Learning to hover!
One more point about the collective, partcularly in the R22:
Hold the lever normally, and stick your left thumb out to touch the seat. For cruise, the thumb is about level with the seat cushion. Climb, it is halfway up your thigh.
For hovering, keep your thumb on the seat edge, and just pivot your hand around this anchor point. This allows you to make finer movements instead of the big jerky bits you get if you rely on your elbow. It's like peeling a potato - you pivot the peeler around your thumb which is planted on the spud. Try to peel it with your hand off the spud and you'll take off your other hand.
Hold the lever normally, and stick your left thumb out to touch the seat. For cruise, the thumb is about level with the seat cushion. Climb, it is halfway up your thigh.
For hovering, keep your thumb on the seat edge, and just pivot your hand around this anchor point. This allows you to make finer movements instead of the big jerky bits you get if you rely on your elbow. It's like peeling a potato - you pivot the peeler around your thumb which is planted on the spud. Try to peel it with your hand off the spud and you'll take off your other hand.
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keep the faith
i can remember coming back from my first hover lesson - thinking "what have i done.... i can't do this, i'm never gonna get this, i'm dreaming if i think i can do this"
in short: don't give up - everyone's most likley had the same problem & probably been told the same thing - relax;
"the more you relax the smoother you will fly"
it will come together for you, persevere & don't let your performance (or lack of it initially) get you down
i managed to pass my flight test (only yesterday actually)
, personally i think i still fly like ****, but realising this will hopefully make me the better for it 
, life is an exercise in personal refinement.
you cannot be expected to nail it the first time. keep-on keeping-on
cheers
in short: don't give up - everyone's most likley had the same problem & probably been told the same thing - relax;
"the more you relax the smoother you will fly"
it will come together for you, persevere & don't let your performance (or lack of it initially) get you down
i managed to pass my flight test (only yesterday actually)
, personally i think i still fly like ****, but realising this will hopefully make me the better for it , life is an exercise in personal refinement.you cannot be expected to nail it the first time. keep-on keeping-on
cheers
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just 6 hrs don't worry about it some bods take 8 ,12,20,.......
everythings been said to help.if you want concentrate on job in hand rather than numerical value.some people after vast number of hours still jump up and down wet themselves and say "thats a helicopter over there........right ?". yet I still get told off doing it in front of paying punters !
everythings been said to help.if you want concentrate on job in hand rather than numerical value.some people after vast number of hours still jump up and down wet themselves and say "thats a helicopter over there........right ?". yet I still get told off doing it in front of paying punters !
Hovering AND talking
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some people after vast number of hours still jump up and down wet themselves and say "thats a helicopter over there.
Cheers
Whirlygig
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DB Chopper -- nice to hear from a satisfied customer... good on yer.
I've always thought that people underestimate the importance of footwork. The pedals are the most important controls in learning to hover, IMHO.
People tie a granny knot in the cyclic trying to keep still, but if they get the feet right, everything will quickly come together.
It's hard for a student to separate drift from yaw in the early stages of hovering, so he or she will correct with cyclic when the machine is beginning to rotate about the mast. And the merry dance begins.
Concentrate on keeping straight on your aiming point, well ahead of the aircraft, and you'll be surprised how quickly you can batter the rest into submission.
I've always thought that people underestimate the importance of footwork. The pedals are the most important controls in learning to hover, IMHO.
People tie a granny knot in the cyclic trying to keep still, but if they get the feet right, everything will quickly come together.
It's hard for a student to separate drift from yaw in the early stages of hovering, so he or she will correct with cyclic when the machine is beginning to rotate about the mast. And the merry dance begins.
Concentrate on keeping straight on your aiming point, well ahead of the aircraft, and you'll be surprised how quickly you can batter the rest into submission.
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Hi Pat.
Satisfied indeed - that was quite a major moment in my life (pauses to wipe away a tear...
)
Good point about drift v yaw. When I finally hacked the yaw I found I had no brain capacity left to counteract any drift. Consequently I remember slowly drifting forward out of the hover square, over the taxiway and far away - a kind of snail's pace hover taxi - until I could cope with re-positioning us.
By the way, anyone else find themselves leaning to one side in their seat when learning to hover in a crosswing, trying desperately to counteract it without moving that damned cyclic..?
DBChopper
Satisfied indeed - that was quite a major moment in my life (pauses to wipe away a tear...
) Good point about drift v yaw. When I finally hacked the yaw I found I had no brain capacity left to counteract any drift. Consequently I remember slowly drifting forward out of the hover square, over the taxiway and far away - a kind of snail's pace hover taxi - until I could cope with re-positioning us.
By the way, anyone else find themselves leaning to one side in their seat when learning to hover in a crosswing, trying desperately to counteract it without moving that damned cyclic..?
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Time Spent Hovering
Hello,
What a great thread...loads of really good advice...tons of ideas for both students and instructors.
This post goes mostly to instructors (and instructors-to-be).
As an instructor myself, I have very definite ways I approach hover training.
One of the major factors is the time I spend 'in the field' hovering with a student.
I am always amazed when I talk to some students, how long they spent...just hovering. The first post in this thread said that he had 'struggled for 6 hours'. I had a student come to me, dissatisfied with his old school. A quick look in his logbook revealed that he had done 10 hours of almost straight hover practice. No wonder he was dissatisfied.
My point is that spending more than 5-10 minutes of hover practice in any one flight can possibly be detrimental to the learning process. Frustration and fatigue can seriously slow a student down. While that student is sweating in his own anger at not being able to hover, other things could be being done...most of which will develop hover skills anyway. I therefore watch very carefully for signs of frustration creeping in, and motivation waning. Then we move on.
I generally downplay 'hovering' with the student. I don't want them to feel defeated before they start. I focus more on other skills and make the hovering a 'small' factor in their initial training, rather than the huge monster that it seems to be. (This thread probably doesn't help!)
Approaches are a great way to learn hovering. I remember somewhere in this thread, the poster said that his first successful hover was after an approach, and he didn't even notice he was hovering! The skill of reducing your speed to 0 kts is a progressive way to get to the hovering stage. The student makes an approach to the slowest he / she has control, then goes around (with a little help from the instructor) for another try. The student doesn't even know he / she is 'learning to hover'.
Airspeed transitions, hover taxiing and indeed any other maneuver will help the student attain the skills of hovering.
So in summary, as I said, 5-10 minutes in a lesson, then other maneuvers is much better than 20-30 minutes of sweat, frustration and anger.
cl12pv2s
What a great thread...loads of really good advice...tons of ideas for both students and instructors.
This post goes mostly to instructors (and instructors-to-be).
As an instructor myself, I have very definite ways I approach hover training.
One of the major factors is the time I spend 'in the field' hovering with a student.
I am always amazed when I talk to some students, how long they spent...just hovering. The first post in this thread said that he had 'struggled for 6 hours'. I had a student come to me, dissatisfied with his old school. A quick look in his logbook revealed that he had done 10 hours of almost straight hover practice. No wonder he was dissatisfied.
My point is that spending more than 5-10 minutes of hover practice in any one flight can possibly be detrimental to the learning process. Frustration and fatigue can seriously slow a student down. While that student is sweating in his own anger at not being able to hover, other things could be being done...most of which will develop hover skills anyway. I therefore watch very carefully for signs of frustration creeping in, and motivation waning. Then we move on.
I generally downplay 'hovering' with the student. I don't want them to feel defeated before they start. I focus more on other skills and make the hovering a 'small' factor in their initial training, rather than the huge monster that it seems to be. (This thread probably doesn't help!)
Approaches are a great way to learn hovering. I remember somewhere in this thread, the poster said that his first successful hover was after an approach, and he didn't even notice he was hovering! The skill of reducing your speed to 0 kts is a progressive way to get to the hovering stage. The student makes an approach to the slowest he / she has control, then goes around (with a little help from the instructor) for another try. The student doesn't even know he / she is 'learning to hover'.
Airspeed transitions, hover taxiing and indeed any other maneuver will help the student attain the skills of hovering.
So in summary, as I said, 5-10 minutes in a lesson, then other maneuvers is much better than 20-30 minutes of sweat, frustration and anger.
cl12pv2s
The Original Whirly
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cl12pv2s,
As a low hours instructor, many thanks for that.
I learned to hover in 5-10 minute sessions at the end of every lesson, right from the start. Even if I begged to do more, I got told it was counter-productive. I think hour after hour of hovering must be horrendous.
Another hint, passed on to me by a multi-thousand hour instructor during my LPC...
He recommends teaching people to hover-taxi first, which is saying much the same thing as you did. They find it easier. I've had a little go at this with complete beginners, since at weekends the airfield won't let us do hover practice; too crowded. So we tend to only do trial lessons then, and if I get someone who looks like they could manage it, I let them try a bit of hover-taxiing back to the school. They feel like they're hovering, but it definitely seems to be easier for them.
As a low hours instructor, many thanks for that.
I learned to hover in 5-10 minute sessions at the end of every lesson, right from the start. Even if I begged to do more, I got told it was counter-productive. I think hour after hour of hovering must be horrendous.
Another hint, passed on to me by a multi-thousand hour instructor during my LPC...
He recommends teaching people to hover-taxi first, which is saying much the same thing as you did. They find it easier. I've had a little go at this with complete beginners, since at weekends the airfield won't let us do hover practice; too crowded. So we tend to only do trial lessons then, and if I get someone who looks like they could manage it, I let them try a bit of hover-taxiing back to the school. They feel like they're hovering, but it definitely seems to be easier for them.
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Hovering
Hi,
I do not exactly remind how I got through it other then that the field needed indeed to be big enough at first....
Something interesting however I observed with the R44-simulator I am building, is that I could not hover with it at first. Hovering has indeed some unstable modes, so if the pilots 'feedback' is not OK, oscillations (possibly increasing in amplitude) will occur.
I went back to the real R44 and observed that I would take on stable positions on the controls (for instance cyclic) for the give situation and make short corrections around these positions. The corrections are most of the time stopped even before the heli in fact started responding (meaning that they really are very anticipative). I copied that to the simulator and guess what, It worked.
Hope that helps.
Delta3
ps : reading back : this explains perhaps the previous remarks that hovering after approach is easier because the student found the stable positions before entering hover
I do not exactly remind how I got through it other then that the field needed indeed to be big enough at first....
Something interesting however I observed with the R44-simulator I am building, is that I could not hover with it at first. Hovering has indeed some unstable modes, so if the pilots 'feedback' is not OK, oscillations (possibly increasing in amplitude) will occur.
I went back to the real R44 and observed that I would take on stable positions on the controls (for instance cyclic) for the give situation and make short corrections around these positions. The corrections are most of the time stopped even before the heli in fact started responding (meaning that they really are very anticipative). I copied that to the simulator and guess what, It worked.
Hope that helps.
Delta3
ps : reading back : this explains perhaps the previous remarks that hovering after approach is easier because the student found the stable positions before entering hover
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Progression
Whirlybird,
I hope my post was useful as food for thought.
Just to add to it...
When we learn to be instructors (the FOIs) we learn about the 'building block' philosophy of learning. That is, that students should learn the basic things and then go onto learn the higher order skills. In otherwords progression.
I always wonder then, why it seems this philosophy is so often NOT applied to the teaching of hovering. If the ultimate skill in hovering over a spot, then why do so many instructors start with this?? What happened to the basics skills such as just getting a feel for the sensitivity and functions of the controls, and relating the view outside with the aircraft attitude? It's like teaching a child to do a handspring before they have done a headstand!
As I said in my last post, PROGRESSION is the key. Delta3 touches on this in his P.S. in the previous post.
For hovering, the 'skills progression' is something like...Straight and level / climbs / descents / turns, then approaches, then hover taxiing, then stationary hovering. I think it is quite a logical progression. So this is generally how I teach it.
It is easy to forget what the 'F' in FOI stands for. Keep to them and the quality of teaching and learning stays high. Simple as that!
Happy flying everyone!
cl12pv2s
P.S. For those who are not familiar with the FAA system and the acronym FOI, the Fundimental's of Instruction (FOIs) is a mandatory study prerequisite for the FAA Instructor rating.
I hope my post was useful as food for thought.
Just to add to it...
When we learn to be instructors (the FOIs) we learn about the 'building block' philosophy of learning. That is, that students should learn the basic things and then go onto learn the higher order skills. In otherwords progression.
I always wonder then, why it seems this philosophy is so often NOT applied to the teaching of hovering. If the ultimate skill in hovering over a spot, then why do so many instructors start with this?? What happened to the basics skills such as just getting a feel for the sensitivity and functions of the controls, and relating the view outside with the aircraft attitude? It's like teaching a child to do a handspring before they have done a headstand!
As I said in my last post, PROGRESSION is the key. Delta3 touches on this in his P.S. in the previous post.
For hovering, the 'skills progression' is something like...Straight and level / climbs / descents / turns, then approaches, then hover taxiing, then stationary hovering. I think it is quite a logical progression. So this is generally how I teach it.
It is easy to forget what the 'F' in FOI stands for. Keep to them and the quality of teaching and learning stays high. Simple as that!
Happy flying everyone!
cl12pv2s
P.S. For those who are not familiar with the FAA system and the acronym FOI, the Fundimental's of Instruction (FOIs) is a mandatory study prerequisite for the FAA Instructor rating.
Last edited by cl12pv2s; 2nd Mar 2005 at 16:18.
CL12,
Is not Straight and Level, two separate distinct maneuvers?
Is not Straight and Level, two separate distinct maneuvers?
Hovering AND talking
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Is not Straight and Level, two separate distinct maneuvers?
Cheers
Whirlygig
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Sassless
Yes strictly they are...
but, with respect to the 'building blocks' leading to stationary hovering, I have deliberately put them in the same 'block'! i.e. they are equally basic and equally fundimental skills.
cl12pv2s
Yes strictly they are...
but, with respect to the 'building blocks' leading to stationary hovering, I have deliberately put them in the same 'block'! i.e. they are equally basic and equally fundimental skills.
cl12pv2s
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Well as a newbie to flying helicopters (I was the one who posted ealier about how much easier I found hovering after transitioning from forward flight) I would feel very sorry for any student who is forced to learn hovering in long and protracted sessions.
My instructor is excellent and uses the building block approach and my initial hovering attempts were limited to 10 minute sessions.
In my day job I teach, and it is reasuring to see that my instructor is using learing techniques that I am very familiar with (although I have to humor him sometimes when I recognise when he is just trying to boost my confidence with the "boost student confidence" technique! )
FWIW I really appreciated Delta3's comments about the "stable positions". If there is any advice a humble student like me can give to an instructor, it is this - teach the stable position! - it worked for me and made my life a lot easier
Solouk
My instructor is excellent and uses the building block approach and my initial hovering attempts were limited to 10 minute sessions.
In my day job I teach, and it is reasuring to see that my instructor is using learing techniques that I am very familiar with (although I have to humor him sometimes when I recognise when he is just trying to boost my confidence with the "boost student confidence" technique!
)FWIW I really appreciated Delta3's comments about the "stable positions". If there is any advice a humble student like me
can give to an instructor, it is this - teach the stable position! - it worked for me and made my life a lot easier Solouk
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Hovering
Good evening folks,
I am currently flying the Bell 206 B3 Jetranger and have 20 hours on it. I have recieved adequate lessons and training on hovering but up to now I am still struggling. Any tips/techniques that I can utilise to get this squared away will be very much appreciated. Thank you.
"Variety is the spice of life"
I am currently flying the Bell 206 B3 Jetranger and have 20 hours on it. I have recieved adequate lessons and training on hovering but up to now I am still struggling. Any tips/techniques that I can utilise to get this squared away will be very much appreciated. Thank you.
"Variety is the spice of life"
One trick someone showed me:
Have the student put a pencil stub between the index and small finger resting on the back of the 2 middle fingers..if the student tenses up pain is caused.
Works even better with a cigarette if the student smokes! (in olden daze some did!) (They also drank, chased members of the opposite sex with the object of engaging in sex and wore watches of incredible size that cost more than their car!)
Have the student put a pencil stub between the index and small finger resting on the back of the 2 middle fingers..if the student tenses up pain is caused.
Works even better with a cigarette if the student smokes! (in olden daze some did!) (They also drank, chased members of the opposite sex with the object of engaging in sex and wore watches of incredible size that cost more than their car!)
