Kenny Keller demonstrates the painfully slow helicopter takeoff, where you avoid pulling collective and stay in ground effect to preserve control if the engine fails. Keep the nose straight, use cyclic to inch forward, and maintain just 2-3 inches of skid clearance until you're ready to climb.
Questions this video answers
About 2–3 inches of skid height clearance.
574-767-1797.
heather@helicopterground.com
December 13, 2022.
Mentions about 30, then 34, 35, then 40 (units not specified).
Chapters
Well, the problem is, what if you have an engine failure? You're down near the taxiway or the Runway or any smooth surface and you're taking off and the engine quits, what are you going to do? You can just slide right onto the Runway, keep your nose straight and slide on. The painfully slow takeoff has a lot of benefits. It is learning how to take off without adding power. You learn how to take off on hot days with heavy loads. You're learning how to be prepared if the engine did quit for some reason during that takeoff. If you're nice and level and the nose is straight, you could just ease the thing onto the ground. Weather's cooler in the winter. You have a lot more available power. But if you train this way all year round, you'll be ready for those super hot summer days. And when I got my opportunity to fly a Jet Ranger and we go out one night on a super hot evening to go up for the news, we took extra people. Camera operator took a student with us and took on extra fuel so we could stay up for evening news. Super hot. So to get that Jet Ranger off the ground with excess fuel and passengers, I had to pull clear to the limit. I couldn't add any power. And we're going to do painfully slow takeoff. So warning caution lights are out, gauges in the green. Everything looks good. We've got fuel. I'm not going to add any power. And this is why we call it painfully slow. So I'm going to go forward, forward, forward, very gently. And on a hot day, I might even touch my skids. But if you just keep moving it, keep your nose straight, it won't be a problem on a smooth sur. Now it's gonna keep going forward, keep going forward. Start to get a little bit of etl so I gotta push through it. I'm still not adding any power. Still not adding any power. Now we're increasing our speed and I still have not moved the collective, so I have not made a power change. Here we go. There's about 30, there's 34, 35, 40. Boom. We can start our, start our climb. Outlook gusta wind there. You keep the aircraft as low to the ground as 2 or 3 inches of skid height clearance or more if you're not comfortable being that close. But the idea is to stay as close to the ground as possible so that you can have the most benefit of ground effect. And the painfully slow takeoff is taking off without adding power. You're just using the cyclic to keep moving yourself forward inch by inch. By inch and we call it painfully slow takeoff because nobody wants to do it. Everybody wants to just pull power and go. But we've learned that a lot of times if you're going to have an engine failure, it may simply happen when you're adding power. So if you're doing your takeoff keeping your collective set of hover power most of the time, do the entire takeoff and never add power. Okay. It will normally get you through ETL and it'll get your climb and you can get all the way up to your cruise flight. Hopefully that's what you're being taught. If you haven't, you should experience it all. The links are below. Private Pilot Advanced Pilot Private Pilot one Year Pro Pilots There are several pro pilot options and just use the links below and below the video. Video. Yep. Tell them one more time while they get a hold of you.
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