ECM equipment, so they gave me another list and said, “pick something from this list and you will be cross trained”. Another watershed moment in my life. There on that list, mid-way down the list, in bold letters on the list was “Air Traffic Controller”! (Probably wasn’t in bold letters but it did catch my attention). I didn’t hesitate and said I want THAT!

I spent the next year going to Air Traffic Controller school and then started working in the Control Tower on my next career adventure. BTW even though I was still in the USAF, military controllers still must receive the FAA Air Traffic Controller license. I was starting to accumulate a lot of FAA license by this time, i.e., FAA A&P, FAA Private Pilot, FAA Air Traffic Controller. I would eventually get both the FAA Commercial Pilot and Instrument license.

I spent the next 4 years as a military Air Traffic Controller then got out after 9 years in the military and became an FAA Air Traffic Controller for another 5 years. The most interesting thing about this is that in 1981 I was fired by President Reagan and the FAA because of the Air Traffic Controller Strike. Lots of people have strong opinions about the strike but unless you know the history, you really don’t know the facts of why I would even participate in this event. Just another watershed moment in my life.

I then found myself out of work and for about a week on the run from the US Marshalls who were determined to put me in jail for striking against the US Government. They didn’t find me and finally the Justice Department dropped all charges because I had been fired by the President, I could not go back to work which was what the Marshalls were trying to make me do. Ridiculous I know but that’s the facts.

Emotions were running high in the general population so when I would go for a job interview (for any type of job) I would either get cussed out for striking against the government or get lots of questions about what was going on. I was about to take a job managing all the janitors for a big hospital when by chance I saw a help wanted add in the paper for a flight simulator technician. I had never even seen a flight simulator let alone worked on one, but I went in for the interview anyway. I was lucky that I was interviewed by the head of the test team who would take a new simulator that had never been powered up and bring it up to full operation. He never asked me any questions about electronics, my simulator experience or anything related to flight simulation. We talked for several hours about the Air Traffic Controller strike, aviation in general and my history up to the present. A couple days later I was offered a job as a Flight Simulator Test Engineer! BTW at only a couple thousand dollars less than I was making as an FAA Air Traffic Controller. All my previous experiences and training convinced this guy that I could pick up the necessary skills to work on a flight simulator but had more expertise than most people in this job on general aviation knowledge. Another watershed moment in my life.

From 1981 to 2018 (37 years) I worked in Flight Simulation, starting as a lowly Test Engineer and ended as the Technical Director and Chief Engineer on the C-130 Aircrew Training System working for Lockheed Martin. I performed hundreds of major modifications to numerous flight simulators to keep them concurrent with the aircraft. I also had the opportunity to fly dozens of different full flight simulators including business jets, airliners, military fighters, and cargo aircraft and even the tilt rotor V-22 Osprey, but I never got to fly a helicopter or helicopter simulator. BTW I don’t have an engineering degree but have at one time had numerous engineers working for me. My skill set is that I know something about everything aviation related. This proved invaluable as I managed multiple complex modifications to full flight simulators working with many different engineering disciplines.

Now why did I want to go fly a helicopter at 75 years old? Remember back at the start of this story when I was 19 years old and going into the military? I wanted to check that box and to see if I could do it. The answer is yes, I can and now for the details of my first helicopter pilot experience.

My wife, Liz, and I met in 2004 and it immediately became evident that we both loved adventure. Since that time, we have had many experiences including, white water kayaking/rafting, sailing, mountain biking and travel. She likes traveling much more than I do so when she had the opportunity to go to Egypt with her niece, I urged her to accept, and she is currently having a great time there right now. I like going to new places, I just don’t like setting in an airplane for 11 hours to get there! It took her around 21 hours and 3 different flights to get to Egypt!

Before she left, she asked me what I was going to do while she was gone and for some reason I said, “I want to go fly a helicopter”. My surprise was that she thought that was a great idea. I started looking for a helicopter flight school near me and quickly found that there are not a lot of them to be found. Helicopters are more complex than aircraft and therefore much more expensive to buy, maintain and operate. I found one in Tulsa, OK at an airport where I worked (and was fired from) as an Air Traffic Controller in 1981. I contacted the school and scheduled some training time with the helicopter instructor, Lacy. Liz left for Egypt and a couple days later I drove to Tulsa for my helicopter training.

I was to receive training in a Roberson R44 Raven 1 which is a 4-place helicopter with gas engine. This helicopter was almost new and looked like it had just come off the showroom floor. Lacy, my instructor, was exceptionally knowledgeable and pleasant to talk with. She asked about my experience and my goals for the flight instruction. I explained that I was not planning to pursue helicopter flight training to get a license but wanted to have the experience of having hands on flight on a real helicopter. She said she would make sure that happened.

My son Jeff had gone to the flight school with me to take video and pictures and even mount a GoPro camera in the helicopter. While talking to Lacy, she asked Jeff if he wanted to go with us on the flight. He immediately said, “no way”! I asked if he had ever even been in a helicopter, and he said no. I have flown in numerous helicopters but never in the front seat so I told him he should go for the experience. Lacy and I must have shamed him into it because he agreed to go and be our in-flight camera man.

Lacy and I performed the pre-flight inspection on the R44 and then got in to perform the pre-start checklist. Jeff got comfortable in the back seat, reluctantly I must admit. BTW it was barely above freezing but aircraft (and helicopters) love colder air and perform better than in hot environments. We all put on headsets with hot mic intercoms and prepared for engine start. Lacy let me do the checklist plus I was in the Pilot in Command seat which for helicopters is on the right side (aircraft is on the left side like a car).

Helicopter Flight

I will briefly explain the controls in a helicopter:

I had watched a number of YouTube videos of people flying this type of helicopter so had a good working knowledge of the vehicle and how to control a helicopter, but I had also determined that it was significantly different from any aircraft or flight simulator I had ever flown. One of the best analogies I got from the videos was flying an aircraft was like putting a marble in a round bottom bowl and move the bowl around. When you stopped moving the bowl, the marble would go to the bottom and be stable. Aircraft are made to be stable in flight. Helicopter flying was like putting the round bowl upside down and putting the marble on the top of the round bottom. The marble was never going to be stable, and you had to keep moving the bowl to keep the marble from rolling off! This made me very apprehensive about my upcoming flight.

The above analogy is exactly what I experienced. Every aircraft and simulator I had ever flown was relatively stable if trimmed properly and you could take you hands off the controls for short times to perform cockpit tasks. I found the helicopter to require constant adjustments to the controls to just keep it flying and especially during hovering. Of course, I’m totally inexperienced flying helicopters so it would certainly get easier with practice. Lacy made it fly and hover rock stable so I’m sure I could reach that level of skills given time (and money).

One important point I want to make now is that all the controls of this helicopter (I assume on all of them) are extremely sensitive. It only takes movement of 1/16” to make adjustments in most cases. In fact, I was told to lay my arm on my leg and use only my fingers on the stick to make flight adjustments. During the prebrief, Lacy emphasized that you DO NOT use big control movements on a helicopter.

Controls from easiest to hardest to control:

               Rudder or torque pedals, since a helicopter doesn’t have a rudder – The pedals control the pitch of the blades on the small propeller (fan) on the tail of the helicopter. Because that large turning blade on top generates a lot of twisting torque, without the fan in back the top rotor would turn one direct and the fuselage (and occupants) would turn the opposite direction with disastrous results. The tail fan counteracts the torque of the top rotor. As you add more power to the top rotor, you must compensate with more thrust for the fan on the tail. An airplane has rudder pedals, but no torque from a top rotor so the pedals are used to fly a coordinated turn along with the ailerons on the wings. In the helicopter during forward flight the pedals are used to keep the fuselage in line with the direction of flight and not used for making turns. In fact, there is a string taped to the front of the windshield that is used during forward flight for this purpose. Perfect is with the string in line with the center windshield post. If the string is either side of the vertical post, you use opposite pedal to bring it back in line with the post. This changes once you get into a hover. Now the pedals are used to make flat turns of the helicopter. The first control that I was given was the pedals while Lacy kept the helicopter at hover. I was told to make a few left and right turns then she told me to keep it pointed at a nearby hanger. It took a couple of tries but I picked this up quickly. I should note that later while in forward flight I kept trying to use the pedals to make a coordinated turn and the string would go off to one side until I quit doing that.

               Collective/Throttle – This is a lever on the left side of the seat with a motorcycle throttle on the end where you place your hand. If you twist the throttle to the left, the engine powers up and twist to the right, the engine powers down. If you pull the lever up it changes the pitch of all the blades on the top rotor at the same time (collectively) and the helicopter goes up, push the lever down and the helicopter goes down. Sounds simple but let me make it more complex. As you pull up on the collective, it requires more engine power so the throttle must be increased at the same time. It is a fine balance of engine power and the amount of collective being applied. I was extremely worried about this control until I found out that most modern helicopters and especially this one has an engine governor that maintains this balance automatically. As you pull up on the collective, you could feel the throttle twist to increase engine power, FANTASTIC! This was the second control I was given, and I picked it up quickly. Important point again is it takes only slight movement of the collective to make it go up/down.

Cyclic – This is a handle that can have two configurations. Lots of helicopters have a stick in front of the pilot’s seats between their legs that perform this function. On this helicopter it had a center post between the seats and a ram horn on each side that put the control between the pilot’s legs but coming down from the center post rather than up from the floor. Confusing but look at the pictures to understand the design. The Cyclic controls the pitch of the top rotor blades but independently. This helicopter has only 2 blades so if you move the cyclic to one side, one blade would pitch up and the other blade would pitch down. It is much more complex than this simple explanation. The Cyclic can move forward/back, left/right and all points in between. Cyclic is used to change the angle of the total rotor system with reference to the fuselage. Push the Cyclic forward and the rotor tilts forward and the helicopter flies forward. Push the Cyclic to either side or back in a hover and the rotor tilts that direction and the fuselage will move sideways or backwards. If in forward flight, the whole helicopter will turn in the direction controlled from the Cyclic. This was the hardest control to conquer. It took extremely little movement to make the helicopter start to move and that’s why you use only your fingers on the control. Ham fisted movement of this control will not have a happy ending as Lacy stressed several times.  It was manageable during forward flight, and I got where I could fly like being in an airplane. Once we went into a hover it seemed to get even more sensitive. It took me several attempts to figure out what I needed to do. On my first two hover attempts after several seconds the helicopter would start going into uncontrolled oscillations and I would tell Lacy that she had control. She would get it back into a stable hover and give me back the controls. BTW this was when my son Jeff in the back seat was expressing his displeasure with the flight. On my third hover attempt I finally got it into a semi-stable hover, and I could see the errors I had been making on the first two attempts. Lacy finally took the controls back and we moved the 50 feet to the helipad where we landed.

               Instruments – Although not actually controls they are very important for helicopter operation. In an airplane I could use engine sound and visual out the windshield to keep the airplane flying. Instruments are only occasionally used for normal flight in an airplane. In a helicopter I found that I was watching my instruments much more than I would in an airplane. I could not tell if I was climbing or descending so I kept watching the Vertical Speed Indicator (VSI) and the Altimeter. The engine power is critical in a helicopter, so the Manifold Pressure Indicator was another one I kept watching. The Engine/Rotor (ER) indicator is used to make sure there is enough engine RPM to maintain the Rotor RPM. The ER and Manifold Pressure are controlled by the throttle governor, but I still kept an eye on them. Interesting that there was no Turn/Bank Indicator that is used in airplanes to make coordinated turns. Helicopters don’t make coordinated turns, so it wasn’t needed.

               Interesting observations – I was surprised on how hard it was to recognize that the helicopter was going to do something I did not want it to do. In a hover, you must constantly move the Cyclic to balance the vehicle to hold it stable (remember the marble analogy). I could not recognize that it was going to become unstable until it had gone so far that I would overcorrect and then it would go even further the other direction. Result was I would get into an oscillation that could eventually end in it becoming uncontrolled. I’m sure this would come with experience, but you get no normal ques of motion like you do in a car or even an airplane to let you know that you are in a turn. I think you just learn to feel the motion and automatically react with minute Cyclic corrections. From what I’ve read and seen on videos, it can take several hours if not more to get this skill, so my .7 hour of training just scratched the surface. Lacy did say I did great but maybe she was just saying that to be nice. It was still a terrific blast and sorry I didn’t get this rating when I was actively flying.