Originally Posted by
RVDT
You can get away with taking your feet off the pedals at idle most of the time but the margins are slim and finding out the hard way is not advisable. Take the left pedal off and turn it around so it interlocks the right one to hold it in neutral against the spring and it will stop that happening. Pretty hard to take off with it configured like that. Yes they will turn around at idle on a slick surface - in particular ice, or with a crosswind from the left or even another aircraft landing to your left.
If the manufacturers had expected pilots to leave the running aircraft they would have designed in fail safe control locks. Although many have cyclic and collective frictions, I haven’t flown any with yaw pedal friction or locks.
In all of my career (which was quite a long time) I never got out and left an aircraft running unattended, not even a light fixed wing. However, I do somewhere still have a video recording of a pilot who left his Squirrel running and completely unattended adjacent to an unlocked gate leading into a public car park whilst he departed the scene completely, carrying passenger baggage into a terminal building. I was a bit taken aback that he even entered the car park and I moved my car and family therein well clear because it was quite a gusty day. Twenty minutes later (!) the pilot reappeared, chucked the throttle forward and launched, carrying out an immediate spot turn and transition which almost took him directly into a mid air collision with another helicopter hover taxying past behind him. Thankfully he narrowly avoided hitting the tail rotor on the ground during the rapid quick stop needed to avoid hitting the other aircraft.