Mon 29th April
Wow, what a flight! I'm just back, after 3.6 hours of mountain flying with Tim, and it was awesome, wonderful, amazing, and more...words fail me. (Tim is laughing at my getting on the PC the moment I'm back, and he says hi
)
Anyway, it was a beautiful day, as we left Long Beach to the East, and started the long climb up the mountains. Up to nearly 9000 ft, then fantastic views of the lake and the mountains, with Big Bear Airport beyond, sitting in a bowl at 6700+ft. We had worked out that we should be able to do an IGE hover, but not OGE. I didn't really understand what that meant in practice. We managed to bring it to a very low hover, then as we were trying to hover taxi very very low to somewhere to park, the horn came on, and as we turned and lost forward airspeed the rotor RPM just started falling away. When we sort of hopped it to a halt it was about 70%, or below. With the heat and the altitude there was no way of getting any lift - raise the collective you stall, lower it you go into the ground. Now I understand the problems of high altitude flying when it's hot; it was all theoretical before. Anyway, Tim thought taking off would be a problem, but there was a reasonable wind so it was easier than he expected, though we still had to be careful. So we went flying through deserted canyons, and down to Hemet-Ryan for fuel and lunch. Then up an 8000 ft mountain, to auto-rotate down, great fun, and very interesting as you have to be so careful to keep your rotor RPM steady. I learned a lot about autos doing that. The wind was interesting too - 7 kt gusting 18 at Big Bear. Then back to Long Beach.
I've learned an amazing amount today - just sitting here having a discussion about mountain flying, power requirements etc with everyone here. In fact, I've learned an incredible amount in the last three weeks, and had a wonderful time. I've flown 52.6 hours, and some time I'll let everyone know what it's cost me etc. Whatever it's cost, it was worth it.
Tomorrow I'm doing an hour's f/w flying, then going home on Wednesday. I'll post again when I've time.