Objects (as in Operating near Objects is Stressful Regardless of the Actual Threat the Object Possessiveness!)

17 June 2012

Today's flight was pretty much a repeat of last week.  The focus was mainly on the maneuvers I need to be able to perform while flying alone.  Normal take off, landing, hovering, hover taxi, pick up, set down and auto rotation.

I am doing pretty much all the radio calls now since I will have to do them when I am flying solo.  No instructor in the cabin to prompt or complete the call.  Just me.  I am confident enough to be maybe a bit over cautious.  My dream is to fly helicopters not die in a helicopter crash.

Today we flew out to the old commercial airport just North of KTLH.  The runway is closed but it makes a nice place to practice with no other traffic.  The runway is not very long and has trees on all sides.  Trees on the left or right side don't really bother me, it is when I have to land flying over trees or take off with trees in the departure path.  I'm not really sure why it bothers me so much, I know I can maintain altitude until I clear the trees when landing and I can climb fast enough to clear the trees on departure.

While practicing pick ups, set downs and hovering I got close to an old set of traffic cones that were positioned on either side of the runway.  I noticed them as I would pick up, move forward a bit, hover to a spot, stop and set down (again opening the door to get some cooler air).  These are the larger cones that come up to about the middle of your thigh, 30 - 36 inches tall.  For whatever reason, I did not want to get near them.  They couldn't damage the main rotor, it is 12 feet off the ground.  The tail rotor is about 5 feet above the ground, so no real threat to that, but as I moved closer to them I could feel my self starting to get nervous about them being there.  I did fly past them a couple of times before while doing landings and take offs before I even noticed them when I started practicing hovering maneuvers.

I had a hard time getting my landing profile correct.  My approach was too steep most of the time, I was too slow or too fast, but mostly I was too high and was not descending as I should.  This matters because of something called the "Dead Man's Curve".  There is a chart published by the helicopter manufacturer that outlines flight conditions that if you are operating in those regions you will not have time or aircraft performance to safely land in the event of an engine or other failure.  When you are low and moving slow, you will not be able to enter an auto rotation that will provide the performance needed to safely set the helicopter down.  If you are operating in the Dead Man's Curve and you have a failure of any kind, you can bet on being dead.

I did pretty good overall and it was time to go back to KTLH.  Once again my approach was too steep, but I managed to land and hover to the parking spot and made a decent set down.  On Saturday, my instructor and I will get in the helicopter, fly over to Quincy (2J9), review the basic maneuvers and after about 30 minutes of flying together, we will land and he will get out of the helicopter.  Then I head off on my own for 30-45 minutes, landing to pick up my instructor and fly back to KTLH.

Then I start learning about navigation methods and cross country flight planning.  Then comes a few cross country flights, night flights, solo cross country flights and probably a solo night flight.  My goal is to have my private license by my birthday (which is in October) and my instructor says that should not be a problem.

I am still working on getting a GoPro Hero camera to record my adventures, hopefully I will be able to afford it soon.  I know that reading about something and seeing that same thing are different.  I really want to be able to contrast the decent rate of a normal approach versus an auto rotation!

R48