Kenny Keller teaches Sam to fly an R-44 helicopter from zero experience. Sam learns the dual controls, practices smooth inputs, and successfully hovers the aircraft three feet above the ground.
June 2, 2023.
About three feet above the ground.
You ever been in a helicopter before? No. And then if you feel brave, I might let you try all three at the same time.
You're doing it. You're doing it, you're doing it.
Look at that. Nice.
You just did it.
All right. Wow.
You just hovered a helicopter. Live to fly another day. Helicopterground.com.
Now, if you're interested of this or not, but we just take a look at everything. Hoses, wires, drive shaft. That's the main road transmission. We're checking the gear lube, and that back here is a hydraulic system. We're checking the fluid in the hydraulic system. Whole thing just came out of refurbishment. So everything's really nice and fresh, and it's a really nice helicopter. I'm really, really happy with it. You ever been in a helicopter before? No, I have not. Oh, nice. Makes it a lot easier. So I'll have you come over here because you're going to get in this side. And so there's dual controls. There's ones over here and one over here for you. And I'm going to explain them to you when we're out here messing around. And I'll let you just kind of monkey with them one at a time to kind of get the feel of them. And then if you feel brave, I might let you try all three at the same time. And real quickly, it'll go like, no. And I'll go, okay, I got it.
Right.
And I'll grab it. I'll be there. We won't let it get too crazy. Every single thing that we do is really small, smooth control inputs. Because we have to maintain the rotor RPM at all time. That's what keeps us flying in the air. So all the control movements, even if there was some kind of an emergency, the control inputs I would do would still be smooth.
Headsets.
Put them on and then just adjust it so it's almost touching your lips. Okay. Because it's voice activated, so if it's too far out, it won't, you know, and I've not explained this to people. And I'm in the helicopter and I'm starting up and I'm running and I look over and hear. They're like. And I'm like, hey, turn your headset around. What? Take your.
Take your headset off and turn it around.
Feeling good, huh? Feeling good? Yeah. It'll be fun. Pretty excited. Nervous, but excited. That's always good.
No better person to do it with, right?
Oh, yeah. I trust him completely. Sat right here.
So put your feet on the pedals. Okay. And Just look out ahead, and if the nose goes left, push a little bit of right. Push a little left, Push a little right, Push a little left. A little bit of right. A little bit of left, A little bit of right.
Okay.
All right, I'll take those back. So there's what the pedals does.
Okay.
Okay. Now, the collective, it controls our height above the ground. So if it starts going up, I push down on it a little bit. If I'm going down, I raise up a little bit. So we want to try to stay about where we're at right here, about three feet above the ground.
Okay.
So I'm gonna release my grip. If you feel us go up, push down a little bit. There you go.
Okay.
So that's how you operate that one. Okay, I'll take it back. I'm gonna go a little bit left just because I want to get away from them a little bit. Put your left hand on this one, or, I'm sorry, your right hand. And this was the tricky one, because what this helicopter wants to do is, like, right now, I'm making tiny, tiny movements, counteracting where the different directions it wants to go. So ultimately, like, let's say I start drifting to the left, I'll push it back to the right a little bit. If it starts going to the right, I'll push it back to the left. And that happens in direction. And so I'm making these tiny, tiny control movements. And this is always the. No, it's the hardest one to learn and the hardest one for me to try to explain to somebody.
Yeah.
So it'll feel a little wacky. So I'm going to kind of release my grip and just. Just so.
Yeah.
It'S just so super sensitive. And I just kind of release my hand when I. So you could get a feel for it. Then you can see as I'm coming back.
Yeah.
To help you straighten it out a little bit. Okay, keep doing that. Now put your feet on the pedals and your left hand on that collective.
Okay.
And I'm gonna. Just for a second, I'm gonna release everything. Oh, look at you.
You're hovering.
You're doing it. You're doing it. You're doing it.
Look at that. Nice.
Okay. And I'll take them back. You just did it.
All right. Wow.
You just hovered a helicopter. Most people, the sooner you. You let it go like that, they go, whoa, and they go crazy. You did really well, man. That was. That was a nice, smooth touch. Good.
It. So what do you think? How was it? It's awesome. Had fun. Like, I want to fly a helicopter. It is addicting. It gets in your blood. What did you think of the first time I took my hands off when you were hovering? I was a little nervous, but it was cool, though. You did good. He actually held it there for a couple seconds, which is more than most people do. Usually as soon as you let go, they go like this. And he just held it pretty smooth, and it kind of stayed there. I'm like, all right, that's pretty cool. And then at altitude, too. Once you're up there, you can see it's really not a big, huge deal. Did you have fun?
I had fun. Did you guys have fun?
Sam. And.
