Kenny KellerCreator Helicopter Online Ground School LLC

"The Perfect Pinnacle" Approach and Landing with Taz Christman

29 Mar 2018 · 5 min

Watch on YouTube

4:36

This is an instructional in-flight monologue demonstrating a pinnacle helicopter approach and landing. The speaker (Taz Christman) narrates pre-landing checks (skid clearance, throttle/power), conducts a high reconnaissance about 500 ft above terrain, assesses wind (north-northeast, ~45 kt) and sun conditions, selects an approach path avoiding obstacles, confirms out-of-ground-effect hover capability (to ~4,000 ft), and executes a cautious landing with attention to skid contact and tail clearance.

Questions this video answers

About 500 ft above the elevation of the terrain.

About 3,200 ft.

All the way up to 4,000 ft.

From the north-northeast.

About 45 knots.

Chapters

All right, so picking up from Pinnacle, obviously we've got brush and rocks and stuff. Like going to have a nice gentle pickup just to make sure that we're not getting anything caught on the skids. Roll the throttle up here a little bit. And now we're just going to slowly start lifting it up. She gets light on the skids. There she goes. And nice dental pickup. Pretty. So now we know where the winds are at. We got good power. I'll lower the nose here and we'll start a little bit forward and off we go. All right. All right. So what we're going to do now is we're going to come in and we're going to do a high reconnaissance. So about 500ft above the elevation of the terrain. The train's about 3200ft. So we're going to be about just a little bit higher here. And since I'm sitting on the left hand side of the aircraft, we're going to make the turn around to the left. So we're looking for our standard, we're looking for the winds. So we've got to know where the winds are coming from. So we're basically coming out of the north northeast. The sun is directly above us so that's not a big factor. And we got some cloud cover today. So it's actually no sun glare. So now what I'm looking for is a path in and a path out. So I know I'm going to come in from the south southwest here and have a nice little run in. There's a little bit of a. There's a tree at the end of the little football shape type thing. So I'm going to come in just to the left of that and that way I'm not going to hit that. And then my spot is going to be right in the middle. I know from checking the power setting before I left that I should have an out of ground effect hover all the way up to 4,000ft. So that's going to be plenty of altitude for based on where we're at. Alright. So I'm going to extend my downwind here a little bit. Now I'm going to start my turn back in. So I've extended it out. So I got my final. I'm gonna come in just a little bit higher than normal due to the winds. I don't want to get that the burble off of the. The leeward side of the mountain. So I'm gonna come in just a little bit higher. I'm looking at there's about 45 knots. Looking pretty good. I'm gonna keep it right there at so getting a little bit of power about right here. So it's keeping it right there. Etl I got a little bit of a bush that I'm gonna fly right over the top of. And landing right on the other side of this little bush. Making sure my tail does not hit it. There we go. And nice gentle set down. As I'm setting down here just to make sure. It looks like it's nice and hard and rocky. But I'm gonna make sure that as that skid touch that I'm not sinking in that I'm not going to get snagged on anything. Alright. So there we go right there. And I'm just kind of light on the skids making sure that it's nice and firm before I lower the collective. There we go. And that would be your pinnacle approach and landing. Sa.