B4RT wrote:
I'm dual rated and own both a turbine helicopter and a plane. I did
helicopter first, and am firmly convinced it was the right thing to do.

Airplanes and helicopters only have 3 things in common from a learning
perspective: rules n regs, radios, and cruise flight. The rest of the stuff
is different enough that extrapolating one to the other can lead to
problems. Even some the regs are different enough to give you a headache in
an exam.

I had logged a lot of time in rotorcraft before I did the transition to
fixed wing. It was a breeze and only took a week. I can't imagine the
inverse being true.

We are pretty much in agreement. I've been
licensed in fixed wing since 1977, and recently
started flying helicopters for fun. I was able to
fly the helicopter in cruise flight right away,
and was able to basically hover IGE after 1 hour
of instruction. Basically means it wasn't the
prettiest hover, but pretty much stayed in one
place ;-)

At the end of the second hour of instruction, I
could lift up, taxi to the pad, and take off
without the instructor touching anything, and was
also starting to be able to transition from
approach to hover.

Somewhere around 5 hours, things were pretty well
clicking, and we were doing high speed taxis,
autos with power recovery, etc. I was flying the
R22 all the time except when the instructor went
to demonstrate something new. I was bringing the
R22 back from the pad to its parking spot among 6
other helis, and doing the necessary tail spin to
put it properly in its spot At that point, my
instructor told me that he felt I was ready to
solo, but the schools policy required 15 hours of
dual because of insurance. That was back in '04.

The biggest time eaters in rotorcraft training are IGE hovering,
autorotations, and approach to hover, and very little translates from
airplanes to choppers with these. I've talked to a few people who are dual
rated and have never run across anyone who did fixed-rotorcraft in the
minimum time prescribed by the FAA, so the money savings thing is a probably
a practical myth.

Agreed. The best you can hope for is fixed and
rotorcraft at basically the same price as
rotorcraft only. Also, I think for a student who
was new to flying, doing both would confuse the
issue. In my case, I'd been flying fixed so long
that I could concentrate on the differences with
the Heli.

The best way to save money is to NOT do any training until you've saved
enough to do all of the fight time in a concentrated block of time. Pass
your written exam first while youre saving up the money. Having the exam out
of the way will relieve you of a lot of pressure so you can focus on the
expensive flght time. If you only take one or two lessons a week it will
probably take you at least 30% more flight hours to complete.

This is good advice.


Bart

Don W.