Day 20 – Helicopter Training Flight #20 – 180° Autorotations, Hovering ‘Pirouettes’ & More…

This is the twentith training flight in a series following a student through his flight training from day 1 to checkride in an R22.

Due to flying with one door off, the airflow creates some extra noise, which means some interference in the audio in some parts of the video.

Some highlights of this lesson:

  • 180° autorotations
  • Hovering ‘pirouette’ maneuvers
  • Hover autos
  • Running Landings

Below the video are time-stamped notes/tips for the flight.

NOTES/TIPS:

00:00 start of video missing – starts with straight-in autorotations at towered airport
01:35 don’t bounce or bump cyclic – put in positive pressure and hold it there
04:35 in the flare, as the airspeed decreases, you can pull cyclic back more
05:40 straight-in autorotation – to private pilot checkride standard
09:35 straight-in autorotation – make sure to level skids before getting too low, to avoid tail strike
11:05 demonstration of an autorotation with a 180 degree turn (180 auto) – pay attention to the attitude (reference the horizon)
11:40 tower issuing an IFR clearance (for when you start Instrument training) on ground frequency (but also on tower frequency as he is covering both)
14:00 200 foot AGL check for practice 180 autos
15:15 experiment with turns in autorotation at high altitude to start with
15:30 two common errors when turning in an autorotation – nose drops and RPM builds
19:55 180 autorotation at altitude
24:00 running landing
27:20 if the instructor is nudging controls, don’t let go of the controls unless they say “my controls”
31:40 don’t forget to gently lower collective after touchdown on running landing to slow the slide
34:45 try to be more specific than “the airplane” -add position “the airplane taking runway 16” for example
38:35 if doing hover auto after many normal autos, remind yourself NOT to lower collective on the hover auto!!
38:45 hover autos
42:10 pirouettes – hover control and coordination practice
44:00 running landing from hover height

To view all the videos in this series, check out this YouTube playlist of all the Flight Training Sessions (Full-Length Unedited)

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