Ask a helicopter pilot anything

[Siko]

Theraveda said:

Like this?

ewww that's the one! I think they crash a lot but fair play, must be a fun job

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Dr Jekyll said:

Interesting that Dave Morgan managed to get accepted for RAF pilot training after being chopped by RN. Perhaps the RAF figured that the Navy had already done most of the training work so they might as well take advantage, or maybe an RN instructor thought he'd been chopped unreasonably and had a quiet word with an RAF counterpart.

it does happen. There was a navy jet pilot on the course behind me going through helicopter training, obviously the only jet the navy had at the time was the Sea Harrier which is a demanding aircraft to fly. She had got through and passed Valley advanced jet training but had only got a twin seat recommend (ie Tornado only), so despite passing the course was sent to convert to helicopters instead. While she was going through helicopter training she applied to the RAF and transferred across, I have a feeling she got chopped on the Tornado OCU as I heard she didn't make it in the end. As a general point there was a lot of movement around between the services and there were quite a few ex-Army/Navy on the various Squadrons I was on over the years.

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Mercdriver said:

Interesting in that the RAF allows pilots to transfer from fixed to rotary wing.

I am sure I read, some time ago, that the USA do not allow it, something to do with controlling a stall, exact opposite between the two, fixed you check forward and rotary you pull back. In an emergency wrong input could be lethal to the pilot and the airframe! I would not think an experienced pilot on either would make such a mistake, but hey what do I know about flying rotary? I only know marginally more about flying fixed wing.

Might have changed though now

Plenty of pilots transferred both ways for a variety of reasons. A few mates went from rotary to plank-wing and happily flying C-17/C-130J etc and quite a few transferred across to fly helicopters. When I was teaching we had a few ex-jet guys come through, one had gone Hercules-Hawk instructor and then lost his ejection seat category for medical reasons so thought he'd try helicopters, another was ex-jaguars. I put in an earlier post but I flew the Puma the same time I was flying air cadets in Grob Tutors and never any issue with the wrong technique - I was equally cr*p on both

[Siko]

NowWatchThisDrive said:

Another really interesting meander in the discussion. This thread really is top value.

A chap I know who flew Hercs only ended up doing so after getting a good chunk of the way through fast jet training (up to flying the Hawk, I believe). We've not been in touch for a while but the last I heard he had a pretty decent commercial gig having stayed in until 40ish I think so clearly worked out alright for him in the end.

In your experience does that sort of thing tend to happen more on the basis of safety and ability or is it mostly the service need(/illogical bureaucracy)? I assume the flying ramps up in intensity pretty rapidly during training and if someone's capacity is being overstretched to the extent that they're at risk of flying into a mountain or power line then it does nobody any favours to keep them on...

Thanks mate! To answer your question it's a bit of both - as I mentioned a few pages back about my Test Pilot chum who was doing fine on his Hawk course and then found himself sent to fly Helicopters as the seats were no longer available in the jet world, it does happen. There was a big cull throughout the RAF training world not long before I left, maybe 2010-11 or so when the RAF decided they didn't need anywhere near as many pilots as they had going through training. It was awful and I feel for all the pilots who were pulled off courses and told they were no longer going to fly....

As to why pilots don't make it through training, sometimes pilots just aren't cutting it from the word go or they get to an applied stage and struggle. It definitely gets harder the further through you get and you find you are just loaded up more and more the closer you get to the end. It does tend to be safety stuff that people fail things for though (I've failed flights myself - it's fairly routine for military flying training ) as sometimes pilots are concentrating so much on flying the aircraft they miss the other aircraft in the circuit and the instructor has to intervene or take control. From my experience as an instructor if I had to take control on a regular flight it was usually just part of the learning experience for the trainee and as long as they learned/it wasn't too bad you just moved on. if it was a checkride then taking control for a safety issue was pretty much a mandatory fail as they were meant to be competent in what you were assessing them on and at least safe.

If a student failed a flight they ended up in a system known as "Air Warning". Fail one flight you usually got a couple of extra flights and a refly of the trip failed on Air Warning 1 (AW1), if you failed the refly or a similar sortie you would probably go to AW2 and get a couple more trips and a refly. If you failed another refly or a similar type of flight you would go to AW3 which usually involved a board assessing their progress and either awarding more training flights (unusual) or going straight to a checkride with a senior instructor. If they failed the checkride they were off the course and dependent which part of training they failed would lead to their fate, either rerole to another type or leave flying completely.

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pete_esp said:

Another great thread!

I have a question regarding emergency landings, I was just out walking my dog when a helicopter came over and looked like it was about to land in the field I was in. However the helicopter then changed attitude and moved on to the field next to me and proceeded to land.

So my question is, if you're coming in to land in an area but spot someone on the ground do you have to move on to the next safe space assuming there is one within reach?

Thanks Pete! To be honest no, but it sounds like the pilot was exercising good airmanship to go elsewhere. Obviously if it was a real autorotation then you would have to plonk her down anywhere safe and would almost certainly not be able to choose another field (unless you saw an obstacle/people at a good distance away).

Autorotating a helicopter (landing without engines) is a fairly stressful experience in anything other than a small and light-ish helicopter. In my current one you are going down like the proverbial ton of bricks and pretty much limited to going somewhere under your nose.

If you are carrying out a precautionary landing (eg you have a warning light illuminated) then dependent on what is potentially going wrong would dictate how much flexibility you have to move elsewhere if pedestrians are on your original landing location.

[Siko]

The_Doc said:

My brother, who currently flies an R44 for his job, told me a few years ago he had a sudden 75% loss in power at 600ft, so he put it down in the field below. Rather sharpish. But fortunately not an auto rotate jobbie.

He then walked 30 mins to the 2 nearest farms to work out who owned the field, let the farmer know, and rang his boss to explain where the bird currently was.

Then he had a 3 hour train journey home.

Exciting times

Bloody hell - great job by your bro! That is no easy job landing with only 25% power, sounds like he did very well there. In my military career I’ve had numerous precautionary landings (normally bird strikes or a chip light). People are normally very interested in the helicopter and you almost always ended up showing the farmers kids around the cockpit….was in general really nice way to spend some time and having a brew in the sun with a nice old dear next to your mighty steed was kind of cool too

[Siko]

Avenicus said:

Do you ever do anything to scare annoying passengers?

Definitely not in the civilian world! To be fair the passengers are really good and never any bother at all.

When I was a military pilot we did get asked to”throw it about a bit” if it was non-hostile as it was somebody or others birthday/loved flying. In the Puma you could do some fun non-helicopter type things I’d probably better not go into here, but when the troops got off there would always be, without fail, one poor b*ger who was pale and didn’t look entirely happy

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take-good-care-of-the-forest-dewey said:

Apologies for being a bit cryptic, but as you're an ex Puma pilot and you seem the right age... have you ever met John Cleland?

Nope sorry, most of the time I was on them there were 3 big(ish) squadrons so unlikely you’d know everyone but name definitely doesn’t ring a bell.

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The Road Crew said:

Did you know the crew of 934?

Not at all - I had left the Puma force by the time that crew came into it. Funnily enough I do have a connection to them though. For anyone who doesn’t know what happened there was a horrible fatal accident to Puma ZA934 on 8 Aug 2007 with several fatalities:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/governmen...

Just checked my logbook and ZA934 was my last Puma flight before I transferred to the Merlin (I returned to Puma in 2010). Last flight for me in ZA934 was Jul 28 2002 when we were called out to an incident in Belfast.

My connection to ZA934 and the accident was because I was one of the few Puma pilots who didn’t know any of the crew, when I was flying it back again in 2010. The service inquiry (or coroners inquest) was taking place and I was asked to show them the profile the crew flew in the flight simulator. I was shown it and it was a real mind fck to fly an exact profile that led to a fatal crash when every sinew of your flying experience is screaming at you not to do it. Took me 2 hours of practice to replicate it but in the end I was not asked to show demonstrate it to anyone.

[Siko]

Turtle Shed said:

Does your chopper have "whisper mode" like Blue Thunder?

Sorry if asked before, but it matters.

sorry to disappoint but nope

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take-good-care-of-the-forest-dewey said:

Found a vid so no need to be cryptic...

Epic puma jolly...

A friend was involved with setting it up.

Great video! Thanks for sharing I’ve not seen that before, does bring back a few memories though. I know of both of those pilots but didn’t really overlap with them in NI or the mainland. Stopping a car is a lot more difficult than you think - if a driver is really going for it then it is very very difficult as you have to anticipate where they are going, somehow get well ahead of them, find a suitable field and manage to land/troops get out of the field in time to stop some nutter probably going not much slower than the helicopter! I stopped a car in Iraq once that must have been doing 100+ and it took bloody ages to get sufficient distance in front of him and only really managed it when he got to a slow S bend

[Siko]

Mercdriver said:

Can a twin engine helicopter fly on one engine safely? I guess it would not be able to take off vertically with a full load and may not be able to do a rolling take off.

If it can must Be fun, not, flying on one engine.

How do you identify the failed engine? It is as difficult as identifying a fixed wing aircraft?

Over Edinburgh at 6000’ as passenger in back and student pilot switched off wrong engine
Instructor “oh this is going to be interesting” he let the pilot sort it out, he did under guidance.

It can be horrifically complex (see the East Midlands 737 crash as just one example) to diagnose some types of failure. If an engine fails on my helicopter you’ll get an audio alert and see an “Engine 1/2 Out” caution, along with other indications such as Eng 1/2 Np dropping to zero and TGT dropping too. The good engine will arm 30second power and is relatively easy to diagnose. If you have a more complex failure, such as governor or fuel issues it can get very difficult with one engine backing off and the other overspeeding (a crap analogy sorry!) to compensate - so what type of failure do you have if you didn’t see it happen - overspeed or under speed? Generally the clue is looking at the Np gauge which should be matched to Nr (rotor speed) and if an engine Np is overspeeding it should be driving the Nr up at the same time…..but not always lol.

Yes modern helicopters can happily fly on one engine, mostly we have performance to the same standards as fixed-wing, eg performance class 1. This means if we lose a donk on takeoff prior to a defined point (TDP) we can safely land or continue after that point into the air at a set rate of climb. Offshore we fly to PC2e which is slightly different and means we have the performance to clear the deck edge on departure and not ditch. We sometimes have to restrict payload going to a low deck, eg a rig supply vessel might have a low deck of 50’ ASL and in the event of light winds/low pressures you might have to restrict max auw by 2000lbs which is nearly 10% of our max wt.

I’ve not had an engine fail for real (touches wood!) other than a wind down during a ground run which restarted without any issue….but we practice heaps of them every 6 months.

[Siko]

ghost83 said:

You’ve probably said what you fly but if ec or airbus doesnt fadec just sort it all out During a failure?

I fly Sikorsky S92A which is like a big old heavy American V8…..love it! It’s a great helicopter if a bit basc but very much 90s technology so the Fadec doesn’t sort everything out sadly

[Siko]

Mercdriver said:

Reading a book sea king down about sas in falklands. They set up an attack on Pucaras at pebble island.

Helicopter about to take off, too heavy for the fuel on board, attack delayed while dumped fuel.

If you take on a section of SF with all their kit, do you know how much kit they weigh before taking off?

Knowing SF are always well equipped and carry back breaking loads surely this is taken into consideration, some of them are no lightweights either and the figure used per soldier must vary considerably.

Easy for me, a mere civvy to criticise, I got caught out one day in para aircraft, just taken on fuel, instructor and four students, they were firemen built like brick sthouses and the aircraft was really slow to gain speed, off a short grass strip. After that I always checked out the passengers when they climbed on board for their weight, lesson learned.

sounds like they almost caught you out there! Big passengers can make a massive difference and you can occasionally get some weird centre of gravity issues at times. Quite rare but I’ve had to put the larger *ahem* passengers at the front of the cabin before as the flight planning software was showing an out of limits CofG with them spread throughout the cabin. It’s all done as part of our regular flight planning process done pre-flight on computer and signed off by the captain.

Madness60 has said it already but the average weights have crept up over the years, iirc there was a Sea King accident in Iraq that was partly attributed to a much heavier payload than planned (and unfortunately downwash affected them too). The army understandably carry as much kit as they need and were normally over the standard weights. Slight digression but I was tasked to lift an underslung load one night in NI of about 1000kg. We had plenty of performance and when I pulled the lever in to lift it literally nothing happened other than the engine instruments going into the red and a lot of noise being made. I assumed it had caught on the ground and released it so we could land on again and get them to free it up. When the crewman went to investigate he found they had filled the net up with scrap metal they wanted shot of…no idea how much was there but he estimated it was 3 tonnes worth

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Geneve said:

Some people say that, if you’ve got two engines you’ve got twice as much chance of having an engine failure

Single engine pilots spend lots of training time perfecting autorotations. Twin pilots spend more of that time flying on one engine.
We’ll never know, but maybe that’s why the Clutha pilot didn’t enter an ‘auto’ immediately the engines stopped spinning

The factor that most effects performance is ‘density altitude’. Lose one engine in thin air and you may still be going down, but under manageable control

Yeah quite right about DA - hot and high is massively limiting on helicopter performance. A mate of mine was flying a foreign type that has really good performance (for a helicopter ) and couldn’t get over the boundary wall in the military base he was in - he told me how he had to gently coax her into a circling transition, trying to get enough airspeed to get into translational lift, at which point he hopped over the wall and managed to fly away (just!).

[Siko]

magpie215 said:

I was told the 2nd engine is there to get you to the crash site. Lol

Lol definitely true on some types! Merlin had a bit of a reputation of being underpowered and heavy with 3 engines and a high basic weight. I was in the sim one day and asked the instructor if we could practice some hot and high engine failures and he put me up at 16,000ft-even losing both engines it wasn’t too bad and I managed some safe-ish landings.

[Siko]

Interesting mention of Clutha again-that was a fascinating one indeed and I think we talked about it earlier on but some very interesting human factors issues with aircraft design there, let alone the pilots reactions and decision making. No criticism implied of him - supposedly a very talented chap and I can see how he got caught out. RIP.

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El stovey said:

My mate from school was playing in a band and was on stage when it happened. Pretty horrendous all round. As a pilot we often focus on the technical human nature of the events and trying to learn from them.

Then we read or hear about the after effects on the passengers or people and survivors or the loved ones of the deceased and realise there’s a big responsibility flying a machine full of people or fuel around especially low over populated areas.

On a happier note.

Have you ever used your job to get girls?

My workmate was a navy helicopter pilot (we’ve got loads of ex forces pilots in my airline) and when he first joined he was always telling all the hosties he was a “naval aviator” Then one night down route in the bar he was banging on about landing on the back of a ship or something and some other bloke turned out to be ex red arrows. One of the girls then innocently asked my “naval aviator” mate if that meant Mr red arrows was a better pilot than him.

Nobody can top trump the red arrows

Your mate on stage was damn lucky….lottery ticket time I guess.

Ref girls……Well kind of but not really used the pilot thing. I never made a big deal out of the pilot thing when I was single because a) I thought it was a bit desperate and b) girls were always more interested in fast pointy stuff or airline pilots than the us pilots of the throbbing vibrating mighty steeds of doom….hang on a mo!

Anyway, I went to Ibiza many years back with two Lawyer chums and we met some really rather lovely ladies who we got on famously with. My mates loved the fact I was a pilot and were constantly bigging me up to this girl that I liked as this hotshot RAF pilot. She didn’t really believe me even though I said I was only training to be one anyway and not even qualified. In fact I got so tired of trying to convince her I was a lowly trainee helicopter pilot I told her it was just banter and my mates were trying to get me laid and I was actually a trainee accountant. At which point she said she knew I was lying as I wasn’t the pilot type! But for some reason that seemed to do it for her, maybe even out of sympathy and a successful friendship was created

So it’s a yes but no but

Edited by Siko on Sunday 24th April 17:00

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Lost ranger said:

Is there any truth in the theory that by using the pedals to reduce power to the tail rotor you can get extra climb performance at the expense of spinning round and making everyone dizzy?

100% true…one pedal is the power pedal and takes power from the main rotor, the other one effectively gives you more power (by just letting the fuselage naturally turn as it wants to due to the torque reaction - equal and opposite reactions etc). So yes, you could in theory get extra power by using a bit of pedal…..not too much though lol or it would all get messy.

[Siko]

classicaholic said:

How did they know there was a pilot in the room - he told everyone!!

How does the pilot unscrew the light bulb? He holds onto it and the whole world revolves around him….