Episode 355: Are You Dangerous with Helicopter Controls?

All right, we're going to show you something in the aircraft real quick. And we're going to refer to getting started with flight training. This is Private Pilot 101 helicopter training blueprint. You can get this free as a PDF down below or a free paperback. So we're going to move the camera over to the helicopter, push the helicopter out where we can see a little bit better. But what I want to show you is guarding the controls. And maybe you're brand new to helicopter flying and hopefully you'll be taught a good technique on this at your flight school. And we have a lot of people come here from around the country and they might. They're usually working on a rating, They've been trained somewhere else. And we have guys doing additional ratings, like a fixed wing pilot doing an add on helicopter rating. And they're especially guilty of having their hands too loosey goosey. And that's nothing bad to say about airplane pilots. It's just airplanes are a different animal. And with airplanes, they can. They have more opportunity to be more laxed about guarding controls, or at least for most airplanes anyway. So you got different helicopters, you know, different places around the world, and you're gonna be taught different ways, but you need to have some kind of a good technique. So for us specifically in the R44, I'm gonna really kind of harp on the collective, specifically, once the engines running, somebody should always have their hand on this collective. And people get in this habit of they. They're doing their startup and they're constantly taking their hand off the collective and without it even being locked. So they're getting pushing here, grabbing, doing all this stuff. And what I try to get them to do is just guard the collective with your legs, do everything with your right hand. And I know it feels unhandy, but in this particular helicopter, we can do everything we need to do with our right hand. There's no reason to take your left hand off of the collective. So when you're in a training environment, you have an instructor with you. Someone should be always guarding that collective. You need to take your left hand off to scratch your nose because you want to keep your hand here on the cyclic. You ask the instructor, could you guard the collective? I have the collective. Okay, you have the collective. You can take their hand off, scratch your nose, do what you got to do, put your hand back on it. But people get really sloppy and really loosey goosey about taking their hand off this. And then especially I'll have guys that come here and they'll Be at operating rpm. They'll be clear up here at rpm. Collective's unlocked and they're taking their hand and messing with radios and doing all kinds of stuff. It's just not a good. It's not a good procedure. It's actually a dangerous procedure. In some helicopters, I've flown helicopters that, that collective will start to rise or start to rise when you take your hand off when the blades are in motion. And that could wreck the helicopter. And that will. And there's been people killed because they took their helicopter or their hand off. The collective helicopter rolled over and somebody died. So for the intents of this video, whatever technique you're using, make sure you're going slow and you're taking the time to guard that collective. And once that engine's running, somebody needs to have their hand on that collective. You can do everything with your right hand, most of the time, at least in this aircraft anyway. I get there might be exceptions to the rule certain aircraft because you can't reach something. This is a more in general, get in the habit of guarding that collective all the time. Somebody always guarding that collective. Lots of bad things can happen. And not just a rollover. You know, not having the collective guarded can cause an overspeed. We've been through that this year. And that was between me and a student. And I wasn't. I got distracted and I wasn't looking and he rolled the throttle and did an overspeed. I mean, it's not only dangerous, but it can cost you thousands and thousands of dollars like it did us. So I can't stress enough how important it is to guard that collective. So the point of the story, please guard that collective. Get a. Good, get in a good technique and stay with it all the time. I say being a good pilot's remembering what you were taught in the beginning. So many people. Oh, well, that's private pilot stuff. No, the things you learn as a private pilot is stuff you should be using with you for your entire career. So don't Forget Private Pilot 101 free PDF. And we'll also send you the paper book, paper book paperback down below as well. All right, stay tuned. See you tomorrow for something else cool and exciting. Peace out.

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Good enough. And then we'll do a wrap up inside.