Saturday, January 26, 2008

Headed towards the Stage 1 Check-Ride...

Flight #: 034
CFI: Kristie H.
Aircraft: Robinson R22 Beta II
Aircraft ID: N8361N
Duration: 1.1hrs
Cumulative Time: 37.6hrs

Got some good practice in today, in preparation for my stage 1 check-ride. We were trying to get it in before the end of the month, but I don't think we're going to make that goal. Weather is really bad, recently, and I need to get better on my autorotation entries. I end up doing one of two things... entering with a nose-down attitude or not completely lowering collective before rolling off throttle.

More practice before I'm going to feel confident here.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It helps (or helped me, anyway) to think of the entry to an auto as having two distinct phases. In the first phase, you need to lower collective (you don't have to slam it down!), right pedal smoothly as you lower it, then aft cyclic to keep the nose up.

You can pause briefly at this point before splitting the needles. Even without a split yet, you have entered an autorotative state. When you have the ship stable, then split the tach needles. Now, the only thing you'll need to do is possible raise the collective an inch or two to keep from overspeeding the rotor system.