Helicopter basics...my experiences

Mike I double the "motorcycle habit" !!!! First question of the student is "so you ride a motorcycle?" If the answer is yes, they get a broken broomstick under their left armpit and for an hour they walk up and down imitating pulling pitch while rolling on and lowering it while rolling it off......actually pretty funny to watch them :)
 
Shawn ... do you own the 500? If so, are they a maintenance hog? I was thinking about getting one but I was told I should wait for the R66 because it would be more chopper for the money and waaaaay less maintenance.

No.. I do not own the 500. The company I fly with has the 500D, 500E, the R44 II and the 600 (NOTAR)... I think they do require a lot of maintenance but we have 3 full time A and P mechanics that keep everything running smooth.
 
Hardly worth mentioning, as it was not a real helicopter, just a military simulator. It happens that my son works for a company that builds simulators, and son is responsible for instrumentation. Just before this unit shipped he invited me to try it out. I had "flown in my head" extensively, and I guess it paid off, as I managed to take off nicely on the first try. So I flew down this country road (I think it was in Alabama) and was really proud of myself for doing so well. But before long I wasn't feeling so good, so I turned her around and headed back. Got in too much of a hurry setting down and crashed. No harm done of course!

I did forget to mention that some of son's buddies had to add some extra interest to the experience and started shooting at me just after I took off. End of story.
 
Most of the first Certified American designed and manufactured Bell Helicopters were sold into Canada. The first went to British Columbia on our West Coast. On your map you will find British Columbia a couple of inches north of California.

Men like Carl Agar, Alf Stringer, and Barney Bent brought the first machine to BC in August 1947.

I was not even born yet but that doesn't matter because I was destined to be a helicopter guy and part of this information pertains to my story.

They called their company Okanagan Helicopters. I think they are still in business today.

More to come , in the meantime I will try to post a picture of CF -FZX , one of the earliest commercially certified helicopters in the world.

Thanks for the thread Stan , my story is not very exciting but it eclipses the years from 1947 to 2009 and I always find it interesting how each one of us aviators got to be here on this day , November 23 2003 , on Rotary wing forum.

Thanks also to Peter-Corley Smith , and David N. Parker for this early photograph and for preserving our history.

I was a kid on a farm who saw the first helicopter to fly over Manitoba Canada around 1958 , I was 7 years old , that is where it started for me. More later.

Many thanks

Arnie
 

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Arnie thanks for that photo. I think it is so cool that we all have a story that brings us together right here. The reason is the same. Love of flying. :)
 
Mike I double the "motorcycle habit" !!!! First question of the student is "so you ride a motorcycle?" If the answer is yes, they get a broken broomstick under their left armpit and for an hour they walk up and down imitating pulling pitch while rolling on and lowering it while rolling it off......actually pretty funny to watch them :)

Gabor, whats funny is when I went to check out the Commuter2B in Idaho, the owner when trying to start it was rolling the throttle the same way as a bike,I was standing back and after 2 tries and it trying to start at wide open I asked him what way he was twisting the throttle, he turned it the right way and that 150 Lyc. fired up and purred like a kitten.

funny that since I ride a bike,I still cought what he was doing wrong.

just so I refreash the motions in my mind, I sit in the Commuter H-1B and go thru the motions of adding throttle and lifting collective and adding right pedal. remember my blades turn clockwise when viewed from above.

even if I never try and hover the single seater,these are good drills for when I get a 2 seater to train in.

looking forward to Bensen days.
 
Like I said earlier Okanagan Helicopters got started in BC in 1947 and eventually grew to be one of the largest operators in the world at the time. I think they were Bell's best customer.

Then an outfit named Spartan Air Services Ltd began operating Bell 47's in Ontario , in the 1950"s they had 24 Bells and 6 Vertol's . The Vertol was a Piasecki design tandem rotor that went on to become the modern Chinook series heavy lift helicopter.

So here I am not even born yet and I have helicopters 3000 miles to the west and 3000 miles to the east.

Finally my parents got to thinking it would be a good time to get down to the business of producing a helicopter type kid in 1951.

By 1958 I was 7 years old standing on my dad's farm and right about then Spartan Helicopters had decided to fly a Bell 47 right across my dad's field at 200 feet heading west.

That was the day I was hooked on helicopters. Everybody else got to see the first airplane fly overhead when they were kids , not me , I went for the expensive stuff.
 
No rudders!

No rudders!

The thing that had to be drilled into my head is that the pedals DO NOT CONTROL RUDDERS. They are anti-torque tools. So "coordinated" pedals are NOT always needed in turns. Sometimes I even found myself using opposite pedals. Soon I realized pedals have everything to do with "power" settings and/or for keeping my heading.

In some regards, my many hours of fixed-wing flying taught me wrong habits when it comes to choppers.
 
Another "heli" thought. No matter who is "talkin aviation" ... whether it be flying jets or exotic antiques ... as soon as I mention "helicopter" all attention is on me.

It seems pilots and non-pilots alike have some wonder and awe concerning our fabulous flying machines.
 
When I was in the military I worked as an engineer on Puma helicopters.
We had a very busy week.

I flew to one location where a Puma was in a field unable to start, by the time we got it going it was too late to fly back so we slept in the open.
Next morning I got a call that we had another Puma down about 100 miles away with a fuel leak, so off we went and did our thing.
Next a call to tell me we had a Puma down with engine failure, an engine was already en-route and I was to fly there by Puma to meet it and change the engine.

All in all we had been away from base for 4 days sleeping in the back of a Helicopter, no shower, no change of clothes, no sleeping bag.

When we got back to base, pilot landed the thing and I jumped out as usual while he went through the shut down checks. Wandering around under the turning rotors was common in the military. I grabbed my tool box and set off, somehow over the noise of 2 engines, the rotors and a tail rotor I heard someone call to me and I turned round, my mate was waving me back so I wandered back to the cabin door. They told me I was about to walk into the tail rotor.........

I cannot tell you even now if I was about to become mince meat but it did remind me that you must never drop your guard when near a running helicopter even if it isn't flying.

Take care be safe.
 
My instructor is very professional at whatever he does. I was fortunate to have him record my first solo flight. He caught me coming back to land. I was to set the R22 down exactly in the corner of the blacktop. I didnt do as good on my checkride!



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOQPxpP9KNs&NR=1



Stan
 
Stan and other heli experts I was wondering if there is a minimum forward airspeed when doing autos in a heli?
 
Stan and other heli experts I was wondering if there is a minimum forward airspeed when doing autos in a heli?
Only if you want to survive it. If not a vertical decent or backward auto will do. Think about it for a second. If you have no forward airspeed how are you going to flare?
 
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Thanks gab, I always kept forward airspeed when doin autos with my rc heli but wasn't sure if you could desend vertically and flair with collective!

Only if you want to survive it. If not a vertical decent or backward auto will do. Think about it for a second. If you have no forward airspeed how are you going to flare?
 
Collective will give you cushion only. You have to flare to gain enough rpm on the rotor that can be used by pulling pitch and cushion the touchdown. Especially low inertia blades will bleed the rpm out very quickly. High inertia blades just float like a powered rotor although there is non to it.
 
The bell 206b in fsx has a minimum decent speed of 52 knots in auto on its reference sheet, If you get below around 30 knots the thing starts spinning round and round lol, I'm sure thats not realistic! will you be flyin a helo at wachula NY, gab?
 
Stan and other heli experts I was wondering if there is a minimum forward airspeed when doing autos in a heli?

Only if you want to survive it. If not a vertical decent or backward auto will do. Think about it for a second. If you have no forward airspeed how are you going to flare?

This depends upon how high you are. If you're close to the ground and the fire goes out, collective can be enough. If you have a long way down to go, you'll want the ability to do a cyclic flare.

If you're high at the start, you may want to come down more steeply than normal to help position you for the particular spot you want to hit, and slowing down can be useful for that. But you won't want to stay slow as you get low, so it often makes sense to do some turning rather than bleed off too much of your glide speed.
 
The bell 206b in fsx has a minimum decent speed of 52 knots in auto on its reference sheet, If you get below around 30 knots the thing starts spinning round and round lol, I'm sure thats not realistic! will you be flyin a helo at wachula NY, gab?
Yeah 206 likes the 55 knots airspeed for sure. You could probably cheat off a fe knots but I don't see any reason doing so unless you mess up the entry and fiddle too long to establish your decent. It does happen time to time I get students that are mortified of autos and by time we get close enough to flare they had dumped and pulled aft 50 times and totally messed up the whole maneuver. But 52 knots is not an exact science by any means. This is a number the manufacture covers their butts. Lots of things play role of a successful forced landing. It is different every time. That's why about 80% of them there is damage to the machines. Pretty bad statistics. But most pilots in real situation flare high and bump the tail or wreck the skids. Adrenalin. It's a bitch! :) I am not flying a heli on NY. It's kind of expensive approximately $300/hour. Jut to take it down there and back would run around $600 so right now I just rather walk :)
 
Quick stops are another fun exercise in a helicopter. ....Anyway, its a very fun and useful maneuver one can do in a helicopter. It is a rush bringing an aircraft from flying speed to 0 airspeed. Part of me used to tell me this aint right, but the more you do these, the more you realize you are flying something different.
Stan good observation and I bet you have never realized just how useful this maneuver is. If you truly master quick stops you will be so much better off when you have to do a full down auto. What I do usually is drill my peeps with quicks and hover autos one after the other. Think about it for a second. Quick stop is the flare tat you use to stop the helis forward movement in both quick stops and autorotations. You have leveled the machine and now you are ready to touchdown. Guess what? You just do your hovering auto. Done! After practicing those two maneuvers back to back, most guys do a perfect full down! (keyword is "most")
 
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