Cracking the big 50

Today I completed both the furthest solo flight I've ever flown in a chopper, and also my fiftieth hour of total helicopter time, about ten hours of which are solo. The past week has been about progressively allowing me to do more and more flying solo in the form of a check flight with the instructor to ensure they're happy with my performance of the flight manoeuvre at hand, followed by a period of flying the manoeuvre solo. This essentially means that I can fly everything that I have learnt to date solo, bar emergency procedures which for obvious reasons we don't practice without the instructor.

This weekend we've moved onto practice forced landings (PFLs) which we practiced in the training area approximately 10 to 15 nautical miles to the south of Jandakot airport. The PFL consists of the autorotation manoeuvre discussed in an earlier post, looking for and choosing a place to land, ensuring you land into wind (this includes looking for signs of where the wind is coming from), looking out for wires and fences, a passenger briefing "brace, brace, brace" (which is code for the passenger to sit upright with hands on their seatbelt as would have been briefed to the passenger prior to the beginning of the flight), a simulated "Mayday" call on the radio (to communicate with air traffic control and other traffic of your predicament), troubleshooting the aircraft to see if it can be restarted, and setting yourself up for the landing.

Of course, in a real emergency, this becomes a game of prioritisation depending on how much time you have and things can fall off due to their relative unimportance. The most important thing is to put the machine on the ground safely; communicating your predicament would be beneficial but comes second in the pecking order, etc. This all happens very quickly. We were practicing from 2000ft, and descending at around 1500 fpm gives about a minute to do this (since we pull full power and "go around" at 500ft above the surface - so as not to scare the cows).

Once my instructor was happy with my PFLs I was set to embark on my furthest journey yet as Captain Jonno. I departed to the southwest, flew to the training area and practiced some steep turns (45-60 degree angle of bank) and compass turns (using some simple arithmetic to level out at the correct heading when turning with the compass - it has errors when turning since the centre of gravity is offset from the pivotal point). I then flew back, made my radio calls and entry and landed back at the hanger.

This next week I will be learning how to safely land on a slope and then move on to landing in confined areas, i.e. relatively small areas (compared to the airport I've been practicing on) surrounded by large trees. This is looking like it will be a lot of fun. After confined areas we'll be looking at doing navigational flights or "navs" which includes flying to places I've never been before, map reading, getting lost, finding yourself, etc.

Good old Romeo Alpha Sierra (RAS), the pilots choice out of the three R22s at Rotorvation