First flight in R-22...

"Steve R." wrote in message ...
After the third rendition of this little dance, the instructor asks me
"where" I'm looking. I say, "Why, right outside that little window!" (or
something to that effect) He says, "Try looking out toward the horizon."

Damn, what a difference that makes. I was actually keeping it on top of
that 20 foot diameter helipad. What a rush! :-D

Hi!

I was able to get second 1hr lesson, with another instructor :-) We
found out what was wrong day befo

1. Instructor was trying to much to fix my "overcontrol". And I felt
resistance on cyclic, and though it's coming from rotor and tried to
"correct" it ;-)
2. Hou have to keep your right hand on your knee, not in air
3. Look out to horizon - use peripheral vision :-)
4. Relax. Be slow. Have lazy hands ;-)

Actually, at the end of this hour I actually felt I was flying
helicopter :-) It probably looked from outside like piloting "under
influence" - I was being thrown around helipad (and sometimes way
further away) quite a lot, used wrong pedals to correct rotation, but
at least I was able to keep it in the air proper side up. I even
managed to land "almost" in the middle of helipad few times. Not
without slight random sideways movement though :-) And to my surprise
I stopped worrying too much about hitting ground, it was way easier to
control altitude with collective (by control I mean keep it more than
zero), than vertical speeds - those were, lets say, very variable. It
felt like sliding on air pillow(?). That's how it's supposed to work,
but the feeling is nice :-) I also liked demonstration how to put
helicopter to ground just by quick&random cyclic movements.

And I tried to control while doing this short loop :-) When it flies
faster it's actually not that hard to control balance. But then
approaching airport for landing is quite different from airplane
method, and it looks funny. And legs hurt after a while (relax,
relax)... It's just strange to have nothing in front of you.

Wow! That was fun :-)

I was surprised that controlling altitude with collective is not that
hard, tail rotor is also quite easy (if you remember and press proper
pedal) but cyclic is another story. After a while I found out that
controlling helicopter is from one side much "faster" than airplane,
and from the other much "slower". I mean, you get instant and very
quick changes in attitude, but need to wait few seconds for effects in
movement changes. Actually it seems you need to wait a while for
attitude changes too :-) It worked best when I used something like
"half" control input for corrections.

That's pretty obvious if you think about helicopter aerodynamics, but
it's different thing to read about it and different to actually do it.
And feel it.

Now, if I had another lesson I would be able to do it much better :-)

I think I got hooked :-)

Will continue - someday in future. Right now I'm back in Poland,
reading again "Rotorcraft Flying Manual" and R-22 POH :-) Anything
else you could reccomend?

Flying planes looks like cheap hobby in comparison, and here every
flying things costs 2-4 times as much... Need to do this in US ;-)
--
Filip Zawadiak
PP-ASEL 138hr + 1.3hr helicopter :-)