A convert to the bright side?

[RotaryWingBob]

Yesterday was recurrency training day (we require our pilots to do this every six months). "Dr. Phil" who flies Chopper 3 in Philly, is also a DPE, and who is probably the best CFI I've ever flown with, gave us a two hour ground school, mostly in tail rotor aerodynamics, followed by in-flight instruction tailored to the individual pilots. In my case we practiced run-on landings after a hydraulics failure, recovery from "Oh sh*t, I'm not gonna clear the trees", and some really neat autorotation stuff that I had heard about but never practiced. All stuff way beyond the PTS.

Anyway, after that I needed a dose of recreational flying, so after relaxing a bit, I planned to take a joyride in the R22. There's a young lad who is a CFI at the local flight school who was sitting around waiting for his next student, about two hours off. So I asked him if he wanted a helicopter ride, and his eyes lit way up.

It was a warm day so asked him if he was comfortable with the doors removed, which he was. I removed the left seat flight controls, briefed him, and then we went for a tour of Chester County, PA. It was really neat. I've never seen anybody get so fired up on a ride! He said he loved everything about it -- great visibility, low flight over terrain, the fact that you can actually see people on the ground (I fly over swimming pools alot in the summer ).

After we landed and I put the helicopter away, he was curious about how the controls and sprag clutch worked, so I unzipped the cowling and showed him. The guy was so taken by all this, he started asking about what it would take to do the add-on to his fixed-wing commercial.

Who knows? Maybe I've won another pilot over from the dark side

Rotors Rule!

 

[KennyFlys]

Who knows? Maybe I've won another pilot over from the dark side

Rotors Rule!

Bob, two things?

Why is it you never trust someone sitting in the other seat and remove the controls? Are rotorheads incapable of remaining in control?

Why is a rotor the most common means of clearing a sewage drain?

 

[wbarnhill]

Excellent Bob! I'm still trying to save so I can go that route

 

[bjohnson]

Who knows? Maybe I've won another pilot over from the dark side

Rotors Rule!

Maybe...untill he finds out how much it will cost and how hard it is to find a place to rent a Rotor.

 

[RotaryWingBob]

Why is it you never trust someone sitting in the other seat and remove the controls?

a) In my case because I didn't survive Vietnam only to get killed by a passenger.

b) It's good risk management practice.

c) Because of b), many insurance carriers (including ours) require the left seat controls to be removed if the occupant of that seat is not a rated helicopter pilot .

d) Scary stories abound on helicopter sites about stupid things PAX and students have done. Except for a slight amount of roll stability, helicopters are basically unstable aircraft, unlike most airplanes. I was flying around one time with a 7000 hour ATP-RH rated pilot in the left seat (CFI/II rated as well). He reached to play with the GPS and damn near knocked the cyclic out of my hand.

That's why

 

[RotaryWingBob]

Maybe...untill he finds out how much it will cost and how hard it is to find a place to rent a Rotor.

There's a variety of Robbies and Schweizers available around this area. The guy in the hangar next to ours rents his R22 at not much more than the local flight school rents a new 172 for.