Flying, just because I can!

So, I guess I lied a little about never spending any more money at Hillsboro Aviation. I needed to fly, so over the past month or so, I grabbed a few hours in the sky with their helicopters.


Anyway, had some fantastic flights. Nothing fancy, just tooling around up there flying one of the most complex machines man has ever dreamed up. :)


Look, let me be clear on one thing.  I don't resent HAI, I don't hate them. Really.  They taught me an incredible skill.  They taught me well.  The school is filled with excellent CFIs.  My issue comes in where they decided to rotate out the high-time instructors.  Just makes no sense for people at the end of their Commercial training. 


If you have questions... ask, I'd be happy to explain further.

0.0 PIC Remaining - Commercial Requirements - Complete

Flight #: 141 Commercial
Aircraft: Robinson R22 Beta II
Aircraft ID: N8361N
Duration, as PIC: 3.7hrs
Cumulative Time: 183.8hrs

Well, I've done it. Made it to the end of my Commercial Helicopter rating. You need 100 PiC (Pilot in command) hours for your commercial... and I had 3.7 yet to go. Well, as of tonight... done!

I really enjoy night flying. Night has to be great, since your margin for error gets pretty small at night, but when it is good... it is great. Tonight was perfectly clear, full moon, all goodness.

Nothing out of the ordinary to speak of on this flight. Only thing to note is how bored the PDX tower / controllers get at night. Really nothing landing or taking off at 12:30 am... so they like to talk and help out. In fact, I got VFR flight following from PDX most of the way since they had nothing better to do.

Now comes the FAA test.

2008-07-02: HIO-5S9-2S6-HIO

Flight #: 079 [Commercial VFR61]
CFI: Kristie E.
Aircraft: Robinson R22 Beta II
Aircraft ID: N2356T
Duration: 1.4hrs
As PIC: 1.4hrs
Cumulative Time: 91.4hrs



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2008-07-01: HIO-3720-W27-W52-HIO

Flight #: 078 [Commercial VFR61]
CFI: Kristie E.
Aircraft: Robinson R22 Beta II
Aircraft ID: N7526S
Duration: 1.5hrs
As PIC: 1.5hrs
Cumulative Time: 93.0hrs



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2008-06-30; HIO-SPB-KLS-HIO

Flight #: 077 [Commercial VFR61]
CFI: Kristie E.
Aircraft: Robinson R22 Beta II
Aircraft ID: N2356T
Duration: 1.4hrs
As PIC: 1.4hrs
Cumulative Time: 91.5hrs



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Triangle of Lost

Flight #: 050
CFI: Kristie H.
Aircraft: Robinson R22 Beta II
Aircraft ID: N8340S
Duration: 1.5hrs

Cumulative Time: 56.7hrs

Same run through the triangle. Except this time, as we were leaving Mulino, Kristie diverted me to another airport about 15 nm south of Aurora. No problem, I got there... I just got lost leaving.

Ugh. I hate being lost. Found my way, eventually, but man, did that suck.

Triangle of Stress (a.k.a. Triangle of Death)

Flight #: 049
CFI: Kristie H.
Aircraft: Robinson R22 Beta II
Aircraft ID: N2356T
Duration: 1.3hrs
Cumulative Time: 55.2hrs


WOAH, this was intense. The triangle of death consists of a cross country (XC) flight to three other airports. Portland-Mulino(4S6), Aurora State(KUAO), McMinnville (KMMV), and then back to Portland-Hillsboro (KHIO).

Round trip of about 70 nautical miles. The truth is, that is really not all that far, and when you are cooking along at 80 knots, things fly by pretty fast.

So, before you even start a XC flight, you need to prepare a flight plan. There is a standard form, and as you can see, it is filled with gobs of information. The one posted here is just the template I use, as it will change depending on wind conditions. But, this gives you a good idea of what is needed.

In flight, you actually fold it and store it in your kneeboard. This way you only look at the details you need to see in flight. Which is mainly the checkpoints, the heading, segment time, altitudes, and communication frequencies.

Once you get this form filled out, you call 1-800-WX-BRIEF, which will connect you with your Flight Service Station. It is a service operated by Lockheed Martin that maintains information, weather data, and other details for a given flight. It is not Air Traffic Control, but a service to give you weather details on your flight plan and to maintain a track of where you should be, and where you might be if something goes wrong. Safety service, really.

So, you call FSS and for our area, they will connect you with McMinneville FSS. You ask for a briefer and then give them details about your flight. They will verify your data; checking to make sure you have the fuel to make it, look into weather along the path of flight, etc. They will also let you know of any special reports that you might be concerned with.

Once you complete this, you can consider your flight plan filed.

Then, it is off to the helicopter. You pre-flight and run-up as normal. Rather than requesting a pattern, you request a departure. In this case we're heading SE, so in this case, I requested a East departure to take off into the wind.

Climb out as usual, and check my first compass heading, and start my timer. As we transition out of KHIO airspace, we call up our buddies at McMinneville FSS to let them know we want to open our flight plan. It goes something like this:

Kristie: "McMinneville radio, this is 2356-Tango on 122.45."
FSS: "2356-Tango, McMinneville radio, say full call-sign."
K: "November-2356-Tango."
FSS: "Afternoon, 2356-Tango, What can we do for you today?"
K: "I'd like to open my flightplan."
FSS: "2356-Tango, what is your departure airport?"
K: "Hotel-India-Oscar."
FSS: "OK, got you here. What was your departure time?"
K: "Approximately 5 minutes ago."
FSS: "OK, so departure at 2122 zulu, confirm?"
K: "Correct."
FSS: "2356-Tango, your flight plan is now open. We do request pilot reports on FlightWatch at 122.0 if you have them. Please make sure to close your flight plan upon landing. Have a nice flight."
K: "Thanks. 2356-Tango".

As this point, they know where we are, where we are headed, how much fuel have, and when we are expected back.

Then the fun begins. It is all about communicating when flying. Make sure everyone knows where you are, and you know where everyone else is. Rather than explain every little detail; look at the first image above. I'm flying the triangle, clockwise. Every time I'm 10, 5, 3, 2, 1 nm from an airport (the blue or magenta circles, with or without the handles) I'm talking. I'm also checking weather for each of the airports I intend on landing. Basically, constantly. When you get to an airport, you need to let everyone know your plans. Where are you coming from? What altitude are you at right now? Ascending, descending? What direction are you traveling in? What are your plans? Landing, approach, etc, etc. Lots of communication.

Keep in mind, I'm hauling ass too... not time to dilly dally and check out the scenery. I'm checking speed, altitude, traffic around me. Am I over my checkpoints? How's the fuel?

Anyway, there is a lot of stuff going on here. Granted, I'm stuffing a lot of action into a small 70 nm flight here... but the point is that this is supposed to be intense. It is supposed to give you a bit of stomach acid so that you know how to deal with stuff when it comes up for real.

Anyway, we got back, landed, and closed the flight plan.

It was really cool, but really stressful.

I got to be honest, I was feeling pretty big after all my solos the past week. Big man, flying a helicopter. Now, I've got my ass out of the baby pool and into the deep sea.

So much for the feeling of superiority. This is intense!




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Alpha & Bravo / Hovering

Flight #: 005
CFI: Kristie H.
Aircraft: Robinson R22 Beta II
Aircraft ID: N8361N
Duration: 1.2hrs
Cumulative Time: 3.7hrs


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Today's flights were in Alpha & Bravo patterns. These two patterns are reserved areas in/around HIO for maneuvers - both real and practice. In my case, all practice. We actually could not get space in the patterns officially, so Kristie bargained with another CFI & student for some time... which I have to say was pretty cool of them to share.

After pre-flight check, which I'm proud to say I did today all by myself and within a decent amount of time, we headed out to Alpha Pattern for some pattern practice. The point was to run through procedures and to practice descents and turning in real space. While I did not get it down too well this time, I think I grasp what we're after here. It is all about doing everything I have learned already, but withing real boundaries... like taxiways, ATC towers, etc. I think I followed the ground tracks Kristie gave me, but I was never at the correct altitude. Most often, too high. First time, I know.

During one of my passes at a practice take-off I was climbing a little too slowly and not turning quickly enough... Kristie calmly said, "You'll want to turn now, before the tower". Translation: "Turn now, before you clip the tower." Practice makes perfect, I guess.

After a few more turns, Kristie crossed the runway and took us into Bravo pattern for a starter lesson in hovering. This is, by far, the hardest thing I've done. This seems to fit with what everyone says... but still. Kristie broke the lesson down into 4 distinct parts:

• Part 1 - Pedals. She gave me control of the pedals. The exercise here was for me to yaw the helicopter right and left to point at a particular landmark of Kristie's choosing. This, honestly, was not too hard. Just have to remember to cancel out the movement, when you were getting close, with the opposite pedal. We did a few 90º left/right turns. Not bad. The R22 pivots quite quickly and you really have to be light on the pedals. A few gusts of wind made it interesting at points, but I think I got this one.
• Part 2 - Collective. This time I had control of only the collective. My job was to raise/lower us while in hover. ±10ft up or down. Again, this was not so bad... and I think I got this one down pretty well too.
• Part 3 - Collective & Pedals. She ratcheted things up a little by giving me both pedals and collective this time. The trick here is to remember all that you know about Part 1 & 2, but also remember that as you change the pitch of the blades (by changes to the collective) you also increase/decrease the load on the engine. This results in a change of torque and causes the helicopter to yaw. The rule is, when you raise the collective you are increasing the angle of attack (AOA) of the blades. The produces more lift and causes the helicopter to ascend. It also increases the torque and you yaw to the right. To counteract this, you need to put in left pedal to prevent this yaw. Raise collective, left pedal. After a few cycles of up and down... I think I also got this down.
• Part 4 - Cyclic. Wow... this is tricky. I suppose I should have known when Kristie took control of collective and pedals. Best way for me to describe this is by an analogy; remember the little wooden maze toy where you had two knobs controlling two axis of the game board? Your job was to guide a ball along a maze by tilting the playing deck and rolling the ball from start to finish. Hovering a helicopter is very much like that game. You start drifting one direction and you counteract with the opposite motion. Too much over correction and you go the other way... fast. Not enough, well, you don't stop soon enough. It took me significantly longer to understand what I really needed to do here, but I think I'm getting it. It is all about the instant reaction to a motion followed by small corrective inputs. Due to something called pendular action, the path you trace out when you over-correct a movement looks much like motion of a pendulum. The helicopter acts as if it were suspended by a single point, the rotor mast, and you appear to swing back and forth. It is a little un-nerving, but it is predictable so you know which direction you are going to swing next... and can correct quickly. I had a few nice corrections after getting us into this state. But, you really should not be in this state begin with. While I need a lot of work here, I understand what I need to do... just practice. One thing which Kristie did which I really thought was interesting was to give me control over the cyclic and then let me hover in place. She would then give a little pedal and yaw us in one direction. I'd have to compensate and keep us hovering. Tricky, but it was all about keeping your eyes outside.
  

We ate up lots of time hovering... and I am sure we'll be doing lots more. Clearly a tough thing to master.

Wrap-Up (a.k.a. Things I learned today):

1. Fly first, then communicate.
2. Raise collective == Left Pedal / Lower collective == Right Pedal
3. Pendular Motion is not a fun state to be in..
4. You don't need the key to start the pre-flight.
5. Wear a t-shirt. It gets hot in the cabin.
6. Cyclic is pronounced "PSY-click" not "SICK-lick"

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.

Hillboro Patterns

Today was a ground training day. 2.5hrs of ground training, to be exact. Most of the lesson covered basic helicopter controls, basic flight principles, aviation communications, and Hillsboro Airport pattern layouts, among other things.

There is a rather old photo copy of these patterns hanging in the pilot lounge, so I decided that I needed to update it a bit. Now publicly available via Google Maps, by the way.

A little explanation:

• blue shaded area is 'A' or 'Alpha Pattern'; basically a practice area to fly in,
• green shaded area is 'B' or 'Bravo Pattern',
• purple shaded area is 'C' or 'Charlie Pattern',
  
• red shaded areas are noise sensitive areas where you need to be very conscious of your altitude. Better to just avoid them all toether.
• the yellow line is runway 30 (heading NW) or 12 (heading SE)
• the orange line is runway 20 (heading SW) or 02 (heading NE)
• green lines are hovering taxiway areas
• the 'i' is the air traffic control tower

An interesting fact I learned today is the runway naming convention. Append a '0' to the end of the runway number and you have the compass direction. So, runway 30 is pointing at 300º. Pretty convenient when you need to know how to line up for landing.




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Family visit.

Was a rather overcast Saturday so I took the opportunity to take Sandy and Zoe out to the airport to show them around a little.

Flight 002: Downtown Portland Helipad

Flight #: 002
CFI: Kristie H.
Aircraft: Robinson R22 Beta II
Aircraft ID: N8361N
Duration: 0.7hrs
Cumulative Time: 0.7hrs

Absolutely incredible. Today's flight was from HIO to Portland's downtown public heliport.

Click and drag the map to explore more of the flight.



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This was one of the most incredible things I have done in my life so far. Feelings were all over the map. I was pumped full of adrenaline both from excitement and also from fear - just being honest here. It is not often that you are 1500 ft in the air zipping through radio/HDTV towers at 70 nmph towards a city.

You can see a rough estimate of the flight path above, but we essentially left HIO, northbound, and followed route 26 east to downtown Portland. I would say that I actually controlled the cyclic for about 90% of the distance on Rt. 26. Kristie had both the anti-torque pedals and the collective at this point. She actually made the approach into downtown and flew a northerly course along the river. If you look at this leg in the map above, you will see a private helipad on the left. You need special permission to even make an approach at this pad, so we just zipped on by. About a mile further north we saw the public heliport on our left, and did a slow flyby to check the wind socks for wind direction. Conveniently there was no wind. She continued north with a large, lazy counter clockwise loop around Portland's Union Station. We lined up for an approach to the heliport and started to descend. The landing was soft and direct and we just sat for a few minutes to check weather.

After some instrument checks, we powered up and lifted off. This heliport is actually on top of a downtown parking garage. I'm sure we've even parked there before (right near the Portland Saturday Market) but never knew. Seems that the rule is, if you get out of the helicopter or power down, you need to pay a landing fee. A touch-and-go, like this, is free since there is no point doing it unless you are training. After we got to about 500 ft, Kristie gave me both the cyclic and the collective control. As one might expect, there is a protocol for doing a control hand-off:

Kristie: "You have the cyclic and the collective."
Kristie is in full control. I've got my hands on the controls loosely so at to feel her adjustments.

Chris: "I have the cyclic and the collective."
I hold the controls completely.

Kristie: "You have the cyclic and the collective."
Kristie lets go completely.

Same idea as the submarine "dive, dive, dive" command. Everybody knows and agrees to what is happening next.

At this point, Kristie told me to follow 26 west, back to the airport by heading between two clumps of radio / HDTV towers. As with any new venture, there is a change in vocabulary and acronyms. They call those clumps the Antenna Farm.

The flight back was a little more relaxed and I got to enjoy myself a little more. Navigation was purely by sight and we just followed the highway all the way to The Stadium (Hillsboro's football stadium). Within a 5 mile radius of the airport Kristie radioed the tower and we were given an approach on runway 20.

We hover taxied to the hover-cone and then took position on the helicopter taxiway. She set us down nice and gently. We did a quick post-flight check and clocked out.

Only the second flight, I know... but this is incredible.

Scheduled and ready to go.

Got a call today from my instructor, Kristie H. and we started to plan out some times for flights. Not really sure how Hillsboro Aviation does there class scheduling normally, but this seems a little odd. At this point, I've got up to 6 windows a week alloted to me - unfortunately, they are all at 7:00am. I suppose it is not that bad after all, as this will not interfere with the rest of my life. We'll see how things work out, but going into winter here in Portland does not bode too will for clear skies.


Here is the plan, we meet this Wednesday @ 11:00am to get paperwork and course materials all settled. Possibly have time for a flight - all depends on timing and weather. Then, Thursday morning, 7:00am at HIO for our first Instructor/Student lesson.

And, of course, a running update - Now doing 3.75m in the last 2 running sessions. I've been keeping a pretty good record, although I skipped Friday and Sunday. I am down one notch on the belt, tho. Progress.