Right seat in a heli

40YearDream

40YearDream

Pre-takeoff checklist
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40YearDream
This past weekend, signed up for 1st session of dual in a heli - R44. Wow, what a firehose of things to learn! Was thrilling, amazing, and frightening all at the same time, especially with the doors off. Having significant experience with larger RC helis, I was wondering how much of that would transfer - seems like not so much, as far as I could tell. Forward flight, turns, approaches to landings seemed reasonable - but hover? Give me a 40 acre paved empty parking lot (with no lights, etc.) - *maybe* then! On a little (relatively narrow) grass strip, not so much. 0.9 in the seat was not nearly enough to get the 'feel' of the machine.
Worst problem is: now I want to go back for more, to try to really learn the beast - but the checkbook says 'no way' !
 
Was it like balancing on a beach ball? That’s my description of learning to hover my TREX450/600 RC choppers.
 
Remember the feeling…learning to hover was one of my favorite aviation experiences.

Congrats on taking the plunge!! Welcome to the addiction.
 
texasclouds said:
Was it like balancing on a beach ball? That’s my description of learning to hover my TREX450/600 RC choppers.
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Not particularly. I think the ‘dead travel’ in the middle of the cyclic may have thrown me off, as I don’t have that with my rc helis. Hover attempts were more like ‘move the cyclic, still didn’t respond, move more, too late’. Things happen a lot slower in full scale, it seems like.
 
The best description I read about hovering noted the following:
The helicopter starts drifting to the right, so you apply left cyclic to counteract the motion. This shifts the rotor thrust vector resulting in less vertical thrust resulting in the helicopter starting to descend. To correct this the pilot increases the collective which causes the rotor RPM to decrease. Either the pilot or the helicopter's governor now increases the throttle to maintain the RPM, but now we've increased torque and the helicopter starts to spin. To stop the yawing, the pilot adjusts the anti-torque pedals. By doing this the tail rotor thrust changes which causes the helicopter to drift which starts the whole process over again.

In my experience hovering a helicopter is one of, if not the most, challenging thing I've ever tried to do. But one day something just clicked for me and the helicopter stayed motionless. It's an amazing feeling when that happens.

I've since come to the conclusion that if you have to think about the corrections you're making it's already too late. It's something that just has to get wired in your brain, kind of like riding a bicycle.
 
BTW:There is nothing unique to the idea that changing one thing makes you need to change others. Airplanes are the same way. Its why we're always retriming in different phases of flight.
 
texasclouds said:
I heard that model is 3 seconds away from killing you at all times!
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I have to hand it to this young man. Literally 5 minutes after we lifted off he took his hands off all the controls and said "you have it". I honestly think its much easier to learn without someone else pushing on the controls too. Of course I messed it up, he fixed it, wash, rinse repeat.
 
I don't think the RC time would help you. I bought my son one years ago, at the time I had over 25 years of rotor time, crashed that RC every time I tried.
 
Its like flight simulator. I can't land a 172 in that thing without crashing it. I will say that my students who have a lot of flight sim time are really good pressing buttons like settings up radios, etc. But they have no stick and rudder skills. Same thing with an RC plane. We bought on and I crashed it all the time.
 
My first few hovers in an R22 were all over the place. I think what makes it so hard is EVERYTHING is moving at the same time. As in the heading, rotation, altitude, etc. Pretty much impossible to hold it all in without losing control after a few seconds.

What made it click for me was to prioritize pointing the nose at where I was initially facing. So if the nose starts to either drift sideways to the left or starting rotating to the left, I'd bring it back to the middle / center line fairly aggressively. And repeat.

Once the nose is consistently pointing at the right direction, the rest of the fuselage movement such as moving forward or backward, or even going higher or lower, you can then simply use the cyclic and / or collective.

In fact, once the nose is always pointing correctly, it became very easy to hover in a wide circular arc. It's not the prettiest way of hovering, but it was a start.

This wasn't something my CFI verbalized. It's just something I kind of stumbled upon.
 
Thank you. I’m learning to hover in the r-22 as well. I think I’m so so at holding it over a point but when I want to slide over it goes haywire.
 
Let me tell you about my experience learning to hover for the first time in an R22.

My instructor had us fly out to a deserted area. He took the controls, and settled us into a hover. He then said, "your ship" and I took over. At first, it was OK, but then I had a little nose up, so I pulled aft on the cyclic. Then I had nose down, so I pushed the cyclic forward. Pretty soon I was looking up at the sky and then down at the ground and up at the sky and down at the ground. So my instructor took over, and again settled us into a hover. Again he says, "your ship." Pretty soon, I drifted right, so I corrected left. Then I drifted too far left, and corrected right. It wasn't long before I was oscillating like a pendulum. The sweat was pouring off of me in buckets, much like Albert Brooks in "Broadcast News." With a chuckle my instructor settled us down, said, "we've had enough fun for one day," and I flew us back to the airport. To this day (25 years later), my instructor and I still laugh about that experience.

So here's the thing...it takes time, patience, and effort to learn to hover a helicopter. Pretty soon it will become second nature, but the first few times you think you're never going to get it right. You will, and if you can hover in an R22, you can hover in anything. Keep the faith.

Good luck!
 
retpd2001 said:
I don't think the RC time would help you. I bought my son one years ago, at the time I had over 25 years of rotor time, crashed that RC every time I tried.
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From my experience in RC instructing, the *worst* RC student pilots are those who come from full scale. Not sure the exact reason; probably the totally different visual picture? Some of the best RC students have *zero* experience - they just do what I tell them to do. I've yet to see a full-scale pilot work at it, to overcome full-scale habits, long enough to become proficient at RC.
It'd be interesting to hear from a CFI what they've seen with zero experience students vs. RC experienced students.
But from what I've seen, I don't think the relationship(s) between learning RC and full-scale are linear / bi-directional.
 
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