DarkSarcasm

Hi all, I've signed up to do an RA FI rating starting in the second week of Dec. I'm keen to do it but I'm also a bit nervous about it. I've no idea if I'd be a good teacher or absolutely terrible at it. Not to mention, I don't really feel like I've been flying long enough to teach others how to fly. I mean, I've only been flying for about 2.5 years, is that enough experience? It seems like to teach you should have 10 years or more. I guess I'm just looking for reassurance from the FIs out there - did you feel like this before doing your rating?

Maybe give Lilydale a call? They're building new hangars at the mo (or just built them - not sure of the progress) so they might have some space?

Maybe they were playing a variation of 'How many people can you fit in a Mini?'

They're not really something you intend to have when you have it. It can happen very fast with no time to avoid it. They can also be found at 3200ft (as I found out the hard way)

Hi Morgs, Would you happen to be the Morgs that flies out of Helicopter Group at YMMB?

Hi kaz, no I'm doing a traineeship (essentially renamed articles) with a firm, not Leos. Mine takes a year to complete unlike Leos which is 6 months. If all goes to plan, I'll be admitted in March next year.

I'm a trainee lawyer and will be admitted in Victoria early next year. I have a PPL, an RA cert, an RA FI rating in the next few months if all goes to plan, and hopefully a rotary PPL by the end of next year or mid 2013.

If they set up a chatroom here, they'll never get rid of us!

I was trying to hold it lightly, my FI kept telling me to relax and he could see my knuckles turning white (it didn't feel like I was holding it that tightly!) I hope so! But there's a lot to do between now and hour 38 so I guess I'll just have to wait and see. Bahaha! :thumb_up: Sorry DJ, I'm not sure aeros was for me. Perhaps in the future I'll have another crack at it. I'll definitely be back in the Decathlon with you sometime in the next few months to get my tailwheel rating though!

I had my second flight/first official lesson on Sunday. We did a lesson on hovering. First was a bit of paperwork, starting a file for me and taking a photocopy of my licence (to prove I actually had one and wasn't just saying I did!) etc. They also gave me a USB stick with a copy of their flight training manual and the POH for the Hughes 300 and R44. Next, unsurprisingly, the briefing about hovering. We went through the primary/secondary effects of each control in normal flight, then the primary/secondary effects of each control in the hover. The trick with hovering is that you need to control everything at once - balance the primary/secondary effects of each control so that you don't go anywhere, you just stay in place. When you hover, you generally hover about 3ft off the ground (from the ground to the bottom of the skids) but we were practicing at 5ft at first then moving down to 3ft. The reason for that height is that if the engine fails, it gives you enough time to put in left pedal to stop the heli turning (from the tail-rotor) and straighten it up and slow down enough to stop safely. If you hover too low (say 1ft) then you won't have time to stop it turning and if you hit one skid before the other you can roll over, which isn't fun. Then we went out and did about 40 minutes of hovering practice. All I can say is, it's an interesting challenge! When it all comes together it's lots of fun, but when it all starts going over the shop, you're left trying to catch up. The main problem I had was stopping forwards/backwards movement with the cyclic, it kept going backwards when I didn't want it to, but when I moved the cyclic foward to make it stop it ended up going forwards! Very frustrating. It's obvious that you need tiny tiny movements of the control and I'm still trying to get used to how small, plus I'm not giving the heli enough time to respond to my control input so I'm putting a further input in which doesn't help. I did manage to hold a semi-successful hover a few times, other times I was going all over the shop and at one point I was slightly concerned that YMMB would be less one windsock! My FI said afterwards that I was hovering at a '3 hour' level. Whether that means 3 hours of hovering practice or 3 hours of general heli flying, I'm not too sure, but either way it's still more time that I have so I'm pleased. Next lesson is in 2 weeks (unfortunately I can't afford one lesson a week, the 40 minutes on Sunday cost $340 (ouch!)) and we'll be working on either elementary handling or more hovering.

I've become 'one of them' have I? Can't I be in both camps?

er....what for? If you mean to hide from me, then no

It has a mixture control so I'd say 300C

No photos I'm afraid, I took my camera but forgot to grab a photo. I'm going to ask my FI to take a photo of me with the 300 on Sunday though :big_grin: So, the write up as requested... I did it at a place called The Helicopter Group at Moorabbin. I'd considered a couple of places but this one had better prices plus seemed to have a good rep on the internet. I arrived, met my FI. He asked why I was doing the TIF and I said I had my PPL(A) and felt like trying helis. So we had a chat about how a heli flies and differences between how they fly and an aeroplane. We headed out to the heli, a Hughes/Schweizer 300, did a walk around, had a look at how the controls moved the rotor, got in (sitting on the RHS is a bit odd). We went through the controls and the instruments then he went through how to start it up (which he said he wouldn't normally do for a TIF but since I had my PPL, I wasn't really his normal TIF). He took off (which felt *weird*) and we taxiied over to the helipad, got clearance and did a fast liftoff/takeoff that was FUN! We headed out to the training area and he handed me control of each control at the time. First he gave me control of the cyclic (the stick, which controls speed and roll) and it took some getting used to how sensitive it was (he gave me a demo on the ground, saying 'this is a right roll' with the barest move of the stick to the right that I could barely feel, so I had some idea that it was very sensitive). Then he took control of the cyclic and gave me control of the pedals (not rudder pedals as I was informed, anti-torque pedals) then took control of the pedals and gave me control of the collective (which makes you go up and down). Then he gave me control of all of them (he had said at the start that he'd keep control fo the pedals for the entire flight) and while I know he wasn't far away from the controls at any time (obviously) by the time we were cruising back to YMMB I had full control of the controls. One thing I found hard to get used to was the low nose attitude in the cruise, I kept trying to raise the nose to an attitude I was more used to. Another thing I found confusing was that moving the cyclic (stick) forward and back doesn't make it climb/descend, it makes it go faster/slower so when he said to climb/descend my initial reaction was always to move the cyclic. When we were cruising back from the training area, I was definitely getting the hang of it and slipping into 'normal' flying of making small corrections without even realising I'm doing it. Once we got back to Moorabbin, he showed me an auto-rotation (engine failure). Before the flight I'd asked him what happened when the engine failed and he said it did glide. There was a slight g-force as the engine 'failed' and then it did glide, a far far shorter glide than an aircraft, but the tradeoff is that you don't need nearly the same amount of space to land in and don't have to sit there thinking 'is that field long enough?'. After that we went to a patch of grass and tried hovering. The trick with hovering is that you need to control absolutely everything all at once - stop it going up, down, forward, backward, roll and turn. It was pretty all over the shop most of the time I tried it but for 5 seconds I held the hover perfectly! (My FI was like "Now you can go home and tell everyone you held a hover!"). I think hovering was the thing that really hooked me into wanting to learn more, after that 5 seconds where all clicked together and I held it properly, it was a challenge that I couldn't give up until I'd mastered it. We then taxiied back to the hangar and had to sit for 3 minutes letting the engine cool before shutdown. Got out, headed inside, I signed up for more lessons and discovered, to my delight, that since I have a PPL(A) I only need to do minimum of 38 hours instead of 50 to get a PPL(H).My FI recommended keeping a separate logbook for heli flying to make it easier to keep track of total time in each. I've got another lesson on Sunday, and can't wait!

I think it's more a question of 'will all of you still talk to me?'!

You can pretty much guarantee that if you're having problems with something, at least one person (usually a lot more than one) on this site went through the same thing :)

Just do what I did - learn at a field with a runway without a centre line! I didn't land at a field with one of those newfangled centre lines :big_grin: until I was doing my navs...

If you're trying Nevil Shute, even though it isn't one of his aviation ones, A Town Like Alice is my favourite book of his

haha, no, I was zooming around YMMB training area in a Hughes/Schweizer 300 looking something like this:

It's not a WWII pilot book, but the books by John J Nance are excellent aviation thrillers, I found them pretty unputdownable. Also worth reading (especially for members of a rec flying forum) is Propellerhead by Antony Woodward. I've read it about 5 times and loved it each time.

Oh no, a fate worse than death, anything but that!!

If only! No, instead I appear to have dedicated myself to a life of poverty

I have a confession... I'm planning to become a heliflopter driver. I had a heli TIF today and it was lots of fun, so I'm going back next week to learn a bit more. Highlight of today was definitely the 5 seconds I successfully held the hover :big_grin: Hopefully next week I might make it to 6 seconds!

I've booked a Heli TIF for this weekend, which should be a fun (interesting) experience While I was on the phone booking it, I had the following exchange with the lady at the heli place: Lady: "What's your husband/partner's name?" Me: "No, it's for me!" I was a bit surprised by this. I mean, sure, they probably get most TIFs booked for partners, but they could at least ask "Is it for you or someone else?" first!

Thanks (I think!)