I took my first helicopter lesson on Saturday at the preview day to Sleap's airshow. We've got a new outfit starting up in a week or two doing lessons from Sleap so I took the opportunity to try out a different style of flying.
It was an R22 - very nice, but the headset wasn't too great (minor quibble). They let me lose doing straight and level and a few gentle turns - wouldn't let me anywhere near the collective though! It was a little hard to resist the temptation to shove the cyclic forward, especially overhead the runway at about 50 feet with only 20-30 knots showing on the ASI. That certainly woke me up
It really was great fun. I hadn't considered helicopters before, but I could really get into this. Just got to save some money and finish my IMC.....
BTW - the airshow was really great, the weather was surprisingly good except for one brief but v. wet CB. I was relieving people of their cash on the gate - I could have done without some of the general public. Why is it that OAPs with bright shiny 6 week old cars and wallets full of money get abusive because there's no discount for them?
