West Practice Area & Drama

Flight #: 003
CFI: Kristie H.
Aircraft: Robinson R22 Beta II
Aircraft ID: N8361N
Duration: 0.7hrs
Cumulative Time: 1.4hrs



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Today's flight was into the western practice area, aka WPA for some basic flight maneuvers.

I did all of the pre-flight check on my own this time... Kristie, of course, did a follow up at the end to make sure I did not skip / miss anything. The checklist does include the nuts that hold on the main rotor (aka Jesus Nut) - you need to make sure they are tight.


When complete we jumped in and began the start-up sequence. I ran through most of the steps which did not involve throttle or collective control; Kristie handles that for now.

We got clearance for a west departure and headed out to the west practice area - an airspace above and around Hillsboro that is used by the HAI students. As you can see from the rough path in the map above, it was to do a series of turns to get comfortable with the controls. Kristie asked me to do things like:

• 90º turns and maintain airspeed
• 90º turns and maintain altitude
• 90º climbing or descending turns
• 180º turns maintaining airspeed and altitude

The R22 is a small helicopter, but it is not under powered at all. I think the toughest part for me was maintaining airspeed. While a helicopter can stay in a motionless hover at any altitude, there are certain aerodynamic forces which come in to play when in forward motion... namely lift. Basically, the rotor disc, under significant forward motion gains additional lift, beyond what is generated by rotation. When you stop moving forward, you lose (lessen) this component. For this very reason the airspeed indicator has a green zone where you want to keep the needle:

I was all over the place! When you pitch forward, you both increase airspeed and descend. Pitch aft, you decrease airspeed and ascend. I was at 40 knots then at 60, back to 50, then up to 80. Remember when you were learning to drive and didn't figure out the accelerator pedal... the lurch feeling. That... only at 1500ft.

I did get a little better at it... but I kept focusing inside the cabin and not outside... which, apparently, is a newbie thing to do... but I'm not yet comfortable with the feel of things yet. SO, got plenty of stuff to work on.

Then at about 18:30, and here comes the drama, we got a call from another HAI helicopter in the northern part of the WPA. Basically looking for any/all HAI flights in the WPA to report in. We happened to be the only other ones out there and we were asked to help out. Apparently a third helicopter was doing off airport landings and was doing some in a field in the WPA. In the middle of the landing, one of the anti-torque pedals locked up and they started to yaw. The CFI safely landed, and radioed maintenance back at HAI. A fourth helicopter came out, bringing the mechanic and taking the student back to the school. Turned out that this was not an in-the-field fix and it was getting dark. So, we were asked to high-tail it back to base, drop me off, and then Kristie and another helicopter with another CFI were to fly back to pick up the mechanic and original pilot. All before it got dark. Mind you, it was already pretty dark.

Kristie took the controls and pointed us back towards home. She gave me the controls back to see if I wanted to take it home.... I did, and we headed back. About 1 minute after she politely pointed out that I was back at 50 knots airspeed and wanted to get back a little faster. I gave controls and she powered back to the airport. She landed very quickly (but softly) and left power on while I grabbed my stuff and headed in. As soon as I was clear, and they were both ready to go, both helicopters took off like a shot.

Turns out, everything was fine and the pilot / mechanic were picked up in time. No major issue... but some drama, no doubt.