A Kenny Keller YouTube ground-school covering essential helicopter checkride topics and practical flight-safety techniques. Major points: thunderstorm stages (cumulus, mature, dissipating); dynamic rollover requires a pivot point, rolling moment and exceeding a ~15° critical rollover angle; retreating blade stall onset signs (abnormal vibration, nose pitch-up from gyroscopic precession, roll left); three types of icing (rime, clear, mixed); night definition and night currency rules per American Air Almanac (position lights sunset–sunrise; three night takeoffs/landings in preceding 90 days between 1 hour after sunset and 1 hour before sunrise); settling-with-power criteria (rate of descent ≥300 ft/min using 20–100% power, airspeed < ETL) and common situations leading to it (hover above ceiling, hovering out of ground effect without precise control, steep approach downwind).
Questions this video answers
Cumulus, mature, dissipating.
A pivot point; a rolling moment; exceeding the critical rollover angle.
15 degrees.
Abnormal vibration; nose pitch-up; roll to the left.
Gyroscopic precession (force on a spinning object felt 90° later in the plane of rotation).
Chapters
Starting off, we're going to do the three stages of a thunderstorm. I pretty much guarantee you about 99.9% chance that he's going to ask you on the private pilot checkride. An examiner might ask you on a 135 checkride, if you're flying EMS, they're going to ask, what are the three stages of a thunderstorm? Cumulus mature and dissipating. Commit those to memory so that you'll always know it. Any checkride they ask, boom. Cumulus mature, dissipating. Examiner is going to ask you, what are the three things combined together is going to get you into the dynamic rollover situation. Number one is a pivot point. Number two is a rolling moment, and number three is exceeding the critical rollover angle. And we'll throw you a little tidbit in there. 15 degrees is that critical rollover angle, which another little training tip. 15 degrees is also your degrees for exceeding the critical angle of attack. So when you're memorizing 15, you think of it in those two different ways. What are the three things are you going to notice at the onset of retreating blade stall? The three things that you need to know are abnormal vibration, pitch up of the nose and a roll to the left. He's going to say, great. Why does the nose pitch up? The nose pitches up due to gyroscopic precession. What is gyroscopic precession? Well, maybe his next favorite question. Gyroscopic precession is when a force is applied to a spinning object, it's felt 90 degrees later in the plane of rotation. Those are some of the key things there. At a private pilot checkride is one of the three things that you'll notice at the onset of retreating blade stall, abnormal vibration, pitch up of the nose and a roll to the left or three types of icing. Examiner is probably going to ask what are some forms of icing? Or what are the three main types of icing? Rime, clear and mixed in a helicopter. Do we want to fly in icing conditions? No. Do you ever want to go when they're forecasting icing? No. In a helicopter, you want to stay so clear of icing it's not even funny there. Even anytime you're near freezing, anytime you're a few degrees above or below the freezing level, you probably better be careful if there's moisture in the air. Recapping three of the types of icing examiner, asshoe, rime, clear and mixed. Commit those to memory.
The three things that will get you.
Into Sailing with power. I've shot this several times, but it's an important message. Our examiner says as a helicopter pilot, it's one of the most. One of the things that can get you into trouble quicker than anything. Being a helicopter pilot, you have to commit to memory. Rate of descent, 300ft per minute or greater using 20 to 100% of power. Airspeed less than ETL. This has to be committed to memory. When I failed my first private pilot checkride, that was one of the things.
That I stumbled on, and that's what.
The examiner told me, was make sure you know that and you know it. So when you're asked, you can go boom, boom, boom. Rate of descent, 300ft per minute or greater using 20 to 100% of power. Airspeed less than ETL.
Now I want to do the three situations conductive to selling with power. The three main situations that guys will get themselves into sling with power, which are. Number one is attempting to hover above the hovering ceiling, which makes complete sense. If you try to hover at a point that's above the ceiling, it's not going to do it. It's going to settle with power. Number two is hovering out of ground effect without precise attitude control. And the example there that we all like to use is photo flights. You're doing a photo flight and you're trying to hold a shot for a photographer and the wind's not directly off your nose, maybe it's quartering off to the side and you're kind of paying attention to what he's doing more than what you are as far as the control of the aircraft. You can get yourself into selling with power that way. And then the third one of the most popular of the three, not that they're popular, but very possible, is steep approach downwind, which sounds pretty simple. Well, we don't land downwind. Well, most generally we don't land downwind. But the mistake pilots make is any of us could do this. You think you know where the wind's at. Maybe the wind has changed. You went from one airport to another or while you've been out flying, the winds changed and you didn't realize that maybe you were landing down when you didn't do the best check. And you start doing a steep approach and the wind may be a little bit behind you. Very good possibility you're going to get into selling the power. Those three again, attempting to hover above the hovering ceiling, hovering out of ground effect without precise attitude control and steep approach downwind. So the three main ways that Guys get into it, you got to really be careful, use good pilot technique and just don't put yourself in those situations.
There's some of you out there that maybe you never have trouble with any of these. I for one have to review this all the time because I screw it up. See how I can do here. Definition of night. The definition of night is the end of evening civil twilight up to the beginning of morning civil twilight as published in the American Air Almanac, converted to local time. Boom, we got that one done. The next one is when must your aircraft position lights be on? Those have to be on sunset to sunrise. That one I can always remember. I can get through that one. Okay, so here goes number three, the night currency. To be current at night, to take up passengers in the preceding 90 days, you had to have three takeoffs and landings in the category and class of aircraft you want to be current in for your passengers. And these three takeoffs and landings must take place an hour after sunset up until one hour before sunrise, as published in the American Air Almanac. There you go. That was a struggle and it's always a struggle. So for me, I don't know, I've always had trouble with that and I have to review that all the time. But point being, my long time examiner that I've been using always says, good pilot uses his resources. You can't remember every single thing. So you got to be good with the far aim. You know, be good at looking stuff up and know where to find your answers. You know, if you're like me and have a little trouble remembering things sometimes, don't be afraid to grab your far aim, grab your rotorcraft flying handbook. You know, go to that source of information where you can get that. But whatever it is you're looking for, This is all footage from a flight I did today. Going to get some maintenance and what I want to hit is three things on aborting a helicopter flight. This is something we need to spend a bunch of more time on, but something real quick. I did five years working for Omni Flight Helicopters doing EMS flying and that was awesome. Got to fly BK117 and EC135 and a ton of great experience. And I think one of the best things that I ever got from their training was the chief pilot who was a former line pilot. Czech airman said, if you're flying along on an EMS flight and all of a sudden you find yourself descending and slowing down from where you want to be at to fly, feel comfortable, it's probably a pretty good Time to turn around and go home. I want to add a third one to that. If your gut's telling you that too, that's probably a great idea. There's all kinds of factors that get involved in deciding when to turn around and go back or when to land and get down on the ground and get to a safe spot.
And we all have outside pressures.
Depending on what kind of job you're doing, it doesn't matter. They all have pressures. We have pressures we put on ourselves on this flight. That looked pretty bad right there. What you see in this picture, in reality, the direction I was really going to go was pretty decent. There was a spot opening up and everything was great. But I had my own personal minimum set. As I was flying along, I knew at what point I was going to say, you know what? Yes, I want to get up for maintenance, but if I can't get there today, I'm just going to have to turn around and go back home and delay it another day. It doesn't matter what else I have going on and what's going to screw up. And that's part of the. Part of being a pilot and trying to make the best decisions you can. And there's really a lot to that. Three things, and this isn't in any textbook anywhere. It's just something that I kind of like and tell myself. And I still, like I said, I still go back to the days when they said, if you're slowing down and you're lowering your altitude, it's a pretty good bet that it's time to be going home and turning around or finding a place to land. And if your gut is telling you as well, that's everything in life. Usually your gut is right. If you're slowing down, you're dropping your altitude than where you really want to be, and your gut's telling you it's time to go home. It's probably a good time to abort and turn around and get back home. Let's do three steps. On a successful lift to a hover. We're going to get the instrument fired up here.
Clear left. Clear on the right. All right, we're going to engage the clutch. All right, here we go, everybody. We're going to talk through three steps of a good pickup to a hover. Step number one is to get the aircraft line of the skids in the instrument. We start at 2300 on the RPM.
Start letting the collective come up.
You're going to hear a horn. Okay, so the horn's off. So what I'm going to do first is I want to get the aircraft light on the skids. So I'm kind of looking outside, back inside, looking outside, back inside there. The aircraft's getting light. So step number one is get a light. Once you get it light, then you want to pause and neutralize all movements. What's the nose doing? Is the nose wanting to go a little bit to the left? Is the nose wanting to go right? Do you feel the nose going down, the nose coming up? Make those adjustments once you're light, make those adjustments, get everything where you want it, get confident that the aircraft's going to come up straight. Then step number three is to just gently lift the aircraft up and you all get a chance there to see the instrument bounce that a lot of you may have never heard of or never seen. That's what the instrument does. When you get it light, it starts bouncing around. And a lot of guys want to rush through a pickup because they don't want to feel that bounce. But it's just part of flying an instrument and it's not really a big deal. So there you go, there's your three steps for a successful lift to a hover. So now the other thing I want to mention is when I was training as a new pilot, flew with the young CFI and he did a great job and every so often had to fly with the senior guy and he, he would always kind of come in and, you know, kick your butt and whip you into shape and make sure that the younger guy's doing what he's supposed to. And I'll never forget him taking me in after a flight lesson and saying, now listen to this, you got to be careful lifting this thing up. And he called it a two step process. Get the aircraft light, the skids, pause neutralized, and then gently lift the aircraft into the air. And I've never forgot him saying, experienced pilots roll these helicopters over from not using a good process, picking the aircraft up, rushing the pickup.
