Kenny Keller walks through lifting a helicopter to hover in two steps: get it light on the skids and feel which way it wants to drift, then gently raise the collective. Rushing this can cause dynamic rollover, so the process matters whether you're new or experienced.
The thing that you should be doing is lifting up the helicopter on a two step process. Step number one, get the aircraft light on the skids. When it gets light and you know you're about ready to come off the ground, you want to pause and neutralize, meaning feel what the helicopter is doing. Is the nose wanting to go a little bit left, a little bit right? Is the nose wanting to come up? Is the nose wanting to go down? You want to get feel what the aircraft's doing, make those changes. And then when you're ready to lift up, just gently lift the collective up. And we've got just kind of a little demonstration here. I'm from the same video we used for the dolly landing. So what I want to show you here is the aircraft getting light. So we'll see if I can time this out just right. If you look, you'll notice the tail move just a little bit. I'm going to get it light and if you really look at the aircraft, you'll see it kind of moving just a little bit. I'll wait until I get it right to where I like it. Everything feels good. Step number two, gently lift it up off the ground. When I started training a long time ago, one of the senior instructors flew with me and that was one of the things he said was experienced pilots roll these things over because they're not using a good two step process. So step number one, get the aircraft light on the skids, Pause, neutralize all your movements, then when you're ready, lift it up. If you get in a hurry, you get sloppy. You've been flying for 10 hours of your career, maybe you've been flying 4,000 hours, it doesn't matter. You start getting sloppy, you're going to end up getting a dynamic rollover by rushing a pickup. So two step process, use it every time. Alright, thanks.
