Voice Recorders while training

[Steve McGowan]

In the mid 90's I was instructing in R-22 's quite a bit.. enough to build up 500 hrs plus in less than 3 years.

I had a student named Kevin,,,, a very bright kid in his early/mid 20's. He was an only child. He and his Dad owned a Dude Ranch in N.Dakota somewhere..

Kevins mother had died when he was 4 or 5 and his dad never married again.
Needless to say,, Kevin was a bit spoiled and arrogant to go with it...

He had all his certificates he could get in fix wing, and he was building time for his ATP. So he thought he would attempt helicopters.

Needless to say Kevin soloed in some 12 or so hrs. Thats when I started noticing the arrogance and defiant attitude starting to show its ugly face.

All of a sudden he knew everything about the R-22. He wouldn't study the standards of the handbook.. Or listen to the PTS as we worked toward then..While he was out solo I had calls from different people saying he was landing in off areas, taking his friends out flying.

Needless to say he denied the reports, so I let it go with cautions to him of the seriousness of his actions should something go wrong..He knew better and had been told,, with a "SMERK" he said he understood.

All that being said,, Kevin and I were on a return cross country headed back to our airport.. As we were at 2000' and 72 mph I closed the throttle simulating an engine out.. As he suppose to, he lowered the collective and brought the cyclic to the rear changing the angle of attack of the rotor disc. into auto-rotation. Everything was going well, I thought !!

Rapidly Kevin shoved the cyclic forward, the rotor RPM started to drop quickly,, as I took control of the cyclic and I said my machine, Kevin is cursing me saying he has the machine. " I KNOW what I'm doin.." he say's
It was a struggle making Kevin release the cyclic.

Many things go wrong at this point, loss of tail Rotor, Yawing & torquing 90' and rolling as well,,, the rotor RPM had decayed to 82%. Yes I did get the aircraft under control, but it was within 50' of the tree tops.

Needless to say no-one would have ever known what had happened that day 5 miles from the airport..

At my advisement, Kevin was grounded until another instructor picked him up and signed his application for commercial helicopter, 3 months later.

The story goes on more in depth, But the point I'm making is that it would be helpful in some cases to have a voice recorder. I was fortunate to have been very vigilant of Kevin and VERY LUCKY that day.



My condolences to the families of all those involved..I truly wish we knew what happened to cause the deaths in Texas, and especially the child.

Steve

[Chuck_Ellsworth]

When teaching in the advanced sector of flying I have been using a video and audio recording of the flights for the past fifteen years which are pure gold when de briefing.

Hopefully no one will ever have to use them to determine what happened in a crash.

[karlbamforth]

I agree and did record a lot of info when doing my flight training. I would play them back late at night as I laid in bed. I found this a very good way to review the information and learn it.

It is a very good study technique, I would recommend it to anyone.

I would watch a video about the lesson maybe 2 or 3 times before the flight.
I would record what happened during the flight.
After flight I would watch the video lesson again.
Then in the evening review my own recordings.

When had spare time I would close my eyes and imagine the flight from start to end. Radio calls, checking T&P's on take off, airspeed alive and building every small detail.
It allows you to experience the flight as many times as you like. It is a proven technique that re-enforces what you have learnt.

Anyway, recording is a useful learning aid and of course would be very useful in the event of an accident.

[PW_Plack]

Some of the new avionics will record 90 minutes or more of data from the attitude indicator, indexed to GPS, so you can replay the flight on a map overlay or simulator.

I have an under-$200 Sony minidisc recorder which, with an adapter to connect it to intercom/radio audio, would record 4 hours of high-quality audio.

[Hognose]

CAPT when it was part of Riddle had its Diamond DA40s wired with three or four tiny lipstick cameras and the instructors found the video somewhat useful for debriefing. Of course, had they ever pranged and the video survived it would have been invaluable to investigators. I don't know if they still do it now that they have spun off to FTSI and concentrate on training foreigners.

I've often thought that you could sell a "greatest hits" collection of video after shooting video in a flight school for a couple years.

cheers

-=K=-

[EI-GYRO]

An instructor of my acquaintance refers to my helmet-cam, as 'the white box'.
Hmmmm....
Very useful, as Karl says.