Whew! Flying from the opposite side of the aircraft that you’ve flown for 180 hours has been an enlightening experience! I never realized how many movements come second nature to us in controlling aircraft heading, power and cross wind components.
Many people have images of helicopters falling out of the sky like a rock when their engine fails or an emergency landing occurs. I think this image is conjured from the fact that helicopters are inherently unstable. What I mean by “unstable” is that they require constant small inputs from their flight controls to maintain the flight path you desire. Whether hovering, take off or strait and level flight, we are constantly compensating for one input via another input…thus these movements become second nature as we learn to stabilize and control the aircraft. In my CFI lab, i’ve had to identify every movement I make and practice talking out loud. It sounds a little like this:
“Now we’ll get light on the skids as we raise collective, arresting any lateral movement with the pedals and cyclic before we come up. As we raise collective we add a bit of left pedal, looking outside at our reference point on the horizon. Now we’ve lifted into a hover, we’ll push forward on the cyclic ever so gentle, maintaining heading with slight pressure on the pedals if needed, arresting our forward airspeed with aft cyclic – not too aft that you strike your tail!”
I just described talking out loud through less than 1 minute of flight! Although it’s exhausting to talk through every little action you’re making, it’s important for the instructor in the right seat to see you correlating movements appropriately. In CFI, we are responsible for teaching in the cockpit, teaching on the ground, building good decision making skills within our students and learning the fundamentals to instruction. These tasks become easier as we gain 2 things:
1. Clarity in Communicating Effectively
2. Building Confidence.
If you are interested in flying at all, look to your nearest flight school or FBO and treat yourself to a discovery flight! Check out Global Air FBO’s to see what’s near you!
AERO~PARKS 