knocked out my First hour of flight friday (Orientation)
Needless to say I was humbled in Forward Flight. The first Control we worked on was the Cyclic. The natural tendancy is to input a positive AOA in the stick when coordinating into the bank, as you would in a fixed Wing aircraft. The problem with that action is that the Helicopter creates forward movement by tilting the rotorhead forward.
So here I am cocky as hell, I input about 4\" of left bank in the Cyclic, and I got about 3 seconds of delay before the Weight of the helicopter shifts to be parallel of the tilted rotordisk. Next thing I know we are in a 700 FPM Climb 15 Deg. Positive AOA and losing airspeed from 70-50 Knots.
Then he explains the Principles of left Turn Vs a right turn based on the Rotation direction of the rotors. We worked on that making Left and right turns for 10 Minutes. I then had it under control, and was having a blast following roads.
Next we worked on the Collective. The collective controls Positive and negative Pitch on the rotor blades. This control was much easier, however now I was hunting the VSI, ASI. and losing concentration on the outside. On top of this the Collective has a twist grip like a Motorcycle to control Engine RPM. The guage to crosscheck has a Engine RPM needle and a Rotorhead needle. Both of these needles need to be (married) together and in the Green zone. The instructor controlled the rpm. He showed me the trick of watching the blade disk out in front of me and watching the Manifold pressure gauge. We kept the helicopter between 19 and 21lbs MP and once I had it down for the specified MP, VSI ASI, the ROTOR/Engine was no longer as puzzleing. After another 10 minutes of this. I was doing well with both the collective and the cyclic.
Next we worked on the anti Torque Rotor (pedals) When we are in forward flight in translational lift. In much of the principles it flies like a fixed wing aircraft. The tail has airfoils that help the aircraft trim out and adjust much like the yaw trim and fuselage allows an aircraft to keep the pointy end into the direction of travel; so in forward flight we did not need to use any rudder, then he slowed the aircraft down to 45 knots and we began doing coordinated bank and rudder turns and showed me the tendency to use left pedal but to allow the torgue to move the right pedal.; (very odd feeling) on top of this we had a tailwind and this caused the aircraft to yaw about +/- 5 deg.
After I had this down I flew the next 15 miles back to the Airfield flying all 3 controls, while he maintained the rotor and engine rpm. I was expecting to make a standard PAPI approach (3 Deg) glideslope, but instead he explained the descent characteristics of the helicopter so we then set the helicopter in a 45 Knot 5 Deg and 500FPM descent.
At 50 feet he took the controls and we hover taxied over to a Runup Pad.
Now for the next phase of the flight we would conduct Hovering manuevers. This is hte most diffuclt stage of helicopter flight. Again we started off with one control at a time. I did really well. I could maintain it in a hover in ground effect. the instructor was impressed, he said i was allready 6 hours ahead of the game. I started laughing, I asked if he has ever seen that for a first hour student, he said he had never seen that before. Which makes me curious how I could handle the hover perfect but could not get in phase with the helicopter in forward flight.
It all came back to 4200 Hours of Fixed wing Muscle memory.
I learned you couldnt hamfist the aircraft like a F15 making High rate demand movements with the Flight stick. Like you would with a non FBW Jet and Oppossite stick travel to stop the Rate of Change. To maintain the desired manuever.
In the helicopter I was making 500 yard Turn Diameters at 60 knots by only making about a radius of 2\" stick movements in the cyclic and collective. That was where the difficulty was observed;. Flying a helicopter is a mental game and not a physical game. In the F15 you flew with your arm. With the helicopter you fly with finger tips and your wrist resting on your leg. Much in the way an F16 is flown by finger tip pressure. But the helicopter you set up the manuever in the stick, and await for the mass change to the rotor deflection and then you neutralize to maintain the manuever.
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![[shock]](./images/smilies/anim_shock.gif "Shock")
Bueno suerte, amigo.
Shows how much I don't know. Learn something new every day, if you pay attention.