Helicopter pilots are such a bunch of worrywarts. Good grief, sometimes I wonder how some of you actually leave the house, so paranoid you seem about Bad Things happening. Do any of you actually fly? I mean in the real world, in real helicopters, not the kind generated by FS2004.
In my 10,000 hours...that's right,
10,000 hours in which much of that time was spent sitting between revenue flights at ground-idle, I cannot ever...that's right,
ever remember a time when the idling engine suddenly accellerated itself. I can't
ever remember a hydraulic servo "running away." (In fact, hydraulic hard-overs in 206's are just about unheard of.) I can't
ever remember having the idling rotor disk do anything strange, even when larger helicopter landed right next to me. Oh, I'd grab the controls and "be ready," of course, and sometimes my helicopter has yawed a little, but I've never, that's right
never had to pull the stick one way or the other to counter this fictitious and imaginary "blade sailing."
Yet we worry. We worry that our ship, which sat perfectly well on the dolly in the hangar before our flight, will now somehow tip over backwards simply because it's running without the weight of the pilot in the seat. We worry that haunted throttles will suddenly go to "full" or collectives with their own minds will raise or errant cyclics will clunk to a stop...or the machine will catch on fire (somehow spontaneously combust?). I guess we just like to worry.
Then again, there are the terminably stupid. I've known pilots who've gotten out of running helicopters without ensuring that their cyclics were properly frictioned (with predictably expensive results). I've known pilots who shut the engine down and then leapt like a Gazelle from the machine (not an SA-341, in this case) without ensuring that the throttle was completely closed and the fire had indeed gone all the way out...oops! And of course there is the true story of the hapless S-76 pilot in Los Angeles who got out to check a door but inexplicably left his ship running at full rpm (now there was a genius!). We are left to wonder whether he was actually surprised when it took off - or attempted to - without him. (We are also left to wonder why an S-76, ostensibly at flat pitch would lift off the ground? Perhaps someone with Sikorksy experience could explain
that little malfunction. In every Sikorsky I've ever flown, if you left the collective friction or stick trim off the pole would fall to the floor like a dropped sledgehammer. So that's curious.)
Eons ago, in my capacity as a lineboy, I used to refuel a particular traffic-watch Bell 47 that regularly stopped in. The pilot was always in a hurry, and fueling operations began before the rotor even stopped (no brakes, remember), with me crouching under the whirling stabilizer bar. The bloke always wanted it topped-off, and you know those old saddle-tanks, no matter how careful I was being, petrol would inevitably slosh out, into the scupper and onto the hot engine with a loud
PSSSSSSST!. This used to happen and I'd think to meself, "Is today the day I get blowed up to the high heavens?" Apparently not, for I am still here. Continued repetition of unsafe acts without accident does not render them safe of course, and I no longer engage in such foolishness. No, I let others refuel 47's right after they've shut down, thank you very much. Avgas? Egad!
Back to the point: Be safe, take the right precautions, and if your helicopter has never before done anything hinky at idle there is no reason to believe it will
this time when you need to get out for two seconds to secure a door, take a leak, throw on a few extra gallons or whatever.
But worry on, mates, if fretting over the trivial makes you feel better.
