Never understood these socmed pilots, who are lauded online for their skills and excellence, with their stick-stirrings & lack of pause when lifting into the hover only to proceed with the GoPro viewers favourite nose-down, max-power, turning take off.
An instinctual pause for instrument & power checks and a spacial awareness looksie for any stationary or moving obstacles appearing in the ever changing world outside the cockpit within the period between walking-round to lifting, could save many a potential occurrence.
Of course there wouldn’t be any of these ‘little’ embarrassments posted on socmed, which leads me to think that considering the video postings to flights made ratio, we are probably missing a few tricks that are going on out there; although the stick stirring and obvious lack of trimming seem to be acceptable practises to post by these skilful (in the minds of the socmed viewers) pilots.
I guess a stringent training background and operating from very busy dispersals creates a mindset of ‘if nothings going wrong, it’s just about to’ and ‘where’s the next hazard coming from’… rather than one of; ‘that’s the engine started, let’s go!
As for take off checks; once had the occasion when lifting in the hover the handling (RHS) pilot calling out ‘torque, NC, T4, CWP’, turned head, checked the tail and began a spot turn. I enquired what the torquemeter was reading.
’Looks like it’s failed’ came the reply!
(it had failed pre skids off)