Lee Loader

Learning to fly a helicopter. Me out for the dawn patrol...

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Looks good. I have flown in many helicopters. Loved them all but my favourite was the Bell 206 Jet Ranger

Are they integrated controls now or still double stick and "rudders" ?

An older Bell 500 is about all I ever really looked at .......I didn't ever fidget with them much .

We have a small airport that is next to the golf course. I saw someone that must have been training as well. The aircraft was similar and would take off, rotate, and come back down repeatedly.

I flew in one years ago. Takeoff and flight was not too bad, but coming back to land scared me to near death.
You must have speed to keep from stalling. All your senses say you are going to crash and die. How do you ignore the feelings that you learn in fixed wing aircraft?

I've near 23K hours in fixed-wing airplanes, and the best way to do this is to throw everything out the door and start over. It is a totally different discipline involving different aerodynamic principles. It comes down to managing energy, kinetic and potential, storing them, and trading one type for another.

I started meeting my night flight time requirements last night until the day rolled over to this morning. My first-night landing, spot on!
Me, finding out that I would need to wait 20 minutes for a fuel truck. It was near midnight, and the fuel was needed to get back.

Looking good Michael. So, your training in a Robinson but gonna be working in a Bell?

larryw wrote:Looking good Michael. So, your training in a Robinson but gonna be working in a Bell?

Yeah, you don't train in a $2.5M helicopter. After this, I will go to Flight Safety Internationals Bell 407 Initial training which is a week of ground school along with flying a full-motion & visual simulator.