Helicopter Landing - Student Pilot Training Struggle

Hey there. This is Kenny with Helicopter Online Ground School. We will call this episode number three of the flight training hurdles. We're answering the responses to our customers that are writing in and letting us know what their struggles are and their problems with their helicopter flight training and ground training. So the question that we posed is what is your biggest hurdle you face while you're working towards your helicopter rating? We know for most it's normally the ground knowledge, but we'd like to know more specifics. Please tell us in detail what you feel is your biggest concern. You can answer with as much information as you like. Brief is okay too. So the next one coming up is landing. And at first I was kind of surprised, but then when I think back about it, I can remember when I first got started, I can remember struggling with landings. I think takeoffs was a little easier to pick up than what landing is. So I'm going to go through and read to you what the responses are so far. The first one is simply landing, which that's cool. I said it could be brief. The next one, knowing what I'm capable of and not capable of doing under certain set of conditions, such as wind strength, changing weather and traffic, making the go no good decision or go around decision. The next one is the last 100ft of auto rotations. That's definitely something that comes up a lot. Next one is confined area. Landings are tough because they are by nature confining. It can be intimidating to land amongst the trees and wonder if you have the power available to get back out of the hole you put yourself in. So that's a good one. We'll come back to that in a minute as well. Next one is weather and landing with no power and then landing with no power or engine and then pedal power push. When I'm landing, it just seems counterintuitive. So let's just start with the general landing. I can remember back when I got started, you know, I trained with some good people and I've had some awesome instructors. And all I've done is taken the things that they've taught me and used them when I was out in the aircraft teaching people. And the things that come to mind are, number one, you have to have a good setup. So this should go back before you even start your landing is getting a good setup. If you set it up nice, it's going to be nice. If you enter it sloppy, then it's probably going to be sloppy the rest of the way down. So that's the first tip. Next thing that comes to Mind is remember, collective controls your angle, cyclic controls, your speed. Learning that coordination between those controls on the approach really is key. When you first get your approach set up, you should have like an imaginary line from the nose of the aircraft down to the spot that you're landing at. And the whole time you're coming in, you're adjusting that collective up and down, just little movements to try to stay on that line as you're approaching your landing spot. Then the next thing I'm thinking of is your speed. It should always look like you're approaching those numbers at the same speed. You should start out. Most likely, you're going to be probably, usually at 60, might be 50, might be 70, what? Depending on what you're flying. But we'll use 60 for an example. You want to slow the aircraft down from the very beginning all the way down to the end. It should be a slow progression, meaning if you start at 60, by the time you get down to the end, you're going to be at zero. And you want to gradually slow the aircraft down the whole time that you're coming in. Now, some guys teach a faster approach, and if you're doing those faster approaches, that takes more work. When you get down to the end, because you're coming in fast, then you're going to put a flare on it and then level it back out. And you're changing power and you're changing your pedal settings, you might be having to mess with the throttle. That's what makes these landings a lot harder. If you use the style of approach where you come in slower, and if you do it right and you come in nice and slow, all those changes are going to be very minute in turn, making a nicer approach. Now, I know some instructors like to argue and say, oh, but you got to keep that speed all the way up to almost to the end because of the height velocity diagram. The height velocity diagram is not geared for landing, it's geared for takeoffs. If you're gradually slowing the aircraft down the entire approach, it just makes the end of the approach so much easier. So let's say you start your approach at 60, you have your angle, you start flying it down, you're going to go to 55 and then to 50, then to 45, so that at the end you're just coming in, keeping it real nice and level. Your changes are very small with your controls, and I think that's a big key. So let's talk next about our member that said, the making the no go decision or go around decision that one, I want to elaborate on this falls back to setting the approach up nice. If you come around and let's say you turned a little tight and your airspeed was a little off, and your altitude's a little bit off, and you're trying to fix all that prior to starting your approach, let's say you enter it just a little bit sloppy again. It causes it to be sloppy all the way down. It's best just to say, you know what, I'm going to go around, set it up again, and try this again. And usually it'll come out a lot better if you enter it kind of sloppy. It's just the way it's going to work out. It's going to be sloppy approach. I can tell you, in all the years, people don't generally want to go around, and I highly recommend going around often. Don't be afraid to go around. That's where the macho comes into play. And guys think, oh, I can do this. I'm going to prove to my instructor I can do it. And it's not. Most of the time, it's not worth it. It's easier just to go around and set it up again. Or even if, say, you enter the approach and you're a third of the way through or halfway through and it's just sloppy and it's not feeling good, go around, make your radio call, pull in the power, go around and set it up again. There's nothing wrong with that. Being able to make a decision to go around, I think is pretty huge. And I think it's something that in general, a lot of guys don't go around when they should go around. So in that respect, as far as go arounds, if you have the time, you've got the fuel, you're having a good day or even a bad day, doesn't matter if your gut's telling you to go around, just go around, go around, set it up again. The next one, the last 100ft of auto rotations. One thing that comes to mind on that is what I teach is start your flair about treetop level. Most of your handbooks usually say 50ft. Some say 75ft, some say 40ft. I like treetop level because that's just easier for me to imagine. As I'm coming in on my auto rotation, I can glance usually over and go, okay, there's the tree line. Right about now is a good time to start the flare. When I was a new instructor, I was struggling with teaching autos, and I hired the older instructor to Come in and go out and work with me a little bit. And the thing that he taught me was do quick stops prior to doing auto rotations. Because that quick stop is essentially the flare that you're going to do in your auto rotation. It happens faster in the auto rotation, but it's essentially the same thing. And if you kind of warm up with some quick stops, that a lot of time helps you with that flare in your auto rotation. And the other thing that he taught me was start with a gentle flare and as you get closer to the ground, make it a bigger flare. A bigger flare, A bigger flare. So start gentle and keep pulling it. And you can kind of judge, depending on the wind and your conditions, whether you're going to need a really aggressive flare or it could be more of a shallow flare. If you pull too much too quick. That's what a lot of guys do. And then they balloon up and it makes it all a big mess. Onto the confined area landings comment. Again, this falls back to if you're not comfortable with it, go around, don't do it. You may choose that this landing spot is just not good. If you have a spot that you were going to try to get in and you decide it's too dangerous or it's just too tight, then don't do it. Go find another place to land. We did that. Common in the EMS environment, you go out to a call, a fire department has a spot set up somewhere. You go do your reconnaissance and you're flying around and you're going, man, that's an awful tight spot they have right there for us. And just maybe a quarter mile down the road, there's a great big huge empty parking lot. The people on the ground don't always see those bigger areas. So a lot of times we would just say, hey, we see your spot. But there's another spot just down the road. It's a lot more open. We're going to go land down there. So on the confined areas, don't be afraid to go around, don't be afraid to abandon it and not even land there. I mean, do you have to get in that one specific spot? On that same question, it can be intimidating to land amongst the trees in order, if you have the power available, to get back out of the hole you put yourself in. Absolutely right. I've done it where I've went in somewhere and I was too heavy to get out, so I either had to burn off fuel, have somebody get out and walk over and meet you at another landing spot. It does happen so it is one of the things that you have to really consider. Don't top off your tanks and then go fly in into a confined area because you probably won't get back out. And I, it sounds kind of silly, but I've done it. Wasn't thinking, oh, let's top it off where we put it away, oh, let's go down their confined area. Landing and then you land somewhere and you can't get out because you're too heavy. So proper planning is probably the biggest one on that. And also flying the slow approach, that approach into that confined area should be really, really slow so that you have the opportunity to stop pulled into a hover or you have the opportunity to just go around. If you see a danger, maybe you see a wire in the last hundred feet that you couldn't see at 500ft or a tree or whatever the case may be, if you're doing a really nice slow approach, it gives you that option to just go around, to just fly away and not make the landing weather. And landing with no power. You know, if you're always using good technique and you're trying to stay over in open areas and trying to give yourself plenty of altitude is going to be your best way of trying to deal with that engine failure. You know, unless you're working on a cfi, you're not out there doing landings without an engine. You're not doing full down autos. You shouldn't be. If you're not working on your cfi, there's no good reason to be doing full downs. Insurance companies don't like them because a lot of helicopters get wrecked with guys doing full down autos and it's just really not necessary. And in the event you lost your engine, if you have rpm, altitude and airspeed and you've got an open area to go to and you do it right, you're probably going to walk away. You might not even damage the aircraft. But if you really lose the engine, who cares? We don't really care about the aircraft. We want you to walk away. So by using good pilot technique and being in the good position that if you do have that an engine failure, you've got somewhere to go. And when you get down to the end, you're gonna flare it about 8 to 10ft, you're gonna level it out and cushion that thing onto the ground. So you know, landing without an engine is, it is intimidating, it can be scary. But you can't just let that completely hold you back because you're worried about the engine quitting. You know, flying a aircraft that has good maintenance and doing your good pre flights and getting all the required maintenance and using good pilot techniques, most likely you're going to be able to survive that engine failure. The next one, another guy says, same thing, landing with no power or engine, and then the last one, pedal power push. When I'm landing, it just seems counterintuitive. I'll go back to what I was explaining earlier about if you make that approach slow, if you take your time, it makes all those things fit together a lot nicer at the end, and it just makes your approach easier to fly. It looks better, it feels more comfortable. And I really believe that slower approach is key. And I would just go back to that and add, I can remember when I did my private checkride, I flew with an examiner who's been, you know, flying since dirt was new, a guy really respected in the industry. And he knew the guy I was flying with or the kid I was flying with flew the faster approaches. So when I do my, my normal landing, I can remember when we were to the end, he goes, what'd you think of that? And I'm like, I thought it was pretty good. And he's like, wow. He goes, I thought you were coming in pretty hot, you know. He goes, I think that was awful fast. And we sat and talked about it after the fact and I passed and it wasn't a problem. He just explained to me that why the slower approach was a better alternative than the faster approaches. And when he went through and said, hey, this is where the height velocity diagram does not pertain to landing. It's geared for takeoffs. And he said, coming in on landing, you have low pitch applied, low power setting. You're not working the engine as hard. It's most likely not going to quit. It could, but it's a lot more likely it's going to quit. When you're taking off and you're working that engine hard, pulling power and you got a high pitch on the rotor blades, most likely that's more of the time when you're probably going to have an engine failure. So I hope that helps keep your comments coming in. This is just the beginning. We've had about 20 responses so far. We want to keep them coming in because as we tally these up, we really see what people are struggling with. And we can continue to produce more videos, more diagrams, and just figure out ways to really help you with these different hurdles in different areas. So keep the feedback coming, let us know what you think.