Double Block

Flight #: 025
CFI: Kristie H.
Aircraft: Robinson R22 Beta II
Aircraft ID: N8340S
Duration: 2.4hrs
Cumulative Time: 27.0hrs

We had a double block (2 x 2hr) of flights today. That affords you so much more time to practice and enjoy yourself. So, we flew on up to Scapoose, OR and did our patterns there. Was great since it was a 7am flight and we were the only people in Scapoose until about 9am.

Got in another first today. Refueling away from home. Sounds silly and trivial, but it was a milestone for me. Felt like getting gas on a long road trip. Get to stretch your legs, check out new scenery.

Just a fun day.

(Autorotation)^5

Flight #: 024
CFI: Kristie H.
Aircraft: Robinson R22 Beta II
Aircraft ID: N7155W
Duration: 1.2hrs
Cumulative Time: 24.6hrs

Ok, so I already told you that aurorotations were incredibly cool maneuvers. They are. What's cooler? Well, rather than doing them at 2000AGL (above ground level), try them at 500ft AGL. WOW! All the same maneuvers, but this time you just have the ground coming up at you rather quickly. The engine is idle and the governor is inactive until you reach about 40ft AGL.

Man, my heart was pounding. But, after the 4th or 5th time, you start to get the feel of it all and if just comes to you. Which, is the point, of course. That day will come, when you need it for real... might as well be overly prepared for it when it happens.

There are different classifications of engine/power failures; >500ft AGL, <500>8ft AGL, and <8ft AGL. The first introduction at autorotations we did were at 2000ft AGL, this set was at just over 500ft.

Obviously, the lower you are, the less time you have to react.

Mapped and Aware

Flight #: 023
CFI: Kristie H.
Aircraft: Robinson R22 Beta II
Aircraft ID: N8361N
Duration: 1.1hrs
Cumulative Time: 23.4hrs


Well, I was determined not to be that "idiot helicopter student who keeps getting lost." So I made myself a map to print out and keep on my knee-board until I figured things out. It worked like a charm. I'm sure it was mostly a confidence issue... but having a backup map to know where I was made a big difference:

View Larger Map


Same maneuvers as the past few times... and I am definitely getting better. Now I'm just not lost.

Lost...

Flight #: 022
CFI: Kristie H.
Aircraft: Robinson R22 Beta
Aircraft ID: N8340S
Duration: 1.1hrs
Cumulative Time: 22.3hrs

We continued with Low RPM Recovery, VRS / Settle With Power and Autorotation practice. I think I'm getting better bit by bit. But...

...I got really flustered today and made a lot of stupid mistakes with my radio communications. When we are in the west practice area we are in an uncontrolled airspace with a lot of other helicopters. As such, we have to spend a lot of time telling everyone in the area where we are, what we're doing, and the like.

This is normally not an issue for me since Kristie has been telling me, "make your call and we're over the turning tree". At which point I say, "West practice area traffic, helicopter 8340-Siera at the turning-tree operating at 1500ft and below, west practice area." Now, since I'm further along in my training, all she tells me is, "make your call." Which means that I need to know where the hell I am at all times. Sounds pretty basic, but you'd be surprised how difficult it is to know where you are; especially in WPA since it is so large and covers parts of Forest Grove, Banks, Gaston and Cornelius, OR. Not only that, but after doing circles looking for landing spots and doing controlled falls out of the sky... I just get all turned around.

I hate being lost. It gets me flustered and throws me off my game. I get annoyed when driving on roads... imagine what it feels like to be lost in 3D space. Sucks.

Anyway, I get flustered, overly critical and I fumbled each and ever radio call I made. First I would forget to tell them I was a helicopter. Then I would say "over Forrest Grove"... which is useless since there are 2 other helicopters over Forrest Grove at the same time. I was supposed to say "2 miles west of Gaston", but I stammer out "NE of Banks". Why? I have no idea. Just making stupid mistakes.

Not only did I get my location wrong, I always forgot my current heading.

Stupid mistakes. I spent so much time thinking about what I was doing wrong, that I started doing other things wrong.

Ugh! Totally off my game.

Autorotation, Settling with Power and Off Airport

Flight #: 021
CFI: Kristie H.
Aircraft: Robinson R22 Beta
Aircraft ID: N8361N
Duration: 1.1hrs
Cumulative Time: 21.2hrs

Wow. Just plain wow.

Today we finally made it to the next flight lesson; and it included some of the most interesting and exciting helicopter maneuvers to date.

Off Airport Landing:
This was just a test run, as we did not actually get to land, but there is a lot to have to think about before you actually land off-airport. As you might expect... and acronym. PAWOTFEEL:

• P: Power check.
  
• A: Altitude of potential landing spot.
  
• W: Wind direction
  
• O: Obstructions in/around the landing spot
  
• T: Turbulent air in/around your landing spot
  
• F: Forced landing areas, within your glide path.
  
• E: Entry point for your landing.
  
• E: Exit point for your takeoff.
  
• L: Landing Spot
  

The idea is that you select your spot, execute a few right-hand circles, so that you can see your landing spot and evaluate. Then, if all things look good, land. I did 4 circles around while I went through the checklist above. It will get better over time, I'm sure.

Autorotation:
Autorotation, or the state powerless flight.


A well done YouTube video of an autorotation; a few differences in what I learned, but essentially the same maneuver.

Very little lift, in a helicopter, comes from the wind being deflected down by the rotors. The majority comes from the rotating airfoil (main rotor) producing lift via a low pressure area above the main rotor disk. This is summed up nicely with Bernoulli's Principle. So, what does this mean... well, simply put, if the helicopter blades are turning, you are going to get some lift. In normal flight, the main rotor blades are given energy from the powerplant / engine. In autorotation, you are using the kinetic energy from your forward motion and the energy stored to the helicopter due to it's height (gravity pulling the helicopter to the ground). By altering the pitch of the rotor blades, and the attitude of the helicopter you force air up and through the disk, causing them to rotate; and generate lift.

That's it. You glide gently, and most importantly - safely, to the ground.

The creepiest part of it is the sound... then engine is put into idle and essentially noise drops to zero. You don't drop like a rock, you don't spiral to the ground... you glide back to the ground. There is quite a bit of adjustment in the cyclic, collective, and pedals during this time, but it is essentially a normal approach.

There is a slight dropping feeling when you drop the collective to full down, but that goes away rather quickly. The whole experience is utterly amazing. Clearly there is going to be a lot of practice going forward, but the point is to make this almost a second nature move... so that when (not if) you need it again, you are familiar with the move.

Settling with Power:
Next, we tried Settling With Power (SWP). This is a condition where large rotor-tip vortices (turbulence) occur and the lift generated by the main rotor disk is eliminated. Essentially, the helicopter is "chopping up it's own turblence" and can no longer maintain necessary lift. If you try to increase the blade pitch, what you normally do to get more lift out of the blades, you just make the condition worse. The only corrective action is to, 1) reduce pitch, and 2) push out of the turbulent air to get into "clean" air. Once you have forward motion, you can then again, raise collective and start slowing your descent.

This is a very easy condition to get into as you need three, very common, things to happen:

1. a descent rate >= 300ft / minute
2. an airspeed < ETL (Effective Translational Lift)
3. power in use

When this triad is present, the helicopter just drops out of the sky and a very high rate. To practice this, we climb to 2500ft AGL (for safety), position ourselves with a tail-wind (to hasten the dispatch of ETL) and slow our forward motion. The first thing you feel is vibration as you enter the ETL curve. Then, when you start to lose ETL, you get serious vibration. It is at this point when you start settling with power. The vertical speed indicator needle drops, and you start to fall - and fast. Kristie had said that you could easily get 600feet + per second if you let things go too far. In our case, we only dropped about 300ft before we pulled out of it.

After another test, Kristie gave me a shot and recovery, and I must say... I did quite well. Lower collective, forward cyclic, and you gain forward speed. Then, once you have speed, you raise collective and you are back to normal flight.

One hell of a day.


View Larger Map

Over and over and over and over and over...

Flight #: 020
CFI: Kristie H.
Aircraft: Robinson R22 Beta II
Aircraft ID: N8340S
Duration: 1.4hrs
Cumulative Time: 20.1hrs

First flight in a long time... and I'm thrilled to say that it came back fast. We did a few approaches in Alpha pattern and then moved over to Bravo and did about 25 sets of lift-off, hover/air taxi, and quickstop. I'm really glad we did that, because it was a very good way to tweak my skills.

One thing than Kristie mentioned a while back is that flying a helicopter requires constant input and control changes. The faster and more smooth you are at this... the better. Today's flight was a big step for me in this understanding.

Simulated Autorotations

Could not get a pattern today, so we opted to get simulator time and do an introduction to auto-rotations. Last time I was in the simulator I actually enjoyed it. This time, now that I understand the feel and motion of flying a helicopter it was really annoying. The simulator is nothing like a real helicopter.

Only thing that I thought that was helpful was the beginning of muscle memory. I'm not going to try to explain it yet... because it wasn't real.

Patience.

Squawk, trend, trend

While today was probably the least fulfilling flight-wise, it was interesting none the less.

I was lucky enough to get two flight slots today, and even got two patterns to top it all off.

During the run up procedures before a flight, there is a safety check for the altimeter. The reason this check is in place is that you need to accurately know your altitude throughout the flight. The field altitude of airports is generally known, but since helicopters can land almost anywhere, you can't always know how high above ground level (AGL) or above mean sea level (MSL) you actually are.

The test consists of adjusting the Kollsman knob to calibrate the device to actual air pressure, right now, and then read the altitude. In our case, the altimeter read approximately 100ft. HIO is 208ft MSL. The test just showed us that when set to the actual outside air pressure the helicopter sitting at 208ft thinks it is at 100ft. Thats pretty bad. The limit for mis-calibrated altimeter is 75ft.

Now, when our altimeter is calibrated to have less than 75ft error, we then re-calibrate it to actual field elevation... since we know that for a fact and choose to trust that more. When it is more than 100ft, well, we just don't know what is wrong. Question is... do we need our altimeter? Is is required equipment for VFR Day Flights?

Glad you asked. Yes. Like in every field, there are mnemonics and acronyms to help you remember required lists. In this case, the mneumonic for VFR Day Required Equipment is: CAMALSFOOT.

• C: Compas
• A: Altimeter
• M: Manifold Pressure Gauge
• A: Airspeed Indicator
• L: Lights, for night
• S: Safety Belt
• F: Fuel Gauge
• O: Oil Pressure
• O: Oil Temperature
• T: Tachometer

Altimeter is in that list... so if it's not working... we're not flying... and we squawked it.


Later on in the day we had another flight. During the pre-fight check I came to the clutch actuator. This is the component that tightens the V-Belt that transfers engine power to the rotors. This one was leaking grease, not just a little, but significantly. Now, there is no rule or acronym here... just common sense. If your clutch bearing is leaking grease... don't fly it.

Trend it.

Just to be a good citizen I finished out the pre-flight check... plus it had been a while since I completed one and I wanted to keep on my game. I also found that he white position light on the tail was burned out.

Trend it.


At this point, it was too late to transfer to another helicopter. So, I headed home.

100%

Aced it!

Stage 2, here we come.