Whilst building up hours prior to passing my GFT, I was comming in to land, but I was not really focused on the job in hand, as I approached the outskirts of the field I was too high to come into the hover, I was wrong with the wind and for some reason my legs refused to do what I asked them too, in fact they operated in the wrong order, so there I was, nearly at a halt , 500ft from the ground and kicking the wrong pedals to stop this strange rotation that had started ever so slowly, I saw a panorama or trees, builings , coast line and horizons, but to my horror it started to go faster and faster what was descernable now became a kalidascope of coloured lines, yellow and blue of far off sand and sky was rapidly exchanged for green and brown lines now focused only in the middle of the screen, I suddenly thought " Oh ******" instinct and instant recall came back extremly very quickly, my feet found the right way to work again, I pushed forwards with the cyclic at the same time as dumping the collective, counted three out loud pulled back on the stick and fed in the power all the way to the top of its travel , and lo, it came to pass, the Lord didn't want me this time and I found myself comming into a gently flaring hover some 15 to 20 ft from the area that had seconds before been a green and brown blurred set of lines in my vision. I set the heli down, rested and trembled and sweated for the next 10 minutes, then lifted and hover taxied back to base.
This incident was my fault, I had not been fully focused on what I should have been doing, I feel very lucky to have had such an escape, I have flown many hours since that day, but I will always remember what it tastes like when you have completely ballsed it up!
