How to Ace Helicopter Check Ride? Master Performance & Limitations Questions

We're moving right along, testing your knowledge with the private pilot Study guide. Today's section, we're covering performance and limitations and we realize that these answers might be a little bit longer than the previous videos. So stop the tape, stop the tape, stop the recording, hit pause, write your answer in and then continue on because we really want to see where you're at with these questions. I'm Kenny Keller, creator of Helicopter Online Ground School. This is a series of videos where we're prepping people for a checkride down to like the last three weeks. We're about halfway through the series. In case you're new to this, I'm going to ask you 10 questions of 40 from performance and limitations. Let's get started. Do aircraft manufacturers test the helicopter under each and every condition shown on performance chart? New reference for this question is the Helicopter Flying Handbook, chapter seven, which you should be very familiar with. Three weeks away from a checkride, take out a piece of paper. We've been having people go along and see how well you can answer these and then we'll come back with the correct answer. Do aircraft manufacturers test the helicopter under each and every condition shown on a performance chart? What are the three main factors that affect a helicopter's performance? Examiner is going to ask you. These scenarios happen in every situation. Think about how you're going to answer the examiner when the examiner is sitting across from you at the table. What is density altitude? I've heard this asked on every single private pilot checkride I've ever sat through. What is density altitude? They're also going to ask you about pressure altitude because you have to understand these terms to figure your aircraft performance at the private pilot level. You need to understand what's going on with the aircraft and how it's going to operate in the different scenarios. Different temperatures, different pressures. You have to know this. If you are operating a helicopter in and out of an airport where the field elevation is 500ft MSL and the density altitude is 5,000ft, how can you expect the helicopter to perform? Going to give you a little hint. What altitude do you think the helicopter thinks it's at? This is important. If you're operating a helicopter in and out of an airport where the field elevation is 500ft MSL and the density altitude is 5,000ft, how can you expect the helicopter to perform when operating at higher gross weights? Why is more anti torque thrust required in a hover? When operating at higher gross weights? Why is more anti torque thrust required in a hover? What are the shaded areas of the height velocity diagram used for guaranteed 100%. The examiner is going to ask you questions about the HV diagram, the height velocity diagram. It's imperative that you understand this. Most likely they'll open up the POH and have you point to those shaded areas and tell them why are they there? What's important? What are the shaded areas of the HV diagram used for? I love this question. Does the HV diagram exist for descent to a landing? I'll give you a hint. This was designed for one specific scenario. This is one that people like to argue about. Jot your answer down. Does the HB diagram exist for descent to a landing? What can happen if you operate the helicopter outside of the weight and balance limits specified in section two and that is section two of the operator's manual or pilot's operating handbook. One reference for this is our Robinson R.22 section video 2.14. You can also resource the helicopter flying handbook in section 6.2. What can happen if you operate the helicopter outside of the weight and balance limits Special specified in section 2? When calculating weight and balance, why is it wise to calculate with empty fuel along with full fuel? When we first start learning to fly, instructors will normally teach us how to do the weight and balance starting with full fuel and then charting it to zero fuel. This is a must. So what are you going to tell the examiner? If the examiner says when calculating weight and balance, why is it wise to calculate with empty fuel along with full fuel? How you doing? Hopefully you're batting 100%. If you are, you're along the path the Good Private Pilot Checkride if you're lacking on any of these questions, keep studying. This is 10 questions out of 40 questions out of our Private Pilot Study Guide. Let's cover the questions and answers. Do aircraft manufacturers test the helicopter under each and every condition as shown on a performance chart? The answer is no. Specific data is evaluated and mathematically derived from the remaining data. What are the three main factors that affect a helicopter's performance? Density, altitude, weight and wind. We always say high gross weight. High density altitude are always going to be a factor in every single scenario. What is density Altitude? It's pressure altitude corrected for non standard temperature. If you're operating a helicopter in and out of an airport where the field elevation is 500ft MSL and the density altitude is 5,000ft feet, how can you expect the helicopter to perform? The helicopter is going to perform like it's at 5,000ft when operating at higher gross weights. Why is more anti torque Thrust required in a hover. The answer is more power is needed to hover at higher gross weights which produces more torque which requires more anti torque thrust. What winds may require the use of more tail rotor thrust to maintain directional control. Crosswinds and tailwinds. You're always going to be better off when the wind is off of your nose, as we've all been taught. So crosswinds and tailwinds is the answer. So while we're at it, make sure you review LTE loss of tail rotor effectiveness prior to checkride day and know that really well and know the three different winds that can cause you problems and lead to lte. What are the shaded areas of the HB diagram used for? The shaded areas are areas to avoid during a takeoff. If you follow the height velocity diagram, you are set up to best handle an engine failure and do an auto rotation if you would lose that engine during that takeoff. Does the HV diagram exist for descent to a landing? The answer is no. During a landing you can't avoid that shaded area. The high velocity diagram is designed for takeoff, not designed for landing. During a takeoff you have high power setting, usually high pitch applied. You're asking a lot out of that aircraft and out of that engine. On descent you have low pitch applied low, lower power setting, so you're not asking as much from the aircraft. Could it still fail on an approach? It could, but it's more likely for it to fail during a takeoff when you're putting a load on that engine. And we've learned that an engine is more likely to fail during a power change versus a steady steady power setting. What can happen if you operate the helicopter outside of the weight and balance limits specified in section 2? Answers are structural integrity is compromised, can result in insufficient control travel for safe control, unable to predict helicopter performance. Basically, it might fly just fine until you have to deal with an emergency. You might get away with taking off and going out and flying around. But when that emergency happens, you may be out of luck. When calculating weight and balance, why is it wise to calculate with empty fuel along with full of fuel? The reason is you want to make sure the helicopter remains within the weight and balance limits. Depending on where your tanks are located. You've got passengers or cargo loaded, you've got a certain amount of fuel. So during that flight, as you're burning off fuel, the CG changes. You might take off and be in a good scenario for flight. But as you burn off that fuel, you could put yourself out of CG and again be flying along and not really notice it until emergency happens. Hope you're batting 100%. If you are, you're in good shape. Keep studying. If you're lacking in any of those areas, go back to preferably helicopter, online ground school. If you're not a member yet, you can go down below. We have 4 full fledged online courses, been online 10 years. Hogs Wall of Fame in the background. If you're new to Hogs, we've been doing this for over 10 years and we have actually over a thousand testimonials. We have well approaching 300 pictures on the wall, but that's just pictures of people that have sent in after their checkride. So we want to cover each day. We're covering a chapter out of top 10 checkride tips. There's 12 chapters, there's 10 main tips, but then there's a section at the end from the examiners. Chapter six, Be an hour early. Sounds easy, right? The day of the checkride, you're going to be nervous. There's a lot going on. There's a lot to do the leading up to it, especially the night before. Usually people are struggling the night before to finish up. Hopefully you want to be done a couple days ahead of time. Show up early for the checkride because your heart's going to be racing. You got all these things going on. You want to get there and plenty of time to get there. Have a chance to breathe, lay out your stuff, get out your paperwork, get out, get everything nice and neat and organized. We understand in life things happen, right? I have a perfect example. I'll make it short. One of my guys who did private commercial CFI with me, he's on the Hogswell, he's one of our online instructors and he's now flying EMS on his private. He smoked a checkride, did wonderful. We did everything right. We were ready, we were there early, everything was great. Commercial checkride. He had some things going on his life, some turbulence at home. We left late that day. So the whole time making an hour and a half flight over to see the examiner and we're both freaking out because we know that we're going to be late. That was not a good check ride. And he almost failed. At a certain point the examiner pulled me out and he's like, what's wrong with your boy? And I'm like, man, you know, number one problem, we were late. But he's got a lot of things going on at home and luckily he made it through. Being early, that hour is precious. And if you can get an hour And a half early, hour early, I would suggest that. Or two hours early. But getting there ahead of time and having the time to settle down, lay everything out, breathe and try to relax before the examiner walks into the room. All right, we've been pimping these two books every day. Links are down below, but we are Helicopter Online Ground School. If you're new to us, we have private pilot, commercial pilot, instrument pilot and certified flight instructor. We have monthly options. You can go to our site down below. You can take a test flight on the monthly options and then we have larger packages available as well. Heather Hight is our member concierge. Approaching five years with us here at Helicopter Line Ground School. She's super knowledgeable, she knows the lingo and she can talk to you through text or a phone call at 574-767-1797 and you can also email supportelicopterground.com as well. A lot of people have really enjoyed talking to Heather. She's really sweet, she's really nice and she understands helicopters. She's not just some girl that answers the phone, doesn't know anything. She's very knowledgeable after being with us for five years and handling the Hog's phone line. So you can go down below to helicopterground.com to check out our memberships and there's also a link for this. We'll ship this to you in the US right here from the HOGS headquarters. Heather will ship you that Short read Powerful short read Private Pilot Study guide. There's a link down below. You can get the physical copy and you can also get grab the first chapter certificates of documents as a free PDF download. You can sign up for that below as well. Both of them are at the same link so you can go in and pick whether you want the download or the spiral bound copy. All right, next video in this series is going to be Operations of systems. Keep studying, keep reviewing and we'll see in the next video. Peace out.