Kenny Keller leads student pilots through a helicopter approach to Runway 9 at Michigan City/Warsaw, covering base and final setup, stabilized approaches, go-arounds, simulated engine failure with power recovery, and taxi techniques. Pattern altitude is 500 feet AGL. Radio calls use Helicopter 181, Mike Bravo.
Questions this video answers
500 AGL (about 1,300 ft).
70 (stated as "get our Speed back to 70").
Helicopter 181, Mike Bravo.
Taxiway Alpha.
Chapters
So I'm going to turn to the right, go set myself up for base and final to Runway nine. Climbing out to the east of the airfield, Michigan City. You can teach me how to kind of. I'm on my base and final here.
Perfect.
Talk me through it. I'm new to this and I just started doing it.
Excellent. Let's set up first off, a little bit lower. We need to start descending at this very moment so we can be at pattern altitude 500 AGL, which would be about 1,300ft. And we want to be with our nose a little. Just a little bit higher there. Let me bring my nose up just slightly. So then we're gonna level off kind of like what we're doing right now. There we go. Perfect. Then we're gonna start descending with our collective. So we always start our descent with our collective. There we go. Maintaining our level attitude with the nose. Fabulous. And now that we're 100ft from our target, we can start raising our collective a little bit. We want to make a radio call before we turn final. Before we turn final. Very, very slow movements for so traffic. Helicopter 181, Mike Bravo is on the base on the right, on the left. Base for Runway nine. Turning final. Runway niner, Warsaw. And that's an over bank right there. We're going to control that with a little bit less. Okay, now we're overcorrecting to the left. And we want to be lined up with Runway at this very moment. So we want to face it over there. Okay. We're still not lined up with the Runway. We are carrying a lot of speed at this very moment, so we're not meeting our criteria for a stabilized approach. I'm going to take control. My controls.
I don't want to fly anymore.
You take it. My controls. Perfect. And we're going to do a go around. Warsaw Traffic Helicopter 181, Mike Bravo is going around joining the right traffic Runway niner, Warsaw.
Okay, what else we got to do? We did confined area. We did low rpm. We did governor off. I just played students. What else we got to do?
Let's go to our list so far. Failure at altitude. If we had time, that's what we said we could.
You know what? I think you should have an engine failure in 1, 2, 3.
Okay, perfect. Engine failure. We're gonna try to get our Speed back to 70. Fabulous. RPM in the green. Our descent rate is looking good. We're gonna keep our speed down. RPM in the green. 100 foot check. All in the green at tree level. We're gonna flare, flare, flare.
And this will be a power recovery.
And then power recovery. Power in. Settle and pull.
All right, let's head over to the taxiway.
Perfect. Heading to the taxiway. We do this a civilized way, as they say. Gonna take a taxiway. Look. Look at the birds over there. And they need to do something about these Runway markings here.
Yeah.
So what's the speeds we'd be using for hover taxi?
Usually the speed of a man walking. I'm going very fast at the moment.
Yeah.
Brisk walk, Walk Parcel Traff. Helicopter 181 Mike Bravo is clear of Runway niner onto taxiway Alpha Fara.
All right, let's go up here. Point that way. There's some behind us.
Okay, perfect. Still going too fast. Okay, we're facing here. Let me just do my center line.
I'd like to take the controls.
Okay, Your controls.
I have the controls.
Yeah, controls.
Gonna do a hoverado in 3, 2, 1, enter.
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