Kenny Keller demonstrates settling with power in an R44 helicopter, showing how wind direction affects debris and turbulence. Taking off into the wind keeps you clear of disturbed air, while landing downwind or hover-taxiing with a tailwind puts you in dangerous turbulence.
Okay, in this video, I want you to think about settling with power. This is a video from the recent past when I was flying with one of our customers down in Virginia, who's flying an R44 commercial. Commercial guy working on his certified flight instructor rating. And we were out in the field doing some different maneuvers, doing some different things. Takeoff, landings, quick stops. This was a freshly harvested field. So what I want to show you is something I want you to use and think about when it comes to selling with power. And not only just selling with power, but also why you don't want to do a hover taxi for a long distance with the wind behind you. You might as well just take off, take off into the wind, go around and land. When you go to move the helicopter, for example, at an airport from one end of the field clear down to the other, instead of doing a hover taxi the whole time fighting the wind behind you, sometimes it's easier just to take off, go into the pattern, come around and land. It takes you just as much more time, and it's a lot more controlled. So while we're out here over in the field, what I want you to notice, this is the direction the wind's coming from, off to the left. So we're going to turn downwind, and you're going to see all kinds of debris flipping up. Watch how far out in front of the helicopter you can see this debris blowing around. So if you really look, if you look to the trees first, it starts out 5 or 10ft, but then as we keep moving, it moves farther out, farther out, farther out. So think about all that turbulent air. Wind's behind us, blowing all this stuff, and you can see it. It's twirling around. That's all turbulent air. Now in just a minute, we're going to turn and face the wind, and you're going to notice that you're going to see virtually nothing because the wind is coming in, blowing all that turbulence away so you don't see it. So again, think about landing downwind. What's happening? You're landing in that turbulent air. So now we're turning back around. We're going to start going back across the field, and once you turn into the wind, boom. Nothing. You don't see anything. I'm sure that if you look out to the left or right, we would see a little bit of stuff blowing around, but nothing out in front of the helicopter. So again, you can think about effective translational lift. Why you want to do your takeoffs into the wind, why you don't want to land downwind. I mean, you see nothing. We're going to go up a little bit farther. We're going to turn around again just to really demonstrate. So I thought this was really cool because like I said, we were out flying that day and we were in this field doing some work. And I said, hey, you know what, Let me grab my phone and shoot this, because this would be a super demonstration when you're talking about selling with power. So again, we're going to make a turn, get the wind behind us, watch what happens. Boom. There you go. We're going to start moving that way slowly. You can see how the stuff keeps ahead of us, keeps moving. And if you keep watching, it'll just keep getting further out and further out and further out. This really is huge. And this, I think, is one of the ways that I can help try to make this make sense in your mind. Because I'm always thinking about, how can I demonstrate selling with power? Selling with power is such a big deal. And I've tried doing it with snow. I want to try doing it with smoke. But I thought, you know what? This in itself right here was a pretty darn good demonstration to really get you think about selling with power and disturbed air. So, as always, let me know what you think of this video. Put your comments down in the box below. Let me know if you have any questions.
