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.
1 comment:
Welcome to the club, Chris! Everybody's been there. It takes time to develop situational awareness. It gave me trouble when I was working on my ASEL rating, and I went through it again (to a lesser extent) working on my RH because I wasn't used to flying so low. It will likewise take time to learn to spot airports because they're hard to see at 700' AGL (even big ones).
I do remember flying our R22, a few years back, to Donegal Springs (N71) south of Harrisburg, PA. I flew right over the damn airport without seeing it! And I had a panel mounted GPS on board! I figured something was amiss when the distance to the airport kept increasing...
The good news is that I found it on the second pass...
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