RW to FW and FW to RW

[that chinese fella]

Interested to hear instructors comments and experiences with training people who are converting between fixed and rotary wing or vice versa.

Common Faults etc..........

[Chuck Ellsworth]

Well when I crossed over from fixed wing to rotary the biggest fault that I had was I didn't want to fly fixed wing if a rotary wing was avaliable. :ok:

Chuck

[that chinese fella]

Nice one Chuck, any problems with lazy feet or looking at damn instruments too much.

[Say again s l o w l y]

I certainly had lazy feet, no problem with staring at instruments however.

My biggest problem was not being able to write down clearances. My memory needed to get a bit better!

I have the same problem as Chuck though, once you've got the hang of it, heli flying is addictive!

[Chuck Ellsworth]

I did not have any problem with staring at the instruments or lazy feet because when I did my Heli training I was in the aerial application business.

After spending some years flying Ag. work in Cubs, Stearmans, Pawnee's and such we had just about figured out how to operate the controls and what to look at.

I started on the Hughes 269A and it took about two hours in the hover practice end of heli flight for the concept to burn into my brain and from there it was easy.

However one word of caution to all the rest of you out there, just because it burnt into my brain very quickly be advised that I have a very small brain..so naturally it would not take long. :ok:

Chuck

[skyfarmer]

It should burn into most of our brains fairly quickly then.....We must all have small brains to do this for a living!!!

[Tinstaafl]

I did a bloke's training from RW to FW. Only major difficulty I recall was his initial tendency to reduce IAS to 0 at the threshold... :ooh:

[Send Clowns]

I've gone both ways. Haven't flown a helicopter in over 4 years but I still sometimes come in too high on a glide approach in a fixed-wing.

Tinny - you expect it to start to shake a bit as you come down through 40 knots ... (by the way, the military banned RW students from flying FW at all during training, even on leave, for that reason, so they did not kill themselves).