I Hovered...

Missa

Missa

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AsGoodAsCake
Last night I thought about Bob and then,
I Hovered…

And it’s kinda cool. Ted’s instructor has a helicopter and brought it over to the Williamsport Regional Association of Pilots (WRAP) meeting. After the meeting he offered me the right seat for a quick hover back to his hanger. He directed me through the start up then had me follow through on the controls while he hovered over to the hanger across the airport. I’m still not convinced that it’s actually flying and not just being repelled by the earth but I am slightly tempted to take his intro lesson offer. He’s offered a 1hr intro lesson to WRAP members at a reduced rate. It’s a teaser to get more students but I’m not sure I would be won over to the dark side. One thing I noticed was that a very little control movements goes a long way.

Missa
 
Missa, I have a few helo hours. Hover is one thing, coming out of and going into hover is another.

To leave hover, add power, increase collective, move cyclic for foward motion, momentarily increase pressure on Right pedal then relax it to lower than during hover.....

To enter hover, add power, increase collective, move cyclic for arresting forward motion, add Rudder pedal and then reduce.

Can you rub your tummy and pat your head at the same time, with precision?!

Know thy limitations. YOU might be able to do this, but I don't have the time and $$s and commitment to get this skill.....
 
bbchien said:
Know thy limitations. YOU might be able to do this, but I don't have the time and $$s and commitment to get this skill.....
Click to expand...

I agree, I do not have the time or the $$$$$s to learn it. But an hour of intro could be cool just to have it in the log book. :yes:
 
That is cool Misa!

I recently got some UH1A sim time including an instrument approach. That was really wild!

I have an invite to go fly the HH60 Jayhawk Simulator that I might just have to do now.

I can really understand why Bob got hooked on fling wings. It is really fun!

Picture is me flying the approach into PIA! Can you see the white knuckles!!!

The IP was calm so I must not have messed up too bad.
 

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I spent 8 hours in that helicopter, and my ass had never hurt so much in all my life. The problem was that it was 6 consecutive hours, and I have zero body fat on me. Those seats are very uncomfortable, hard, etc.

I'm glad you took him up on the quick hover, and you should take him up on the intro lesson. If nothing else, figure that at some point in time you might get an opportunity to fly one of those fling-winged beasts that does not resemble any creature that nature has provided us, and if you do, it would sure be nifty to have some idea of how to operate the thing. :)
 
ive got a buddy and instrument student who is a commercial pilot in robinsons. i need to get up with him soon.
 
:yes:
Missa said:
It’s a teaser to get more students but I’m not sure I would be won over to the dark side.
Click to expand...
Heh, you never know, Missa. I went over to the dark side for a while. Now it's just a memory and some words on my certificate but it was fun while it lasted.
 
If you think about what it would be like to be able to stop time and just walk around everybody while it was stopped, that is something how hovering feels. Yes, everything is very much moving (you can't lose sight of that, even if you try), but I am always used to moving while in the air. In a helicopter you can cease to move, if only for a bit, and take in the surroundings. That's the advantage of the wings spinning above you and moving themselves through the air rather than you having to move the wings through the air.

It's cool enough that after I get all of my ratings in fixed-wing (and that is a ways off yet, since I want to go up through CFI and currently only have PPL and working on my IR), I may go for it if I feel like I haven't given my instructor enough of my money and need to give him more (I don't even want to think about how much money he's gotten from me thus far).
 
What I thought was cool about flying helicopters was not the hovering thing per se, it was being able to see so much from a different perspective... like what people keep behind their fences in their backyards. My CFI also liked going out into unimproved areas, doing real confined area approaches into clearings between trees, landing on the tops of little hills, etc. Anyway, it was totally different than anything I had done in airplanes. Then I gave it all up to go high and fast...
 
Check them out some more out for sure, they're just too cool not to!
 
Flying helicopters still is the single coolest thing I've done outside of getting married to my wife (I'm a sap).

The first time the helo takes off...

Sometime, someday, I'll be back in a fling wing. I just know it :yes

Cheers,

-Andrew
 
Yawn. Hovering in a helicopter is what they're designed to do. I've hovered a 172. Stationary aka 0 ground speed. Less than a couple of hundred feet away from a hovering helicopter.

My wife and I rented a 172 from the Sporty's Flight school at the Hilo airport on Hawaii. After getting checked out by a CFI there (mainly showing us how to merge in with the helo traffic over the lava flows) we departed to the south to get some aerial views of the active volcano and lava flowing into the ocean. There was a point when we flew out over the ocean and turned around to come back and see it from that angle when I realized we were fighting about a 50something knot headwind. So, I dropped the flaps and pulled the power back and pulled up along side one of the sightseeing helicopters that was doing the same thing. We actually got it to zero ground speed for a few seconds before our kite imitation starting making my wife a little queezy (there was a fair bit of up and down :) ). The guy in the helicopter remarked on the Kilauea CTAF "That's something we don't see every day."
 
I've had the opportunity to get a little (brief) stick time in a JetRanger. I've always wanted more, just never had the time/money to do so.

Maybe when I sell the plane I can think about it.
 
I have a handful of hours in the front seat of a Jet Ranger, thanks to working at the TV station; it's definitely a different kind of good time! I'll never forget the first time we took off...he lifted straight off the little yellow, wheeled pad, translated right and back about 50 feet, rotated 60 degrees to the right, then pulled pitch and dropped the nose - and off we went. As we climbed through 500 feet he turned to me and said "I'd like to see your fixed wing do that." I always thought it would be fun to learn but yeish...soooo expensive!
 
You know, I've been thinking about this, Missa. I believe I'm going to hit the louisburg airport rotary wing school and take an intro lesson... and think about Bob a bit, just before I get into that contraption.

Just a little way to say, "See, man? You're still here..." :) And he'll be in my logbook forever! :D
 
I remember in flight school how the students held their heads a little higher after finding their "hover button". There is always a little work involved in hovering but the more you relax the better you do. It seems impossible the first hour or so but I'm sure we all remember our first plane landing and how difficult it was to put all the axis together. Its the same thing....give a shot and so some VMC approaches:) Success would be if your pointing the same direction as your approach path when you slow down to let say 10 knots!!!
 
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