Controls Full and Free
A cautionary tale that may stop somebody else doing what I did.
I hired an R22 a while back to go on a trip with a photographer friend who is also a fw flyer. After an experience once when I had a sneezing fit while flying solo, I prefer to have the dual controls rigged so that the passenger can at least keep the thing pointed straight ahead if I need to let go for a few seconds. When I got into the aircraft, the dual controls had been removed, so I found them and put them back on as allowed in the POH.
I assumed that the pedals are identical, wrongly as it turned out. I slotted them into position, fitted the cyclic and collective and did the rest of the checks. When it came to "controls full travel and free", I found that the pedals would not go full travel. I looked down and saw my friend's camera bag laying against the pedals, so asked him to move it and continued with the checks. I did not recheck pedal travel after he had moved his bag.
I completed the checks, spun up the rotors and got ready to lift. I pulled up the collective, fed in left pedal, and to my horror found that there was no left pedal! The longer right pedal on the passenger side was trapped behind the shorter left one and I only had half pedal travel range. I was by then about an inch above the ground, so I dumped the collective and dropped on to the deck after twisting 45 degrees to the right. Thank Heavens the ground was smooth flat grass.
Two points emerge from this.
There is no indication in any of the documentation that the pedals are left and right handed.
Controls Full and Free means just that.
Check before flight!
Phew!