A New Instructional Technique For Learning To Hover

[SilverHamer]

Learning to fly an airplane is by far MUCH easier than learning to fly a helicopter...mainly due to the task of learning to hover, among other things. That is probably the single most difficult thing to learn, and there is never any clear-cut event or instruction that could be defined as the ingredient that made the difference when a student pilot is suddenly able to correlate all of his control inputs to affect a stationary hover. It's like, one day you couldn't hit yourself in the ass with either hand, but at some point during the night there was a switch that was flipped and when you get in the aircraft the next day it's like magic. Everyone has the same experience...that is before THIS innovation:

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Of course they don't show you the difficulties a student has learning to hover this model. To watch someone trying to hover during their first couple of hours of instruction is very entertaining. Even the most seasoned instructors cannot duplicate the gyrations and crazy attitudes that a student pilot will put the aircraft in at that stage. BUT, check out this video of a student pilot hovering a helicopter the first time he ever flew it after learning to hover using the Hover Chair device:


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I thought MarkE would find this very interesting since he's a model helicopter pilot and airplane driver ;) Hell, I think that Hover Chair would be cool to have as a primary means of controlling the model in all modes of flight.

[MarkE]

This is really interesting. yeah, learning to hover was a bitch, and was the very first thing you had to learn. Its like trying to balance a golf ball on your head. I flew around with training gear like that for a while.

One day, when you think you've got it, you push the stick forward, add a little collective and transition into forward flight. You zoom away not knowing if you can make the first turn or even if you can transition back into a hover. Its like breaking your cherry and quite exciting.

Luckily I've never crashed a model heli. I'm very slow and methodical in my self training. I've bumped the tail rotor into the ground a few times after removing the gear but never a full blown crash.

The chair is an interesting idea. I remember one of the guys in our club talking about building one during one of our monthly meetings.

My absolute favorite thing to do with the model heli was autorotations. I'd get up around 100ft with the main rotor blazing RPM and kill the engine. You've got one chance to "collective" the beast safely back to the ground. I wonder how you practice that with a full scale ship?
After a while I started landing like that on every flight. I'd approach the field at high forward speed and kill the engine. It was really fuken kool. The guys dug it and I felt like Bob Hoover :)

[SilverHamer]

Autorotations are a kick in the ass in the real ship as well. My favorite is the hovering auto. In the army we had three different "in flight" autorotative maneuvers...

1. The "straight-in", which is performed on the final approach leg at traffic pattern altitude at cruise airspeed. At the point of entry, the maneuver begins by lowering the collective and retarding the throttle to idle, and in the Bell UH-1 Huey we adjusted the pitch attitude of the airframe for a glide at 80 knots. At approximately 100 feet AGL, you'd begin a deceleration by bringing the nose of the aircraft up to slow forward airspeed...at approximately 15 feet you'd pull "initial pitch", sort of a snatch on the collective, just enough to check the rate of descent and further slow aircraft. While maintaining the nose-up attitude (not excessive enough to strike the tail stinger), you'd cushion the aircraft to touchdown using the remaining energy in the main rotor by milking the collective pitch. Some aircraft require you to level the airframe just after initial pitch application, but in the Huey, if you lower the nose and level the airframe, there is so much energy remaining in the main rotor system that the aircraft would accelerate during the cushion phase, so we just maintained the slight nose-up attitude until she had the skids in full contact with the surface.

2. The "low-level" autorotation. The landing phase of this one is not much different than the straight-in, except that it is executed from an altitude of 50 feet above the highest obstacle at cruise airspeed. It's basically just a deceleration maneuver until you have bled the airspeed off enough that the airframe begins descending in the nose-up landing attitude...and then everything else is the same from 15 feet.

3. The "auto with turn". When I was an instructor for the Army Aviation School, we lovingly referred to this maneuver as the "auto with scream"...LOL. This one is a little tricky because it involves a bit more cross-checking, both inside and outside of the cockpit. The traffic pattern is flown closer in on the downwind leg and what you are trying to achieve is landing the aircraft from traffic pattern altitude after making a 180 degree turn. The entry point is variable due to winds aloft, but usually somewhere close to the abeam point of your intended landing area. Making a 180 degree turn in an autorotation usually requires that you pull the collective up slightly during the turn to avoid overspeeding the main rotor because during a tight turn the rpm builds due to coriolis effect (think of the figure skater spinning...when she pulls her arms in the spin speeds up). In a 30 degree (or more) bank angle, the horizontal span and lift vector of the main rotor system is shortened significantly, thereby introducing the coriolis effect. So you keep watch of your rotor rpm throughout the turn, and after rolling wings-level you have to remember to put the collective back down again or else the rpm will bleed off prematurely. You also are required to roll out of the turn and be assured of making your landing area by the time you've reached 200 feet AGL...and this makes the maneuver even more intense because most helicopters fall out of the sky like a Wells Fargo safe with a feather taped to the top of it during an autorotation...LOL. Interject doing this with a student pilot with very little experience...thus the term, "auto with scream".

In the commercial world we are only evaluated on the hovering auto and the auto with turn...the only assemblance of a straight-in is in the simulated engine failure in flight, but those are seldom ever completed to touch down unless it is initiated in the traffic pattern and the airfield can be made.

A little added twist...our company has a Bell 206 BIII with fixed floats on it for water landing training. The airport we utilize for our training and evaluations has a sea lane for amphibs and they allow us to utilize the sea lane for water landings. THAT is a kick in the ass. I will see if I can round up our company's safety video and make a clip of the 206 making a water landing.

[MarkE]

You are so lucky to fly helis for a living. i'd trade jobs with you in a heartbeat.

Thanks for the descriptions, and the video. That was a sweet auto that guy did! Listening to you describing it really gave me the itch to fly again. Who knows, with this new job and the bucks rolling in I may get current and start flying again. I think I would only require about 3hrs dual time to get signed off for the Archer again. Damn....my wife would kill me :(

Anyway....best of luck with the new venture. Im sure you will do fine.