There I was......
There I was at five hundred feet on finals and we're not dropping at all. I'm one up on my first R44 solo & the VSI needle is pegged stubbornly on zero. I remember my training days in the R22 when the instructor would shove a car battery under the pax seat for solos so the machine wouldn't behave too differently in his absence.
No ballast on this flight though & I guess the quarter full fuel tanks aren't helping my situation much neither. I consider my options. I can lower the lever a bit more & tell the flying school I was practising autos? Probably not a good idea on my first solo. I could haul back on the stick to lower the ground speed & give me some more time to get down, but I've tried that once already & the bloody thing started to climb.
The preferred approach would be to call the tower & ask for a go round. Unfortunately its a busy Saturday morning & by the time I'd get a call in edgewise I'll be way past the bounds of my landing clearance anyway. I consider the nuances of my 'cleared to land at the western pad' instruction more carefully. There are in fact two pads followed by a large grassed area in front of the flying school, maybe I can stretch the definition to just a bit east of the eastern most of the two pads?
I lower the MP till I feel the Sprague start to free wheel then raise the lever a whisker so its not really an auto. Then I haul back on the pole till the ASI drops below translational & check the VSI again, I could almost wish for some vortex ring state.
The western pad passes beneath followed shortly there after by the other western pad then the grassed area. I terminate in a waffly high hover so close to a hangar fence that I have to back up to turn around. Back on the pad the instructor says, "Where the F**k do you think you think you were going". Knowing that attack is the best form of defence I say, "Pretty good bit of hover reversing though eh?" His eyes narrow, "How do you know there wasn't something behind you?". Bloody lowest bidder instructors, they've got an answer for everything!