Kenny Keller breaks the 180-degree autorotation into two 90-degree turns to make it easier to learn. He recommends practicing quick stops and straight-in autorotations first, and shares how hiring an experienced instructor helped him regain confidence after a frightening early flight.
Hello, I'm Kenny Keller with Helicopter Online Ground School and this is a member requested presentation. Got an email this morning from a customer who was requesting help with his 180 autos. And the interesting thing about that, the last two CFI members that just recently passed their checkrides, when they first contacted me for help with some of the ground stuff, the first thing that they said was, man, I'm really struggling with 180 auto rotations. So this is a very common question that I get a lot of. And so the point is there's two guys, two of our members that are going for their CFI, struggling with 180s. So don't feel bad if you're going for your private or your commercial and you're struggling with 180s. A lot of people have trouble with the 180 auto. The key to any maneuver is a good setup. If you set up a maneuver sloppy, it's probably going to be sloppy. And I think a lot of the problem guys run into is they're coming around on their 180 and you have to turn in tighter and usually make it a faster turn. And people aren't quite ready when they enter. And a lot of the times that's the problem. So to back up the story just a little bit, when I was a brand new instructor, brand new cfi, my first job, only in it a few weeks or a month or so, and I go out with the owner of the company to do some autos and he about kills us in a 180 auto. And I almost gave up instructing because it scared me so bad. I didn't know if I even wanted to instruct anymore. So what I did after talking to the examiner and he kind of laughs at me and says, hey, now you've had your first scare, you survived it, the aircraft's okay, everybody's alright now. You know, anytime you're in the aircraft, you never trust that the guy beside you knows any more than what you do. And at his suggestion, I hired the older guy to come in the 4000 hour R22 pilot to go out with me and do some auto rotations just to get me freshened back up because I got my cfi. Couple months goes by before I get my first job and then I start with a brand new student off the street. So it was a while before I started doing 180s and I really feel like I needed some extra help just brushing up on the auto rotations. So I hired this instructor to come in and help me a little bit Pay out of my pocket for the aircraft and for his time. And what do you think? The first thing we do, we sit down and we do ground school and talk about auto rotations. And then once we got through the ground, we went out and the first thing we did was quick stops, which is a great idea to always do quick stops before you get into the auto rotations. And then we did straight in autos and we did some 90 degree auto rotations. Then we got started on the 180 autos. And a tip I want to give you here is, you know, the first thing is a good setup. You got to have a good setup. But what this instructor taught me was he said, hey, let's break it down and let's try something a little different. Instead of doing a full 180 turn, let's do it in two 90 degree turns. And I really like the 290 degree turns because it helped me kind of break everything down. It then later made it easier to turn into the full 180 turn. So if you think about it, when you're coming for your 180 auto, you're always going to be wanting to enter approximately a beamier spot. It could be a little bit early, could be a little bit late, but you want to enter pretty close to a beamier spot. And when you're trying to make that full 180 turn all the way and just make that turn and come out and get your spot just right, that can be kind of hard in the beginning. So this instructor takes me out and he says, let's just do it in two 90s. And like I said, we start out with straight ends, then we did 90s first, perfected the 90 degree turn, and then he goes, now let's turn it into two 90 degree turns. So the cool thing is if you have the time, you should enter it up 180 auto. Make your right hand turn, turn 90 degrees, left hand as well. Make your right hand turn, level back out for just a second. And if you think you need to make the next turn right away, you can make the next 90 and turn right in. Or sometimes it'll work out. You make that 90 degree turn, you'll level out and you can go, you know what, you can kind of gauge it and go, you know what, I can wait just a second or two now turn to make my 90 degree turn. So that really helped me out as a new instructor. Just breaking it down and going out. Number one, we did the ground school, went out, did straight in or quicksteps first, then straight ends, then did some 90s, got comfortable with the 90s and then turned it into two 90 degree turns. Just kind of a tip, something that you can use. It's not, not absolutely necessary. Just giving this as a tip. Something that helped me out a lot. And along the way I've helped a lot of other people by doing the 290 degree turn technique for the 180 auto.
