Another Helicopter Flight

My scheduled fixed wing lesson last weekend got called on account of wind and rain. I rescheduled for Friday (tommorow) at 10AM.

So yesterday evening, with my wife's generous support and blessing (even in the face of car trouble), I splurged and bought another helicopter lesson. Helicopters are fun, but expensive; fun things usually are. So I wanted to squeeze in as much hands-on time as I could during this lesson; I'm not sure when I'll be back. The good news is that I flew almost the entire time. The bad news is I don't have any pictures - because I was flying almost the entire time.

I flew with Travis because it was chilly and we needed doors on the R22 this time. Why Travis? Because with Derrick and doors, my fat a$$ puts us over the R22 max load. Stupid, delicious Krystals.

Travis lifted off and got us out to 2,600 ft.

"You have the controls," he said.
"Copy, I have the controls," I replied.
This communication is critical in helicopters. We did two things: turning and hovering.

Turning
The turning practice was an extension of the last lesson. It got progresively more complex:

"Turn right to a heading of 32, hold 2,600 feet, hold 60 knots."
"Now turn left to a heading of North, descend to 2,200 feet, hold 60 knots."
"Now give me a right turn to a heading of 17, ascend to 2,500 feet, speed 75 knots."

Left/Right, Up/Down, Faster/Slower .. all simultaneously using all the controls in coordination.
I had it down pretty good. Time in fixed-wing helped.

Hovering
After 45 mins of turns and basic navigation, we returned to the taxi-way for hovering about 10 feet off the ground.

I practiced first with only the cyclic (roll /pitch), then only the pedals (left / right), then only the collective (up / down). I kept it stable and hovered without problem. This earned some praise from Travis. He had never seen a student hover like I did the first time out. I felt my big head swell with pure awesomeness.

I am a unique and special snowflake. The voodoo child.

Then he gave me both the cyclic and pedals. I held the hover for about 3 seconds. Combined with the wind, it was more than I could handle and we got blown around every which way. We started spinning and sidewinding. He pulled us back from the brink. My head deflated back to mere mortal size.

I am not a unique and special snowflake. I am the same decaying organic matter as everything else.

We wrapped it up. I got some pats on the back for how well I did, settled up, and was off home to my wife whom I love for not only putting up with but eagerly supporting my high maintenance, overdeveloped sense of ambition and challenge. While I was playing helicopter pilot, she was dealing with a dead car battery. To show my gratitude, I went out later and picked up some ribs from Sonnys in time to watch Barack Obama's 20 minute music video.

This experience reminded me of what I love, fear, and respect about piloting aircraft: Your mind, body, and senses are in tune with the world. You aren't dealing in artificiality. There is only dangerous and beautiful reality. You're in it, part of it, connected to nature by the work of countless fellow human beings who came before you. If you choose awareness of, respect for, and harmony with that nature, you experience what few others ever do. But if instead you choose arrogance over awareness, or trade reality for wishful thinking, it may cost you your life.

I'm Doug Hale and I approve this message.

Helicopter Flight

Two pieces of news warrant a post of their own.

First, I got my own pilot headset. For $100, I purchased off craigslist a decent set of David Clark H20-10 and no longer have to mooch headsets from the flight school.


Second, I flew a helicopter.

In the interest of developing into a more well-rounded pilot, and because it's just plain awesome as hell, I wanted to get some rotary wing experience under my belt. So on my way home Wednesday night, I called the helicopter training outfit "Blue Ridge Helicopters" located in Lawrenceville and lined up a discovery flight for 5:30 that evening. I've never been in a helicopter before and was really excited about it.

Blue Ridge is located at the same airport as Advanced Aviation, but on the opposite side of the runways. I got to Blue Ridge and met up with Travis, who then introduced me to Derick - the pilot I would be flying with. We would be flying a Robinson 22. I knew from what I had read on the web that this would be an entirely different experience from the fixed wing, but it really hit home seeing the R22 up close.

Like the DA-20, the R22 is tiny. However, sitting in the R22 without the doors is not claustrophic at all. In fact, it was perfectly comfortable. What I didn't realize was how windy - and thus cold - it would be up there. So while I roasted the first time up in the DA-20, I would freeze the first time up in the R22.


The R22 has fewer interior guages, most notably the lack of an attitude indicator. The visibility is far greater in the R22 than the DA-20 because of the lower orientation and smaller footprint of the instrument console. This configuration greatly reduced the temptation for me to stare at the instruments. Like in the fixed wing, we were flying VFR.

We did a quick briefing on what the controls did and how I would be operating them. Helicopters are piloted via 3 coordinated controls.

1: Cyclic. The stick/yoke analog. Push to nose down, pull to nose up, left and right to roll.
2: Collective. Handle on left (between seats). Pull up for vertical rise. Push down for vertical drop.
3: Anti-torques. The rudder analog. Pedals turns nose right, left.

There is also the throttle control. The throttle in the R22 is automatically adjusted by a "throttle correlator" linked to the Collective which keeps the RPMs at a constant rate.

Derick had already done the preflight so we were ready to go. He and Travis both stressed to me the importance of using gentle, controlled pressure and not jerking the stick. "It doesn't take much to enter a dangerous attitude," said Travis.

"Got it," I said. "Do not yank the controls. Understood."

Just then Derick walked up. "I just heard the word 'Yank'" he said.

"No, what you heard is the tail end of 'DONT yank!' I kidded back. We all laughed for a moment, but I reassured Derick that I understood and would be ginger with the controls. In the fixed wing DA-20, it seems practically impossible for a student pilot to put the plane into an attitude the instructor couldn't easily recover from. I got the distinct impression that helicopters were a different story.

Derick started the rotors. "So what I'm doing here is waiting to feel us start to lift and tilt, and then do little corrections. That way we rise straight up." Soon, I felt the tilts and rise begin. Where airplane takeoff is about speed, helicopter liftoff is about balance. I had my hands on the stick to feel the liftoff. Indeed, small corrections and pressure induce big attitude differences. I could already tell. We lifted up about 10 feet and cruised over to a runway.

Derick explained the take off. "To get speed we pitch down the cyclic." We pitched forward. "And push some collective," he continued. We thrusted forward and lifted gradually. Soon we were in the air. After we cleared LZU, Derick handed me the controls and I flew for a while. It's true that flying a helicopter is a balancing act, but straight and level flight is not a hard balancing act. I felt very comfortable with the controls.

Normally Derick would take the controls 8 miles out from LZU, but since he felt I was comfortable with the controls he allowed me to do the approach. He complimented my performance several times which made me feel good. Later Derick would tell me that the really hard part is hovering.

"It's like standing on a basketball," he described it. I already cannot wait to try it. Flying a helicopter was really fun and I'm sure I'll be back for more. My next fixed wing lesson is Friday at 10 AM.

Lesson 4: The B17 Bomber

Tic-Tac-Toe

It was a bright, cold day in October, and the clocks were striking thirteen.

According to my TV and contrary to all my first-hand experience, the United States have magically polarized themselves evenly into Red and Blue factions.  Red guy and Blue guy play Tic-Tac-Toe in the sand for a captive national audience.  Real-time graphs guide viewers through the perilous waters of independent thought.  Tic-Tac-Toe experts debate the artistic merit and style with which the "X"s and "O"s were drawn.  Software, created in part by me, ensures that the circus is profitable.  

And here I am, learning to fly airplanes.  

B17

Chris was finishing his lunch when I arrived.  He and Darrick were talking about a mysterious flat tire on one of the DA-20s.  The flat has happened 3 times now, each time with Chris on the same DA-20, with the same student, and all three times it was only noticeable during taxi.  Oddly nobody else has experienced it.  So Chris decided he was not going to fly it for a while and see if anybody else noticed it.  Why tempt fate?  

 

We got our stuff together.  As we walked outside, Chris asked me, "did you see the B17 when you came in?"   

"No," I told him.  I did not know what a B17 was.  He explained that B17s were old World War II era bomber aircrafts.  The U.S. Air Force (I presume) had flown a B17 into LZU and parked it on the ramp for public viewing.  For $6, you could tour the interior of the plane.  Chris, Darick and I walked down to it and gawked for a few minutes.  It's an enormous aircraft, designed to drop enormous bombs on bad guys, and equipped with machine guns to dissuade enemy aircraft from interfering.  I snapped some shots of course.  

(b17 pics)

Takeoff #2

Back at the DA-20, Chris guided me through the preflight as usual.  I could probably do the entire preflight by myself at this point.  I've seen more advanced students doing the preflight alone.  I'm probably not too far way from that point.

We taxied to the line.  Chris got "cleared for takeoff without delay" which means don't dilly dally; there's an inbound who will be needing to land in a couple of minutes.  

"Ok take us up to the line, " Chris said.  I gingerly pushed up some power and we started to barely move.  I'm still at the point where I like to take things extra slow and deliberate.

"Juliet 91 - No delay on your takeoff," the tower came over the radio.  That meant: hurry up.  So Chris took control for us to get lined up for take off.  

"Full throttle," Chris said.  I pushed up to full throttle and we started moving.  For some reason we were yawing right really hard.  It felt like I was having to stand on the left rudder to keep us from veering off the ramp to the right.  

"At 55 knots pull up," Chris said.  At around 55 knots the ground contact vibration died down.  I pulled up and we were in the air.  Tower told us to turn west.  We turned and climbed to about 4,000 feet.  Today we were to practice trim control, banks, and more slow flying.

Steep Banks

At one point, our traffic proximity alarm went off.  We look around but could not find the nearby aircraft, which is not good.  Then Chris found him, above us on the right side.  It was a glider.  We were coming up on some clouds, so Chris banked us hard to the left.  

I've never banked this hard before.  It had to have been at least 45 degrees, maybe more.  I'm glad we did though, because I had been timid about banking too hard before.  Part of getting comfortable as a pilot means learning what "a lot" and "a little" feel like.  As a land animal born to fear heights and imbalance, it's like learning to ride a bike all over again.  I practiced steep banks into headings.

Slow Flight

Mastering slow flying is a pre-requisite to learning how to land.  In other words, landing is essentially a controlled stall as close to the runway as possible.  You fly slower and slower, closer and closer to the ground until you stall and the plane drops in a controlled descent onto the runway.  In a few weeks, we will start touch and goes.  

As we landed today, I kept my hands on the stick to feel the landing.  The controls become "mushy" at slow speeds because less wind is flowing over the control surfaces.  I need more slow flight practice, but I'm starting to be able to see the landing in mind.

Lesson 3: Sea of Clouds

9:00 AM. I arrived at Advanced Aviation this morning for my 3rd

lesson. It was cloudy and windy today. Chris was finishing up a
ground school lesson with another student.

We got our stuff together and headed out to the ramp. Last class, he suggested I look into getting my own headset. I researched headsets this week but decided to wait and see what Chris used and find out what the Advanced Aviation folks thought about Active Noise Reduction (ANR) headsets. ANR greatly reduces ambient noise by emitting "anti-sound" that cancels out the constant background noise. Other than ANR being more expensive, I was concerned about the possibility of ANR canceling out important noise, like engine sounds, radio, or warning indicators like the stall horn. Chris and Darrick didn't have any concerns with ANR. Darick in fact uses ANR headsets. Chris uses passive Dave Clarks, but wants a set of the new Bose ANRs. That takes care of my ANR concerns. I'll get some off Ebay or Craigs List.

We pulled the cover off the DA-20 and did the preflight. I taxied us to the runway area. Because of the high winds, Chris decided to handle the takeoff. I was disappointed but appreciate Chris's cautious attitude about safety. Darick was with another student beside us in the other DA-20 doing their pre-takeoff. They were first up.

"Hey Darick," Chris radioed. "Your front tire looks low."

It did look very low, pancaked at the point of contact with the road. Darick replied that it felt ok on taxi.

"Ok," Chris responded. "It might be the angle I'm looking. Just keep an eye on it."

"Yeah, I will. Thanks," Darick responded. Pilots look out for each other.

After Darick was in the air, we taxied to the line and stopped. ATC cleared us for take off. Chris throttled up and we were in the air within 5 seconds. We couldn't have been going more than 30 mph.

"Wow - we're already in the air," Chris exclaimed. We were facing a 20 mph wind. That means as far as the wings knew, our true ground speed of 30 mph was more like 50 mph. Wind moving over the wings creates lift. Strong headwind combined with the DA-20s light weight put us into flight in no time. I took control once we were up. Winds were strong and gusty, which meant lots of bumps and drops. I did not feel nervous at all though. I'm getting used to the sensations.

Although I didn't get to take off, I was in for a rare treat: a low cloud ceiling. Because the DA-20 is not IFR certified (its plastic airframe lacks lightening protection), flying through clouds is not allowed. But that doesn't mean we can't get above them, as long as we don't fly into them on the way up. So we had to find a hole in the clouds and climb through it.

"See that opening," Chris pointed. "Climb us through that to 4500 feet." This was really fun. I pushed full throttle for power and pulled the stick back to about a 700 ft/min climb. As we climbed through the hole in the clouds, I looked around at the surreal gaseous layer just below us. I asked Chris to take the stick for moment while I snapped some pictures. Here are few just after we leveled off. You can see the hole we climbed through.

Just through the hole

Sea of Clouds: Pilot side

Sea of Clouds: Co-pilot side

Above the clouds, the turbulence was completely gone. Except for takeoff and landing, I flew the entire time today. For an hour, I practiced turning, ascent, descent, trim control, and throttle adjustment. It was over before it began and we needed to head home. I descended and brought us into LZU controlled space where Chris took back over for the landing.

"This is going to be interesting," Chris said. We were landing under heavy winds. Chris slowed us down and lowered the flaps. As we got down to around 300 ft above deck, it looked like we were barely moving. Chris touched down to an amazingly smooth landing. There wasn't a single bump or jolt. I don't think they get any better than that.

"Nicely done!" I complimented him. "Thanks," he replied. Chris was smiling, clearly happy with his touchdown. He had a right to be. It really was remarkable.

We were supposed to do more stall recovery today, but the high winds prevented that too. It's looking like Friday Oct 17th will be the next lesson. The agenda will be more stall recovery and steep bank turns. Chris also said we would start landing practice called "touch and go"s. That's where you line up for a landing, descend, get wheels on the ground, and then take back off to circle around for another pass: touch and go. Even with the instructor present and helping, completing an entire flight from take-off to landing will be a huge milestone.

Lesson 2: The Cessna 172 Skyhawk

Saturday's flight lesson was awesome. I don't have any in-flight pictures because I spent more time playing pilot than photographer. Which is good. After all, that's what I signed up for. However, I do have pictures of the Cessna I flew and some intense experiences that I'm not sure I could ever verbalize to their full credit.

VFR-into-IMC
I arrived at 3:00. Chris was on a discovery flight and running a little late. No big deal. I sat down and thumbed through some magazines. I found a photocopied article about Cessna safety. I would be flying a Cessna today, as chance would have it. The article explored a sobering topic: VFR-into-IMC is the biggest pilot killer out there.

A pilot flying Visual Flight Rules (VFR) flies by sight. Everything he needs is visible to the naked eye: the horizon, ground, mountains, towers, power lines, other aircraft, etc. Gauges are also used in VFR, but they are secondary. On the other hand, Instrument Meteorological Conditions (IMC) occurs when visibility is severely limited. The pilot cannot fly by sight and instead must use instruments as the primary reference. This mode of flight is called IFR (Instrument Flight Rules). Only by earning an instrument rating is a pilot qualified to fly IFR.

VFR-into-IMC means a pilot starts in VFR and then finds himself unexpectedly in IMC. This is an especially dangerous situation when the pilot is not instrument rated. Disorientation and unawareness of position/heading lead to disaster. Sadly, this situation spelled the death of John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife, and his sister-in-law in 1999. Even as a student pilot, I am already deeply committed to a conservative, cautious attitude and intend to earn my instrument rating as soon as possible.
I glanced up as the front door opened. Chris entered followed by a man who appeared to be in his mid 40s. They had just finished the discovery flight. I immediately recognized that quiet, slightly glazed-over look. It's in the eyes, a kind of thousand-yard stare. He was on auto-pilot. Inside he was still sorting out the excitement, fear, and discovery of it all.

"Okay, let's see .. that's sixty-two dollars," the girl at the front said. His eyes came back into focus.

"Really? sixty-two? That's all?". The first one is always free. Advanced Aviation had created another junky.

The Skyhawk

Chris sat down across from me for our pre-flight briefing. Today was going to be about slow flying. Specifically, maintaining control of the plane right at the edge of a stall. It was not going to be a joy ride. We were getting down to business.

Cessna's 172 is the quintessential personal/trainer aircraft. Introduced in the 1950s, it's the tried and true stuff of an earlier generation. Put simply, if the DA-20 fought the Cessna 172 in an epic boxing match, it would be called Rocky IV.

In the right corner, weighing in at 1,116 pounds the Austrian-engineered, state-of-the-art, streamlined 1992 DA-20 C1 Falcon from the Diamond company. Constructed from high-tech lightweight composite material and equipped with the latest avionic technology, this bird is all about smooth efficient flight.


And in the left corner, weighing in at 1,620 pounds the American made, tried and true, blood and guts 1952 Cessna 172 Skyhawk. The steel frame, high wing 172 is the most popular trainer aircraft in the world. 30 years before Diamond was founded, Skyhawks were coming off the Cessna assembly line. Here are some pictures of our 172.





Brie Cheese versus Apple Pie. That's how some people see it, anyway. For me, flying the Cessna was so I could understand both ends of the spectrum and make an informed choice as to which I would stick with for the remainder of my training.

The Skyhawk is a roomier 4-seater and the high wings and covered cockpit make it a cooler flight. The Falcon has less room and gets hotter because of the bubble canopy, but is much newer, has better avionics, and far greater visibility. I also like the stick better than the yoke. Chris agrees that fundamentally they aren't much different. Having flown both, I'm pretty sure that I'm going to stick with the DA-20 Falcon. The deciding factor for me is the fact that the United States Air Force uses the Falcon in their pilot training program. If it's good enough for USAF pilots, it's good enough for me.

Take-Off
Taxiing is a little easier in the Skyhawk. Where the DA-20 uses only differential braking to steer, the Cessna's rudder pedals actively turn the wheels right and left. Chris told me a rule of thumb for taxiing: you never taxi faster than you could sprint. We did preflight and I taxied out of the ramp and toward the runway. We pulled over to do the final pre-flight engine checks.

"Ok. Take us to that line and stop," Chris said. It was the take-off runway.

Calm down, I told myself. We're just getting in all the taxi practice possible. Chris will take it from here.

Tower called over the radio. "November fifty-two seven forty one, you're cleared for take off." That was us.

"Ok, here we go," Chris said. "Give us full throttle, straight ahead."

Holy shit. He wanted me to take off.

"So .. I'm taking off? Full throttle? Now?" I asked as cooly as possible. I'm sure he's seen that look of terror plenty of times.

"Yep. Go for it. Full throttle," he replied.

I pushed the throttle all the way in. The engine roared up, and we started our race down the runway. The panels and everything were vibrating wildly. I had the yoke in a kung-fu death grip, ready to pull up.

"Let me know when to pull up," I shouted over the racket. At the time, I guess I felt that Chris, my fully certified commercial flight instructor, needed a friendly reminder not to let his student careen the plane off the end of the runway into a ditch.

"You're doing fine," he reassured me.

Then something changed. The rattling high-speed noises and vibrations had all but stopped. We felt lighter.

"Pull back gently," Chris said. Point of no return. I pulled back on the yoke and we started to climb. Tilted up at about 45 degrees, all I could see ahead was blue sky. I looked over my left shoulder and watched the ground shrink into the distance. My ears popped. I uttered an expletive. I had survived the first of two gut checks of the day. What would come next made take-off feel like a walk in the park.

Slow Flying and Stall Recovery

We climbed to 4,500 feet and headed North toward Lake Lanier. As we leveled off, I remembered something had I wanted to ask Chris.

"If I let go of the yoke, will the plane naturally level off?"

"Yes," he said. "Watch this." Chris pulled back on the yoke, facing our nose up and then let go. The nose drifted down into a dive. My stomach clenched momentarily. Then the nose started back up by itself, past the horizon and back into a climb.

"If we let it, the plane will oscillate like this for 10 minutes or so until it finally levels out," he explained. "That's what the trim control is for - micro adjustments to get us smooth and level." Things I had read in the textbook were starting to come into focus. Lake Lanier materialized below us.

"Ok we're going to do some slow flying," Chris said. "I'll do the first one, and then you can try it." I knew I was not ready for this, whatever it was.

"See our altitude?" Chris asked. "We're at 4,500 ft. Now pick a point in the distance - let's use that water tower." He pointed out a white tower way off in the distance. "That's our point of reference. We want to keep that tower in front of us."

"Now, pull the throttle back to idle," he said. I pulled the throttle out. The engine noise went away. It got very quiet. We started to dip forward. "The nose wants to dive, so I'm going to trim nose up," he explained and adjusted the trim dial. The nose came up. We were loosing airspeed, quickly approaching the low end of the "green" airspeed gauge. Butterflies. My pulse quickened. "Ok more nose up trim," and he dialed up the trim to maximum nose up. We were about to stall.

Our airspeed dipped into 40 kts. A high pitched, unmistakable whirring sound poured through the earphones and cabin. It was the stall indicator. Our nose pitched down into a steep dive. My adrenaline was pumping. Keep it together. "Ok, we're going into the stall - go full throttle," he said. I pushed the throttle all the way in. Comforting sound of engine noise again. The nose came back up into a climb. Chris spun the trim dial, nose came back down. More trim adjustment. "Throttle back to 2200 RPMS," he said. I throttled back. We leveled off. The water tower was still dead ahead.

I felt like I had been on a roller coaster. Climbing, diving, throttling up and down. Check out the altitude," Chris pointed. 4,500 ft. We had not climbed or dived at all. The nose up attitude had balanced out our throttle loss. We had stalled, but not long enough to loose altitude. At the onset of the stall, we pitched down to get air moving over the wings again and throttled back up to keep altitude. This maneuver is called a Power Off stall recovery.

"Ready to try it?" he asked. He walked me through it. We repeated the maneuver a couple of times. It got less and less scary each time. Am I comfortable with it? No way. But I'm getting there. The 2 hour lesson came and went. Time flies up there. I steered us back to LZU and Chris landed the smoothest touchdown yet. I truly enjoyed flying the 172.

Next Saturday, it's back to the DA-20 where I will stay. The agenda will include take-off, navigation, more stall recovery, a new maneuver: high bank angle turns. I'm looking forward to it.