Calm - As in "Calm Down, This is Normal!" or Experienci​ng new things and remaining calm while your body wants to freak out

28 April 2012

Did some new maneuvers today. Did some Autorotations, landing on slopes and even took some "jumpers" (with parachutes) up so they could fall back to the ground.

The training school is based in Tallahassee and most of the training is done at the airport in Quincy. Traffic patterns, autorotations, steep approaches, maximum performance take-offs, run-on landings and more are done while at Quincy. Quincy is a non-towered airport, meaning there are no controllers managing the flow of traffic into and out of the airport. You use the Common Traffic Advisory Frequency (CTAF) to self-announce who you are, where you are and what you are going to do.

Autorotations

When an (fixed wing) airplane loses engine power the wings continue to create lift so they can glide to a landing site and land safely. When a helicopter loses engine power (or during other emergency situations) an autorotation is performed to keep the rotor blades spinning so that when it gets close to the ground it can bleed off airspeed and touchdown safely. During normal maneuvers we descend at a rate of no more than 500 Feet Per Minute (FPM) but when you perform an autorotation the descent rate is almost 1500 FPM. Blade rotation is the life of the helicopter so you have to monitor it so you can make control inputs to keep the rotors spinning at the correct speed, not too fast, not too slow. You also have to maintain airspeed, so during the autorotation you look outside, at the airspeed indicator and at the rotor tachometer.

Run-on Landing/Takeoff

When performing a run-on take-off or landing you run the skids of the helicopter on the runway. During a take-off you build airspeed so you can generate lift and not use too much power from the engine. During a landing you touch down on the runway doing about 40 knots and run-on down the runway until you come to a stop.

I pre-flighted the helicopter and prepped for takeoff, Quincy is to the Northwest of Tallahassee and the wind was blowing from the south so we took off toward the south (you always want to take off into the wind whenever possible) made a wide left turn over Capital Circle and then began flying to the Northwest. Flying about 60 knots we climbed to 1000 ft. We had to doors off the helicopter since it was in the upper 80s, that was first time I flew with the doors off. The never exceed Velocity (Vne) with the doors off is 100 knots, so after we were at our cruise altitude, I sped up to a cruise speed of about 90 knots. With the wind coming from about 187 degrees that meant that Runway (RWY) 14 was the active runway in Quincy. We started with a normal approach and landing in a hover over the runway numbers. Holding the hover was average for me, mostly under control but needing some help from the flight instructor when things got too crazy.

Quincy was busy compared to the past flight lessons, usually in the 90 minutes I spend learning we are the only aircraft operating in the vicinity (excluding the jump planes from the parachute school that is located at the field), it has the cheapest Avgas in the area, so everyone comes to fill up there. So as I was learning we had to do a lot of radio calls and looking for other traffic as they made radio calls to announce their landings and take offs. Several times a fixed wing would announce they were in the pattern for RWY 14 and we would look and look to where they should be and not see them, then several minutes later we would see them crossing field preparing to enter the pattern. Radio calls are not required because Quincy is a non-towered airport; you should self-announce your position and intentions to alert others who are operating in the area.

With the parachute school operating from Quincy there are always jumpers going up to anywhere from 8-12 thousand feet and landing on the grass near the school. Today we took two jumpers up to 3500 feet and they jumped off of the helicopter. It was pretty cool to experience. Being pretty heavy we took off using maximum power and began our climb to 3500 feet. We were climbing at about 700 fpm, so it took about 5 minutes to reach jump altitude. After we were at 3500 feet and were over the area the jumpers wanted to bail at. They climbed to the skids of the helicopter, made their final preparations and after an audible count they were gone, falling back to earth. After a few seconds they opened their chutes and glided to the ground. We descended to 3000 feet and prepared for a normal approach for one last landing before we headed back to Tallahassee to do some ground lessons.

Learning about autorotations today, meant this last landing was going to be an autorotation in! You start by lowering the collective all the way and rolling the throttle down to about 65%. A Sprague clutch or free-wheeling unit allows the rotors to keep spinning if the engine stops or you are practicing autorotations. We setup for maximum glide configuration, 90 knots and 90% rotor speed. Your eyes do a continual sweep of outside, airspeed, rotor RPM while you make control inputs to steer to the landing site, maintain the airspeed and control the rotor RPM (too fast or too slow is bad). While we were descending I glanced at the vertical airspeed indicator (which tells you how fast and what direction (up or down) you are traveling) which was pegged past 2000 fpm descent! We went from 3000 feet to the ground in about 70 seconds (a 2800 foot difference, the Quincy airport sits about 200 feet above sea level).

We flew back to KTLH (Tallahassee Regional Airport) landed and shutdown the helicopter, that ended the 2 hour flight. I got positive feedback from the instructor about the new maneuvers we covered today and about my flying skills overall. He says I am on track to be able to start solo flights when I reach 20 hours (I am only 5 hours away!). Thinking of flying solo is kind of daunting for me, some days I feel and fly like I could do it and others I fly like crap and I feel like there is no way I will be ready to solo at 20 hours. After I do some solo flights, we will start cross country flights while I learn flight planning and navigation.

R48