My best ever debrief came after my one and only dual helicopter flight in a Bell 47, in the Antipodes.
I was a really experienced helicopter passenger in many types ranging from a Hughes 300 to an Mi 8, but I had never handled the controls of one. I had of course read lots about how difficult it was - Chickenhawk in particular was in my mind.
I was flying in the right seat seat with the dual-controls fitted, but there was no throttle on the collective, so my instructor was handling the throttle, which helped a lot. We went through the usual ab-initio exercises - handling each control separately and then all three, while going up to 10’ and down again in the hover. I can still distinctly remember saying to myself several times “Relax. Anticipate.” A piece of advice from my instructor that really helped was “Hold the cyclic loosely, so you don’t feed back the vibrations.”
After managing to hover fairly well, my instructor demonstrated a low-level circuit and then let me do three of them. I was amazed that I did as well as I did, after reading all the horror stories. The only mistake I made was over-flaring while coming to a halt. This was prevented by my instructor’s firm forward pressure on the cyclic!
After nearly half an hour, I wanted continue but I was told “Quit while you’re ahead. Much longer and you’ll go to pieces.”
We flew a spirited low-level route across the field, followed by a 720° spiral descent onto the helipad which was an 8’ square trailer.
My debrief was: “I’m not blowing smoke up your a**e mate, but that was bloody good!”
Unfortunately the 47 had been sold next time I was there.