Thanks people. I ought to do some studying; I'm going to work today (especially the dreaded P of F
) and take tomorrow off completely before driving back to Andover in the late afternoon. This evening I'm going to try out an Ex 4 briefing on
Aerbabe , who's cat/house sitting for me, and her friend Neil; she has a PPL(A) and has had a trial helicopter lesson, and he's had a few f/w lessons, so they're almost typical students. I've told them to act like real students...so we'll see.
The stuck collective problem...I pretty much agree with
Helibloke . As you flare to slow down that'll raise your RPM, so you'll need to keep bringing it back to the bottom of the green. I think you'd want to keep above translational lift speed to prevent any sudden sink, but you might want to do that to prevent vortex ring anyway. As you approach what would be hover height the ground cushion will hold you up, so very gradually bring back the speed and roll off throttle till you come to rest on the ground with a very gentle run-on landing - how's that for sheer optimism? Well, what do you think? Shoot me down in flames gently please.
Helinut,
I can see that you do indeed need to adjust the briefing to suit the student. But...I think (though I can't be certain) that what happened to me was that my instructor made some incorrect assumptions about what I'd want.
I went for a trial lesson, a f/w PPL who had no plans to take it any further. I loved it, and went back for a whole day. I said then that I was considering doing a PPL(H), but wasn't sure. Fairly soon afterwards I said that I was going to. But I always felt I wasn't taken seriously. I was treated as though the most I'd ever do would be take out a helicopter occasionally in my local area, as though the finer points of the 'A' check and not being able to reach the rotors because I'm so short wouldn't matter...
"Don't worry; someone can always do it for you"
"Get me a ladder; I do my own 'A' checks!"
Perhaps it was because I was female. It made no sense really, because as a f/w pilot I knew a fair bit about the theory and nav and met and so on anyway, so more information would hardly have overloaded me. Perhaps it was purely because I hadn't made it clear that my feelings about what I wanted were changing as time went on. Fairly early on I thought about instructing. I'd never enjoyed anything in my whole life as much as flying helicopters, and I didn't want to be one of these PPLs who never flew enough to be confident, or to improve - I wanted more. But I didn't tell anyone that; I saw no reason to at the time. Then one day my instructor said jokingly: "You enjoy this so much; maybe you should become an instructor". I then told him I was considering doing just that. Well, he wasn't just surprised; he was utterly gobsmacked!
So, any instructors reading this...what would you have done if I'd been your student from the start?