I tried out a helicopter over the weekend

tlglenn said:
I guess that'll be another expensive hobby for me after my daughter finishes college.

Darn it to heck.
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They're fun, aren't they? I'm glad I learned even though I never did anything with it later. :(

I'd kill myself for sure if I tried to fly a helicopter today....
 
Just a R22 around Tucson for a couple of minutes. Much lower to the ground plus there were no doors so it was a lot easier to experience the feeling of flying.
 
Didn't do much. Just flew it over a small mountain and then back to the airport. The CFI handled the takeoff and landing. The depature and approach was thrilling.
 
Welcome to the dark side.

LOW FLIGHT
Oh, I've slipped the surly bonds of earth
And hovered out of ground effect on semi-rigid blades;
Earthward I've auto'ed and met the rising brush of non-paved terrain
And done a thousand things you would never care to
Skidded and dropped and flared
Low in the heat soaked roar.
Confined there, I've chased the earthbound traffic
And lost the race to insignificant headwinds;
Forward and up a little in ground effect
I've topped the General's hedge with drooping turns
Where never Skyhawk or even Phantom flew.
Shaking and pulling collective,
I've lumbered the low untresspassed halls of victor airways,
Put out my hand and touched a tree.

Anonymous
 
It is a totally different world that is probably a lot more fun, and what people view as real flying. Our job is to get altitude under us. When we get up there we might as well be in a Sim. Helos are low and slow, see, and feel the relative motion against the surface, and really fly. Very cool.

While a fixed wing may be a better travelling machine, a helicopter is more of a real flying machine.
 
Anthony said:
It is a totally different world that is probably a lot more fun, and what people view as real flying. Our job is to get altitude under us. When we get up there we might as well be in a Sim. Helos are low and slow, see, and feel the relative motion against the surface, and really fly. Very cool.

While a fixed wing may be a better travelling machine, a helicopter is more of a real flying machine.
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I do believe this is the first post I've seen in quite sometime where someone from this board admits a helicopter actually does fly......
 
As much as I love flying planes, there's no comparison to the fun of flying helicopters. A few friends have asked why but it's not something you can answer with words. (or maybe I just need a bigger vocabulary)
 
2 hours and 3 lessons (.4 in a R22, rest in a Schweizer). A barrel of fun. And believe me, hover is the hardest thing I've ever done in aviation. I seem to handle the collective and peddles okay but the cyclic is bizarre. I've been on rollercoasters that don't move around as much.
On the other hand, I am up to a good stable 30 second hover.
If you get a chance, buy a intro flight. Usually runs about 2/3rds the price. The school I've been taking lessons at sold a bunch on Living Social and has been flat out all month.
 
Laurie said:
I do believe this is the first post I've seen in quite sometime where someone from this board admits a helicopter actually does fly......
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Wait, they fly? This is news to me... :)

Love the "Low Flight" poem!
 
Although I am not a pilot yet I work for a County Fire Rescue Service as a Paramedic on an Astar 350 B3 and had an opportunity to fly it a couple months ago. We had the left seat in for a check ride the next day. When we did a fire recon of the the County, my pilot let me take the controls for about 45 minutes. It was great. The hardest part was hovering. I even had the ATC's making fun of me:redface:.

Even though I will get my PPL I probably will never get my helicopter endorsement but will always remember that day.
 
kimberlyanne546 said:
I will never fly a helicopter.
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Why not? It's the ultimate ATV machine. I've landed on rocks in the middle of the Potomac, on the yawn of crab house where I ate before flying through Baltimore's Inner Harbor (For anybody who's been to Bay Bridge, W29, I'm talking about the place off to the left as you're coming into 11. Literally between the bridge and the runway.), in people's back yards and into fields maybe 4x the size of the ship where the surrounding trees made for a near vertical approach in and max performance (near vertical) takeoff out.


silver-eagle said:
2 hours and 3 lessons (.4 in a R22, rest in a Schweizer). I seem to handle the collective and peddles okay but the cyclic is bizarre. I've been on rollercoasters that don't move around as much.
On the other hand, I am up to a good stable 30 second hover.
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A quick tip on the cyclic, try not to over-control it. When I was learning to hover I was told that in 99% of all cases any movement of the cyclic over an inch in any direction and you're handling it too much. My only exception to that is when you're dealing with a crosswind. How'd you like the SFAR 73 speech? Was it as simple as "Pushing the cyclic too far forward too fast is very bad. It's called a Low-G pushover. Don't do it." or did your CFI go into detail?


Of the folks who've taken an intro helo flight, how many have done an autorotation?
 
After I scheduled the intro in the R22, I read the SFAR a couple of times while trying to decide how much time the training might take. As we were going over the preflight, I asked about it. The instructor went through the whole thing in pretty good detail. While I would not worry about training in the R22, the school I can get to in under 30 minutes has Schweizers.
No autorotation yet. Let's get past hovering first.
 
Laurie said:
I do believe this is the first post I've seen in quite sometime where someone from this board admits a helicopter actually does fly......
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Sure it flies, and it would probably be a lot better craft for most of the missions on this board which are probably around the patch fliers, and not cross country types. They are just TOO darn expensive to operate, even R22's, unless you go partnership, which some have done.

For local flying you can't beat a Helo.
 
Anthony said:
Sure it flies, and it would probably be a lot better craft for most of the missions on this board which are probably around the patch fliers, and not cross country types. They are just TOO darn expensive to operate, even R22's, unless you go partnership, which some have done.
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The hourly operating costs of a Hughes 269A are about the same as the hourly operating costs of my Aztec. For something that goes about the speed limit on the highway.

That said, I still want to get my ratings.
 
Laurie said:
Autorotations on an intro flight?
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After reading this a second time it didn't come across the way I wanted it to. I guess that's what I get for posting at 1am. What I meant was:

During your intro flight (or the first couple hours in) was an auto demonstrated to you?

New students actually hands-on doing the auto? Yeah, no.

I'm curious because while hanging around my home field I've noticed that some CFI's will demonstrate an auto while others will not and for some it's "eh, maybe, we'll see." I didn't have a auto demonstrated to me until a few hours in. I didn't have an issue with that but I've talked with other CFIs who's opinions are that autos are sometimes a deal breakers and that it's better and cheaper to find that hurdle sooner rather than later. My cousin actually asked for an auto demonstration during his intro flight and was told that they'd see how the flight went. I'm undecided on the topic and have been wondering what the ratios are when comparing students who would or wouldn't want an auto demo'ed and CFIs who do, do not and who would demo one if asked.
 
Ted DuPuis said:
The hourly operating costs of a Hughes 269A are about the same as the hourly operating costs of my Aztec. For something that goes about the speed limit on the highway.
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I don't know if I'd measure affodability within the parameters of a owning, operating, and maintaining a light twin, but YMMV. :D
 
Anthony said:
I don't know if I'd measure affodability within the parameters of a owning, operating, and maintaining a light twin, but YMMV. :D
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Well, that's my point. You don't buy a light twin so that you can just punch holes in the sky, it costs too much to do that. But when you get into the helicopter world, the cheapest one costs about as much per hour as a light twin. You're just going much, much slower.
 
Satchmo10th said:
After reading this a second time it didn't come across the way I wanted it to. I guess that's what I get for posting at 1am. What I meant was:

During your intro flight (or the first couple hours in) was an auto demonstrated to you?

New students actually hands-on doing the auto? Yeah, no.

I'm curious because while hanging around my home field I've noticed that some CFI's will demonstrate an auto while others will not and for some it's "eh, maybe, we'll see." I didn't have a auto demonstrated to me until a few hours in. I didn't have an issue with that but I've talked with other CFIs who's opinions are that autos are sometimes a deal breakers and that it's better and cheaper to find that hurdle sooner rather than later. My cousin actually asked for an auto demonstration during his intro flight and was told that they'd see how the flight went. I'm undecided on the topic and have been wondering what the ratios are when comparing students who would or wouldn't want an auto demo'ed and CFIs who do, do not and who would demo one if asked.
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I thought that is what you meant. As far as the auto demo's, I've found what you described to be the great debate among helicopter instructors. I've chalked it up to being either a performance issue or CFI comfort issue for those that don't. I don't buy the opinion that auto's are a deal-breaker in that out of 70ish helicopter students I had, I only had one quit claiming the autos just scared her too much. There was more to it than that however, as everything scared her. She admitted it was scary to watch helicopters in normal flight from the ground. She never would have made it regardless of the autos. While there are always those not comfortable, especially the first few, it's never been a deal breaker.

I never demonstrated auto's on an intro flight, but I did on the first or second lesson when requested, which wasn't often simply because our syllabus started in on autos on lesson 3 for the add-on guys (which was the majority of my clients) and lesson 5 for the initial clients. We also taught full-touchdowns to proficiency at the Commercial level and to survivability at the private level. I know most schools rarely let you see a touchdown let alone allow a student to do them until absolutely required for the CFI, but the belief where I was teaching was that it was an important element and the PTS is only the minimum required. Personally, I didn't want any of my students to experience their first full-down when it was for real and in teaching them I stayed current as well. It paid off - I had a student right after his commercial ride experience a catastrophic engine failure (read: big hole in the case) over downtown Billings, MT and was able to put it down in a parking lot, between the cars, over wires and poles with no damage to him, the helicopter, or anything else. I got to do a couple for real myself over the 3 years I was out there.

You can argue risk/reward with this all day long, it's just different theories in instruction as well as aircraft and instructor capability for the conditions.
 
Ted DuPuis said:
Well, that's my point. You don't buy a light twin so that you can just punch holes in the sky, it costs too much to do that. But when you get into the helicopter world, the cheapest one costs about as much per hour as a light twin. You're just going much, much slower.
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Two very different missions. The helo can land almost anywhere, go low and slow through the weeds, and it is a ton of fun. The twin gets you and stuff from point A to B.
 
Now, the helicopter CAN get you and stuff from point A to point B. I'm routinely hauling just over 2800 pounds of people and bags 264nm offshore and over 4000 pounds back in.
 
Laurie said:
Now, the helicopter CAN get you and stuff from point A to point B. I'm routinely hauling just over 2800 pounds of people and bags 264nm offshore and over 4000 pounds back in.
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But are you paying the maintenance bills? My point is for similar opex, your hubby made a good point. The Aztec is a much more efficient hauler, but also can't land on an oil drilling platform. :wink2:

Which is more fun? Helo!
 
Anthony said:
But are you paying the maintenance bills? My point is for similar opex, your hubby made a good point. The Aztec is a much more efficient hauler, but also can't land on an oil drilling platform. :wink2:
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But those are practical decisions which businesses and individuals need to make. Even within an all-aiplane fleet there are certain ones which are better suited to some jobs than others. Everything is a compromise.

Anthony said:
Which is more fun? Helo!
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For me it's a tossup between a helicopter and an aerobatic airplane. Of course I have neither but that is beside the point...
 
Anthony said:
But are you paying the maintenance bills? My point is for similar opex, your hubby made a good point. The Aztec is a much more efficient hauler, but also can't land on an oil drilling platform. :wink2:
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Well, that wasn't my point. My point was that to fly the helicopter equivalent of a 150, you're going to be spending as much as it costs to operate my Aztec. So, for someone looking to just buzz around, it represents something that requires significant fortitude of the wallet.

Now, the helicopters that my wife flies are a completely different animal. You're talking about a 26,500 lb, transport-category helicopter that can carry as much fuel as the gross weight of a Navajo Chieftain. They're helicopters that have a defined purpose that can't be met by anything else. No, you wouldn't use one for commuting from Williamsport to PHL - you'd use a DHC-8 for that (and that's what they use). But good luck landing a DHC-8 on an oil rig.
 
Everskyward said:
But those are practical decisions which businesses and individuals need to make. Even within an all-aiplane fleet there are certain ones which are better suited to some jobs than others. Everything is a compromise.
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Correct. Even with the two options that I routinely have being Aztec or 310, there are times when I choose one over the other. Typically, 310 if I'm going further, Aztec if I need to haul more pups.
 
Ted DuPuis said:
Well, that wasn't my point. My point was that to fly the helicopter equivalent of a 150, you're going to be spending as much as it costs to operate my Aztec. So, for someone looking to just buzz around, it represents something that requires significant fortitude of the wallet.
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I am sorry I did not articulate myself well. That is exactly what I meant also. My apologies.
 
Anthony said:
I am sorry I did not articulate myself well. That is exactly what I meant also. My apologies.
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Then we're in agreement. Good! Where's the beer? ;)
 
Anthony said:
But are you paying the maintenance bills? My point is for similar opex, your hubby made a good point. The Aztec is a much more efficient hauler, but also can't land on an oil drilling platform. :wink2:

Which is more fun? Helo!
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I knew that as well, I was just being facetious. And actually, with the winds we see offshore Newfoundland occasionally there are days and one particular platform that we almost could land the Aztec.
 
Laurie said:
And actually, with the winds we see offshore Newfoundland occasionally there are days and one particular platform that we almost could land the Aztec.
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Hmm... I'm thinking new business venture. :D
 
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