#22 Helicopter Preheating Request for new video -brrrr
Kenny Keller answers Lance's question about starting helicopters in freezing weather. His team flies R44s at 32°F and above without preheating, but uses portable heaters or block heaters for colder temps. Always check your POH and coordinate with your FBO or hangar before heating the engine.
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Hey, it's Kenny with Helicopter Land Ground School. Got a good request for video here today. Request for video, brrr. So I want to read you this to you real quick. It's about preheating helicopters and Lance said, would you be willing to put together a video on the proper way to prepare preheated helicopter, preferably an R44 that is left outside in freezing temperatures? In one of your videos, you made a presentation regarding the day you picked up an R44. During that trip, you had to preheat the helicopter because it was left outside. New video could cover subjects. By way of example, if a pilot is preparing to heat the helicopter for flight with a heater such as the one you used in your video, where should the heat be applied? What temperature is the air being pumped into a given compartment? What areas, compartments, or components should be preheated? Should you limit the temperature of the air being supplied to ensure you're not applying too much heat? What temperature are you hoping to achieve before attempting to start the engine? And how do you confirm that you have achieved that temperature? This is valuable information for those of us that reside in warm climates but travel to colder destinations warmest. No pun intended. Professional regards, Lance. Those are some awesome questions, Very, very technical. So I'm going to ask those of you that want to add your tips and tricks down below, tell us what you do preheating wise. For me, this isn't super technical because we do fly most generally the northern states, because that's where we are. And I'm going to first put a disclaimer in here. You need to make sure you're following whatever procedures any flight school you're flying with or an owner's aircraft you're dealing with. Number one, is the PoH say anything about preheating the aircraft? Number two, what does the company or owner want you to do with preheating an aircraft? So for us, I'm gonna admit we're spoiled. Okay? 20 years I've been flying. We keep helicopters inside all the time. General rule, if it's 32 degrees or higher, we pull it out, we start it and we go. Over the years, I've had several mechanics all tell me the same thing. If it's 32 degrees or higher for the piston powered aircraft that we fly as trainers, if it's above 32, take it out, start it and go. Okay? So that's number one kind of rule that we live by. To answer his questions, we did bring an R44 back and we're going to use the toy as an example, on this particular flight, he's asking about the FBO owned the heater that they brought out, and they just simply opened an access door on the side, put the tube in there, and they took care of the preheating. Now, that was their unit. I didn't do it. The owner was there, so, you know, he approved it to be used on his aircraft. And they just blew the warm air into the engine compartment to warm up the engine. I think it took, you know, 10, 15 minutes and the start right up, no big deal. So what we do, we're always hangered. If it's 32 or above, we pull it out. If it's inside a cold hanger. You know, over the years, sometimes we've had heater heated hangers, sometimes we do not. The current hanger that we're using now is not heated. Now. There are heaters that we can turn on, which would take a while to warm the aircraft up. A lot of times what we do, we use a simple salamander heater. Now, again, disclaimer here. You need to check with, you know, wherever you're hangering at, what the airport is before you go using any external heaters. I would make sure it's approved with the airport. And what we've done, we've used a Salamander style heater. And we set them to the, you know, rear of the aircraft, make sure we're clear of everything. We don't leave and go anywhere in case anything bad happens and we just blow warm air on the instruments. And the Robinsons, we can just blow that warm air right in behind and it goes right into the engine compartment. So as far as temperatures, I mean, we do it long enough to warm it up. I mean, you get kind of an idea. It's not like you got to heat the thing up to 70 degrees, right? You just. If your engine's really cold, say the hangers 20 degrees, we would probably leave the heater on it maybe 15, 20 minutes to warm up the engine. Also, same thing with the cockpit. You're going to get some residual heat as you're heating the thing up. Leave a door or two open if you want to. In general, they're a little more durable than what you might think. If it's 32, you get it warm to 32 degrees or above, you're pretty much good to go. Another method that we use, the one beautiful black instrument we use every winter, luckily that one has a block heater and a block heaters. I highly recommend, if it's allowed on the aircraft you're flying because you just plug the thing in, it keeps the engine at 70 degrees. Okay? So at that point, it's very easy. It is a beautiful thing. You unplug it, pull it outside, boom. Turn the master on, look at the oil temperature, 70 degrees. So the engine's warm, no problem. Again, you might want to warm up the cockpit a little bit if it was a lot lower than 32 degrees. But 32 degrees or above is our general rule. Pull it out and go fly. So the only other times that I've run into trouble, like cross countries like that, I'm gonna be transparent. I've been lucky. When we've done cross countries in the northern states, we always call ahead. We make sure that there's a hangar available, because it is a real pain if you park somewhere overnight and you get some really cold temperatures. You're probably gonna need a way to start the aircraft. Whether you. Whether the FBO has a preheater to bring out, warm it up for you, or you could actually push it inside. We've done that where we've asked the next day, hey, we need to warm the helicopter up before we try to start it. They didn't have any kind of a heater. They made some room in a warm hangar, push it in and just wait to thaw it out. So Lance asked a lot of really good questions. I'm lucky. I'm spoiled. Rarely do I have to worry about an aircraft sitting outside. If you do, you're going to need to preheat in order with anything that the PoH says, of course, anything that your company or the owner of the aircraft wants. So pretty quick, simple video. Put your questions or comments down below. Tips and tricks, things that you follow. I appreciate that question from Lance. So hopefully that helps. Subscribe to the video. When you subscribe, click the bell so you can get notifications of new videos. As we do these daily videos, we're enjoying doing them. 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