Episode 432: Robinson R-44 Start Up & Shut Down

Foreign. We're going to take our time and walk through a R44 startup. We're going to go nice and slow, talk about the different things going on during the startup. But first I want to tell you about Private Pilot 101. You can go down below and grab a free copy of our Amazon number one bestseller. This will help you with a lot of free information on getting through your training and getting through your check rides. Good stuff down below. Completely free, free PDF. You can also grab the paperback copy as well. So first thing I first climbed in, I went ahead and put my seat belt on. Fuel valve, it's down here. It's when it's level, it's on. So the fuel valve is on. So first we're going to check cyclic and collective friction and also the pedals and throttle. So I'm going to set the checklist down. And I normally Harp and I use a knee board, but I've given away all the knee boards. We gave away like 15 last month and mine got given away. So today I'm going to do it by hand like most people. And you'll probably drop it on the floor and you'll see that when you're just trying to hold it somewhere, it's easy to lose track of where you're at. Cyclic, collective friction, pedals and throttle. We're going to do kind of do all these together. So I'm going to do is reach down as I do when it's running. I do the same thing. You want to reach up here first and unlock your cyclic first so that then you can reach back and release your collective. And you want to do the same thing while the engine's running. That way you're not leaving that collective unguarded. But we're going to hit that several times throughout this video. So I'm going to go up with the collective, down with the collective. I'm going to go full throttle. Make sure we have full movement, cyclic. We're just going to take it and go all the way around. Make sure it's nice and free and clear. No binding anywhere. And you can look outside too, while you're moving it. Make sure the rotor blades are moving as you're moving that. So I'm going to reach back forward, lock the cyclic first, then reach back, lock the collective. Because you want to get in that habit that way. You do the same thing when the engine's running, pick back up. And this is where people have trouble with the checklist is when you take your tension away from it, then you Come back. That's why kneeboard is nice, because you can kind of use it to break down the checklist as you're going through it and help keep track of where you're at. So I did cyclic collective pedals, or did I do the pedals? Let's do the pedals all the way forward and back on the pedals. Make sure everything's free and clear. Collective friction on cyclic friction. I just did that. Pedals neutral. I just did that. Rotor brake disengage. I want to reach up here, make sure that's disengaged. It is. When I look down, make sure all the circuit breakers are in. So I just reach down, run my hand across, and I can actually look visually as well. All the circuit breakers are down. Next we want to check, make sure that the carb heat is off. The carb heat is all the way down. This has a lock on it, but it's unlatched right now. I'm going to leave it there because we're getting ready to do a startup mixture. Full rich. So we push this down all the way is rich. We'll make a comment on why this is here. You can imagine in early days, somebody reached down to pull a vent or pull carpet and accidentally pulled the mixture and cut the engine. That's why this is on here. So you want to make sure that this little guard is always in place. So when you're reaching around and grabbing things, you go here. Like if, say you want to get car beat and you put your hand on there you go, oh, that's not the car beat. That's the throttle. That's the mixture. So that's why this little unit is on there and needs to be on there. If you jumped in a helicopter, didn't have one, I wouldn't even fly it. I'd make sure you get one of those. Get that thing reinstalled. So mixture guard installed, Landing light switch off on this helicopter. It's right here. The landing light switch is off. Avionics off on this. I leave strobe on all the time. And the reason I do that is if you walk away from the aircraft and forgot to turn the battery off, you may notice the strobe flashing or someone else may notice it. I stopped somewhere for lunch one time and went inside and somebody goes, hey, are you in the helicopter? And I'm like, yeah, you left your master on. So that's why we always leave the strobe. Strobe on. Everything else else is off. So avionics off. And we Want to check the clock clutch and make sure the clutch is disengaged. So the red switch is down. This is all the way down. So it's disengaged. When I go to the altimeter. 850 is what we are here. It's already set. I set it when I climbed in. Next, we're going to go to hydraulic and governor switches. So hydraulic here on the R44 that is up, so. So the hydraulics is on. And then governor switch. If I look down, governors to the right. That is on as well. Throttle twist for priming on this helicopter about three turns or four turns. Seems to be really good, which I already did it once. I'm gonna do it three times. Back off. So now I'm getting ready to do the start. But I want to show you something real quick. What we do is we know once we start the engine, we're gonna reach down, go alternator, avionics, and we're going to reach up and we're going to engage the clutch. Then I'm going to reach down here and start the timer. So I want to go ahead and clear the timer. Now I just push that in. Hold it. That takes it back to clear. So alternator, avionics, clutch, engage. And down here to the timer is what we do when we start. All right, so now what I'm going to do is I'm going to go to my headsets on and turn the battery on so we can record through the intercom. There is a thought process that you should leave your headsets off for a little bit. So once you do the start, you can listen for any vibr. Any funny noises, anything going on that doesn't sound right. And I totally agree with that and understand that's a great way to do it. However, just for my purposes, I don't want to jack around with the headsets once the blades are spinning. If I had somebody else with me and somebody was gardening collective, that'd be different. So going to throw my headsets on now. And we'll continue through the checklist. So I just flipped battery on. So our audio should be now picked up by this GoPro camera. Okay, throttle twist. We're priming. We did that. Throttle closed. Yep. Battery and strobe those are on. Area clear. I'm going to look to the right, look to the left, make sure there's nobody around. So we're going to do next is ignition switch. Start them both. Starter on. Light out. Set. Engine RPM 50 to 60%. Clutch switch. Engage. Blades turning less than 5 seconds. Alternator on. Oil pressure within 30 seconds. And then it says avionics. So again I'm moving ahead so that I can guard that collective as we start. So I'll verify that stuff after we go. So let's see how I do here. I'm going to guard collective with left hand, guard the cyclic with my right hand and I'm gonna try to do most everything with my right hand so that I'm not taking my hand off that collective. And I highly recommend you get used to doing that. So I'm gonna look around again and we're gonna see if this baby starts as good as normal. Alright. So boom. I saw that oil pressure come up, so that's good thing. So I'm gonna come down, go alternator on, avionics on. I'm gonna reach up, engage the clutch and I'm going to start the timer. Because we want to keep track of how long we've been running the engine to help track our fuel. And we know this thing is actually burning about 12 gallons an hour. As far as a training environment including startup and shutdown could be. Could burn more in flight. So the blades did start moving. They started moving right away. This just came out of an annual inspection. I know he adjusted that. So everything went good on the startup. Everything's where it should be. Blade started moving in less than five seconds. So now I'm going to bring the needles together down here around 50 to 60% and then I'm going to go back to my checklist and just verify that I did everything that I needed to do. So next to switch on to both. Yep. Starter out light. Yep, it is out. Set engine RPM to 50 to 60. We're at 60%. Clutch switch, switch. Clutch switch engaged. It is. Blades were Turning Less than five seconds. Alternator is on. Oil pressure within 30 seconds. Yep. We watched it pop up as soon as the engine started. And now I have my avionics and on and my headsets on. So now we're just going to kind of let things warm up. So the next on the list, annunciator panel test. If equipped. We do not have a button for that. Audio alert if equipped. We don't have that. Wait for clutch light out. Clutch light is out. Now I can warm up 60 to 70%. So I'm going to increase the throttle to 60 to 70%. So now we're waiting for the engine gauges to come into the green. So if we look down here, oil pressure is already in the green. Oil temperatures working its way up Cylinder head temperatures working its way up. This aircraft's only got about 360 hours on it. 100 hours ago, we put two cylinders on the engine because we had an issue. So I'm not going to rush. Get in no big hurry. This is time where you can double check your checklist, start working with radios, or do whatever else you want to do. But of course, you want to give the engine plenty of time to warm up before you move on with the checklist. Okay, everything is now coming into the green. So I'm going to go back to the checklist. So now we're going to do a mag check. And it says mag drop at 75% RPM, 7% max in two seconds. So what you're going to see is we're going to roll it up here to 75. And I'm keeping my hand on the collective cyclic. I'm guarding with my legs. I'm going to get to 75. Now, a mechanic that I worked with back in the day, he said sometimes people, when they check the mags, they stay on a one mag too long. So he's like, turn it to the mag. You want to check no more than two seconds and get it back. If you leave it there too long, you can actually do some damage. So when you're doing these, don't dilly dally on the mag. I'm up there close almost to 80%. So I'm going to go left first. 1, 2, 3. Slight drop back to both. I'm gonna bring it back up again. Get it about the center. Now we're gonna do the right mags. We're gonna go two clicks. Watch small drop. 1, 2, and then back to both. There is our mag check. Mags checked out good. Next I want to check carb heat. So you can see Lindsey showing you the gauge is currently in the yellow. Now, this is one time where I'm going to reach away from the collect with my hand. I'm going to check and make sure it's locked. It is locked. And I'm going to reach forward because I just about can't do that with my right hand. Well, you know what? Maybe I can. I bet I can. I'm going to reach down there, pull that up, go full carb heat. And we want to watch and make sure that that carb heat starts to rise. It is starting to rise. One time we did that, it didn't go up. Well, mechanic found a nut had come off or a pin come off underneath the seat and the carburetor. Temperature didn't move, so it was. The carpet was not working. So we can see it's moving up out of the yellow. So I'm just gonna push it back down now because we're gonna check that again before we lift up. And actually we're not gonna take off today. We're just gonna do a shutdown once we get up. All right, so now spray clutch check. So I'm gonna roll it up close to 80. And when I roll it up, I'm gonna add a little bit of right pedal up here in the northern states, we know we need a little add pedal when we add a little right pedal when we roll off. So 1, 2, 3, throttle off, add right pedal. The needles just split. So that's good. Pedals back to neutral. And I'm going to keep it there about. I'm going to keep it about 70%. Doors closing latch, which the doors are open because we're doing filming and we're not going to take off. So I'm actually going to disregard that limit on the manifold pressure. I checked we're about 18 degrees Celsius. So I'm going to go here and I'm going to use 2000 pressure altitude. And let's be conservative, we'll say this shows to be around 23.5. So we'd say 23 inches would be our limit on the manifold pressure if we were actually going to fly. Cyclic collective friction off. Hydraulic system check. Governor on. Increased throttle to 100 to 102%. And we'll come back to that. Let's set it down and do this hydraulic check. So collective is locked. I'm going to reach forward in my cyclic. I'm sorry, with my left hand, release the cyclic lock. Put my left hand back on the collective, which it is again still locked. And I'm going to turn the hydraulic off. And now I'm going to make a small X pattern and make sure that I can still move this with the hydraulics off. It's difficult, but you can move it. So you want to check and make sure that once the hydraulics, if the hydraulics failed, you could still actually move that. So X pattern is good. So now we got to reach up, make sure we turn hydraulics back on. And now I can kind of check it again. That's nice and smooth. So I can tell. Yes, the hydraulics are back on. So here's where I'm going to guard the cyclic with my legs and I'm gonna pick the checklist back up. So the hydraulic system is Good. So I'm gonna put the checklist away. There's three things left to do, but I want to put the checklist away as though we were getting ready to go fly. So we're gonna do governor on increased throttle and let it take it all the way up to 101, 102%. Want to make sure that the warning lights are out. And then we want to lift collective slightly reduce or RPM and listen to the horn and light at 97%. So I'm going to reach down again. Garden now the cyclic with my right hand. I'm going to reach down here, unlock the collective. Keep my hand right there. And now I'm going to just start rolling the throttle up. Governor's going to catch it at 80%. That's going to go up to full operating RPM. So now I just want to raise collective and start rolling down throttle. As I raise the collective, there's the horn. Collect it back down, let it take back over. All right, so now we'd be ready to fly. If we were gonna take off, we would do a good hover pre or pre liftoff check. Check everything out. Clear the area and pick up. So now we're just gonna go ahead and do a shutdown for you. So we say we went out for our flight. We got. Just got on the ground, and we just landed. I got on the ground. First thing I'm going to do is roll the throttle back down. I'm going to roll it down to about. We'll say about 70. So it's below the governor. Grab the checklist. So collective down 60 to 70%. We'll keep her there about the halfway point, about 65 to 70. I'm going to put my collective on. Collective is on. I'm going to put my cyclic friction on. Back to the checklist. So once all the frictions are on, we're then going to watch for the CHT to drop. Now, because we didn't go fly, we're pretty cool right here. Normally you'll wait until that needle gets down below the three and the 350 or at least off the F. I usually let it get off the three. Don't want to get any hurry. You want to let the engine have plenty of time to cool down because it's just easier on the engine. It's going to last longer if you don't get too big of a hurry. So since we're going to say we're down to a nice cool temperature, so we can go throttle closed and then reach down here and do clutch disengage. Now we're going to wait 30 seconds. So we've got our timer running there. So we'll say on the 25 minute mark, we just started it as we start our shutdown. All right, so we've waited 30 seconds. I can reach down here, Pull the mixture up. Engine's off. Mixture guard back on. Mixture gonna wait 30 seconds, then we can apply the rotor. Blake, rotor brake, rotor plus now on the rotor brake. Some people just grab on there and start yanking. It's better to just give it a pull and then give it a break. Like example, put some pressure on it. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Let it up for a few seconds just to let it cool a little bit. It can get too hot if you just crank down that too heavy. So we'll go down for another five seconds or so. Pressure back off for a minute. A little more pressure on. Way about got it. Pull it up just a little bit. And as it comes around, I can just kind of put a little pressure, a little pressure until I got my blade lined up over my tail so I can push it back inside. We want to make sure that the clutch light out, the clutch light is out. Avionics, alternator, battery and ignition switches off. We want to put everything back where it belongs. Okay, so let's go off down here. I'm going to leave strobe on, avionics off, alternators off, batteries off. Got everything locked up. And next big tip is put the helicopter back the way you found it. We have a little problem with renters or instructors even at times taking pieces and parts out and not putting them back where they belong. And I just want to back up the story. When I started early on in my career, I worked in Cleveland for about five years, and when I was new people I work for, you didn't. Everything had to be in place at the end of the flight. And if you left something undone, you left a water bottle in, you didn't fasten the seat belt, you didn't put the controls back. You got a good ass chew in the next time you showed up after it was found like that. At the time, I thought it was a little bit overboard, but guess what? That stuck with me. Because you want to have your aircraft always in good condition, everything put back in place. And I worked for two guys that owned instruments for a while, and they were horrible about doing, taking the doors off, pulling the controls out, doing helicopter rides, and then leaving it for me on Monday. But the problem was I come in and like, where's the controls? They're not in the helicopter, they're not in maintenance, so I gotta go find one of the owners. Oh, well, yeah, the collective's over in so and so's office, but I think the pedals are over here. And it was like, come on, guys. It was. They owned the aircraft, but they couldn't put it back. And I'm chasing the freaking controls all over the place. Just not good habit to get into. You know, we learned in kindergarten, when you're done with your toys, put them away and put them back away the way you found them. Please do the same thing with a helicopter. Put everything back in its place. And so it's ready to go for you for the next flight or the next courtesy for the next person coming in. So they're not chasing controls, picking up your trash, because they're gonna notice you didn't turn something off, you didn't shut it down correctly. The next guy is going to know that you're a slacker. So take your time, use the checklist. Don't forget about Private Pilot 101 helicopter training blueprint. It's free down below. Peace out. When you feel the pressure to fly, but know the right decision is to stay on the ground, hit the hogs. No go and live to fly another day. Helicopterground.com.