Pilot Kenny Keller warns that confusing the mixture control with the carb heat in Robinson helicopters can kill the engine mid-flight. He tells pilots to practice reaching for controls in the cockpit without power until muscle memory takes over.
Live to fly another day. Helicopterground.com.
Coffee with Kenny is meant to be fun. God, did we really wash that cup? Coffee with Kenny is meant to be fun, but also entertaining and hopefully maybe sometimes save your life. People that have already been flying have heard this, know this, they've read that. But if you're new to the Robinson, there's one specific safety notice or safety tip. The safety notice, it would be inadvertently pulling the mixture control could get you killed. Right intentions to be pulling the carb heat. But instead of pulling carb heat, you make a mistake and you pull the mixture. Now it has a guard on it and they've started doing that to prevent you. You reach down there thinking you're going to pull carb heat. You should go, oh. But somehow, someway it still happens where people accidentally pull this, of course, during flight, when you're trying to pull car beat and then you kill the engine. Not ready for an auto rotation. And that could be a fatal accident. And I remember when I got started struggling with different things in the cockpit, one of the instructors said, hey, you need to go out there when nobody's flying, when you have a little time, sit in the cockpit, learn where everything is at and touch everything without looking right. So that you become super familiar with where everything is. And by practicing, it's a good way to practice your checklist. You know, you leave the battery off, but you go through the motion, sit there, go through checklists. It's a great way to speed up your, your startup and shutdown is just by sitting and mentally practicing, going through the whole startup, but sitting in the seat, reaching down, knowing where your frictions are, knowing where the carb heat is, the mixture control. So very simple concept, but we're human beings and we make mistakes. So, you know, I'm not talking down anybody that has ever had an accident because that happened to them. You know, people get confused, people get excited, people get nervous. So super, super important to understand what's carb heat, what is the fuel mixture, and understand how they've incorporated this to keep that from happening. And again, also being same thing with frictions. Knowing where everything is at without looking. I'm not saying it's not okay to verify that you're touching what you're touching, but it also helps if you just mentally take the time to know where everything's at and be able to reach those things without looking and be confident what it is that you're grabbing. Short and sweet, but super powerful. Really, really important. It was just on my mind. It came up. We're prepping a CFI add on, and that came up in our talks about, you know, past accidents and things that happen and people have been killed by accidentally pulling the mixture and killing the engine and then not surviving the auto rotation. 308 okay, camera guy, are you happy? Are you happy now? Am I done? Yeah. Okay, cool. Peace out. Mmhmm.
Live to fly another day. Helicopterground. Com.
