Hover button....

 As the Navy Liaison Instructor for the Flight Medic Course there at "Mother Rucker". I can attest to the fun we have with the student pilots. We use them for our Medevac final exercises. It makes them feel like a real Dustoff pilot for an hour and our students look like a deer in the headlights when we explain what the orange doors on the 60's mean.

The last class was great. Our student flew great once he figured out how to start the thing.....

From a former victim of helicopter flight students - Greetings!!!

I was a victim of Ft. Rucker flight students during the Florida Phase of Ranger School.  We were conducting helicopter rappelling with student aircrews - great fun and laughs ;^)

The student flying the UH-1D from which I was rappelling was having serious trouble maintaining his altitude - When I left the skids we were about 60 feet up, but before I reached the ground, the student lost about 20 feet in altitude and I landed on my butt with 30 feet of rope still behind me!!!  The Ranger instructor was laughing while telling me to get off his rope!! 

Of course, that was better than when I was the safety trying to hold onto ropes that were dropping and rising by tens of feet.  Luckily none of the helicopters rose so far that the Ranger students ran out of rope before they reached the ground - OUCH!

But we Rangers never enjoyed the sound of helicopters more than those coming to take us out of the field - we quickly forgot about being dropped off on the wrong LZ four fays previously!!!

 

HOOAH!!

I swear...the 40 some odd hours I spent sweating in the H-300C (basically a TH-55) were probably some of the fondest yet hardest working flight time I've ever logged.  The worst was doing 180 autos on the reef runway taxiway at Honolulu Int'l, and having the crosswind through the cockpit rip the damn velcroed cushion in the middle loose.  Talk about mastering many tasks at once!  I sure would have liked to have been on the outside looking in on that one.  Musta looked like a monkey &^?!ing a football!

ANYWAY Jon, like many have already said...just about the time you've convinced yourself that "I'm never gonna get this down"...That's when miraculasly it just clicks for ya.  Now it might not be pretty, but it clicks.

Have a blast with it Bubba!  The future brings feet on the floor, SAS 1, SAS 2, and depending on the aircraft commander you're flying with maybe even SAS 3

It will come

Jon,

   Ya'll ought to try it in  the Mattel Messerschmitt (AKA TH-55). In addition to the flight controls, we had that darned manual throttle to contend with.  Soloed 37 years ago; March 9, 1969. IP was Capt. JW McElroy. Nice guy. When I looked over half way through the pattern and realized he wasn't there, I nearly soiled myself. Our first day trying to hover was a real treat. 55's fluttering in all directions. It still astonishes me that no one played mingle wing on the stagefield that day.

Hang in there, the technique will hit you like a bolt from the blue. Sort of like when you know you have the right woman...only your brain doesn't turn to mush!

Welcome aboard - you are gonna have so much fun it will be some of your best memories of life.

Can't say enough how important it is to choose a reference point well out  in front of the machine.

After that it is like riding a bike. A noisy, vibrating, hot, uncontrolable bike but a bike all the same.

I agree that you have to be gentle on the cyclic - if you can see it move it is probably too much. Pressure not movement.

Easy to say - hard to do- "Use the collective to adjust your altitude. Use the cyclic to control your position over the ground. Use the pedals as necessary to control aircraft heading." I can still hear my instructor "Outo Al" in my headphones. Of course he would then place one finger on top of the cyclic, one on the end of the collective and do a flawless hover pattern saying: "It is not, as I am demonstrating, half as difficult as you are making it!" I still can see the dings in my old helmet where he used to hit me with his clipboard - all in fun of course! Great guy! 30 years later we are still in contact.

If you find you are trying to squeeze toothpaste out of the cyclic try placing the stub of a pencil between your index and little fingers with the other 2 on top. When you tense up the pencil will hurt your fingers and you will relax your grip. Unless you are a glutton for punishment! - I have seen this work a lot. In the old non-PC daze a cigarette worked even better - as long as it was the student's cig and not yours and he cleaned up all the tabacco from the floor after the flight.

Its funny, I keep trying to tell myself to relax.  At altitude, I have no problem.  Having some fixed-wing time helped a lot in that aspect.  Hovering wasn't all that bad. I was able to hold my heading pretty easily.  My biggest issue was forward and aft cyclic.  Apparently I was inputting both fore and aft and didn't even realize it.  Ended up taking off unintentionally three times, much to the enjoyment of my IP, who promptly curved us around and put us smack over our hover spot again.  I'll get it today if we fly.  Its cloudy and windy, so I don't think we will, but we'll see. 

Now SEFs at altitude?  Nooo problem. Greased that sucker into a perfect auto and recovery yesterday.  THAT was FUN!!!!

 

 

Ah, yes!  The old "death grip"!  White knuckles, if you could see through the Nomex flight gloves.  Then was taught the "thumb and forefinger" technique.  It's amazing how you stopped sweating so much when you found the "touch"!  Then it was fun hovering instead of seeming like a death sentence on death row. 

Ha ha, very good description of the feeling!!!  I remember exactly what you are going through!  Never fear, you will go to the flight line one day soon, probably the day after you feel like you'll never get there and somehow, during the night you found your personal "hover button" and it will all work for you.  Then comes the real fun, Autorotations!!!!

Have fun, and remember, the cyclic and collective work a bit better when you dont have a death grip on them!! (but thank god they are made of some sturdy stuff!!!)

Matt

The title of your e-mail had me wondering why you didn't just hit the "hover" button?
Was it because it was training or doesn't the aircraft have one?
(that is only semi sarcasm. . . totally unsarcastic is this: It really is fun isn't it?)

Don

I've also heard someone refer to hovering like balancing on a wet bar of soap or riding a unicycle!   I remember my first try back in Sept of "71" at Chu Lai with my Maint. Officer.  What a disaster almost.  Finally got the hang of it years later in the Reserves.  Never did learn to ride a unicyle!   

Cobrahistorian wrote:

Evening all... For todays lesson, I'd like everyone to take out their skateboard and place it on the ground in front of you.  Now step up onto it, placing one foot firmly in the center.  Don't let that second foot touch it!  You have to tuck your right foot up behind you and keep it there.  Now, once you've got that, take your broomstick... no, don't act like Harry Potter, balance it vertically on the tip of your index finger... good.  Ok... hey, don't let that right foot touch the board!  Ok, now, continue doing those two things while patting yourself on the head continuously.  Very good!  That's basically what I did for the better part of an hour today.  Today was my first flight!  Hovering is one heck of a challenge.  By the end of the training period, I was getting a handle on it... a little.  Its hard, but man is it fun!  The Apache screaming past me in the Bearcat corridor going the other direction was pretty cool too! Later guys! Jon

Stories like this makes a person appreciate tandem rotor aircraft...set the pedals and leave them alone and all you have to worry about is cyclic and collective/thrust, not only in a hover but through most parameters of flight except for turns, banks, and pedal turns. Another thing that is nice about 46s and 47s is you don't have to worry too much about CG

Jonathan Primm