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Old 10th Apr 2011, 19:25
  #19 (permalink)  
FH1100 Pilot
 
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: Pensacola, Florida
Posts: 773
Received 29 Likes on 14 Posts
Personally, I've never understood the minimum-power-for-takeoff crowd. Yes, I know the helicopter can conduct every maneuver at hover power, I get that. But takeoff with just hover power? Why would I want to do that?

I fly airplanes. We use full power for takeoff. Why? Well obviously because runway lengths are finite. But along with that, we want to quickly get some airspeed and altitude. It's safer up there (as opposed to down low) in case something goes wrong.

In my helicopter it's the same thing: I want airspeed and altitude fast. At our home base airport, when I'm by myself and the thing is hovering at 72%, then maybe I'll only pull 85-90% on takeoff. That gets me up and going right smartly, it does. Trouble is, I'm so very rarely by myself in the machine. If I'm heavy I go all the way to 100%. This is not abusing the engine/trans and I'll be damned if I'm going to worry about the engine quitting just because I'm using full power. Especially if I have to takeoff thisaway when I need to be going thataway. (No, I do not just takeoff in the direction I need to be going, not even from an airport.)

Confined areas are a different story. With them (and I do a lot of them), it's 100% until I'm well clear of the obstacles and have some positive airspeed registering on the meter. But having said that, a lightly loaded 206B has plenty of vertical performance. So if I'm in one of our patented hover-holes and I'm coming out empty, the pull from 72% (or whatever) wouldn't be a mighty yank (although I happen to be a mighty Yank) but a smooth ease-on-up-to-100 even though the actual time spent at 100% might be brief indeed. Get me outta here!

Lately I've been "auditioning" some replacement pilots as I've reached the end of the road of my flying career (I hope!). Some of them have very different philosophies on flying than I. Most are graduates of the just-use-minimum-power school. They seem reluctant to even pull full power, and some do not even climb at BROC as was beat into my head by PHI's training instructors for lo those many years. (But see, JetRangers do not climb well at BROC at "a little over" hover power.) Maybe these aspirants are just trying to impress me with their cautiousness, I don't know. And while their techniques are not mine, I understand that different pilots fly...well, differently, and that there is no singular correct way of doing much of anything in helicopters as long as you don't crash, which I would say demonstrates ipso facto bad technique.

At the end of the day (and the end of the post) I gotta go with Gordy. So much of what we do in helicopters is done by feel. Most everything we do is an improvisation of some sort; it's hard to apply "hard" numbers when every dang landing site is different and requires a slightly different technique. But in general, if you tell me that I have 100% available, then I use it and do not feel guilty about it. I don't like being low and slow near the ground.
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