Memo to all - RTQ

212-here is a Sergei Sikorsky event on the subject:
1982 Hanover Airshow. Sergei hosts evening party in nearby rented barn. Invitees are limited to pilots in the show-any function. Dress is flight suits. Informal food and all sorts of alcohol-no shortage.
Discussion starts between German F-4 fighter pilot and German CH-53G helicopter pilots, who claim their task in flying a helicopter is far more demanding and the F-4 pilot likely couldn’t even hover a helicopter. Sergei enters the conversation, finds me and a serious bet is made, with me to give a ride to the F-4 pilot on the morrow, with 53G pilots along to witness. Sergei to be the judge.
0800 the next morning all appear with ( honest to God ) the F-4 guy in the same scotch smelling flight suit he had on the night before. The 53G guys are smiling and counting their winnings.
Took the F-4 pilot out to a nearby field which had trees along one side then a fence at 90 degrees to the tree line, and the ground cover was under a foot high. The F-4 pilot had good visual cues for translational movement.
Anyhow, long story short, with those geometric cues and some coaching re the controls from me, in 15-20 minutes the F-4 guy could hover in position or change his position. I’ve always thought it might have ( probably was? ) been the scotch, because this pilot was quite obviously still under the influence, so to speak. The 53G crew were not smiling!

Engage auto hover. Lift to hover. Engage rad alt hold.

Not difficult really.

No. Except the OP asked how he could practice at home… ;)

Kind of defeats the purpose of Learning to hover. What happen if the auto hover fails for some reason

A decent vindaloo and a comfy couch should provide sufficient practice :E

As mentioned earlier, look well ahead at the horizon. Use the cyclic to keep the attitude steady. Don’t try to use the cyclic in reaction to sideways or fore/aft movement. If you notice that the aircraft is moving, select and hold a slightly different attitude so as to reduce the motion. Creating a “control loop” whereby motion triggers cyclic input directly, will never work.

Press the transition up button, obvs,

You will get it, 5 hours isn't bad. Nothing like hover practice to wear you out and overwhelm you really fast. You need to only do a little at a time. If you practice any more than a few minutes solid it maybe be frustrating and counter productive in my opinion. Pretty sure I had about 30 hours of instruction in maybe more before I could hold a steady hover. So I can't say it came easy to me either. I found the R22/44 harder to hover than say the Hughes Schweizer 269 platform. The key like some of the other guys have said is to look out. if you look close in or right off the nose it all goes bad quick. When I got rusty after not flying for a bunch of years. I found myself looking too close and the hovering wasn't all that pretty until I remembered to look out. If you look kind of straight ahead it smooths things out and you kind of feel your position from the peripheral vision mostly and glances here and there. .

It is worth it once you master it. I still go out and practice squares, nose around a point, tail around a point. Once you can hover you can go out and fly a good hour or so with just hover practice and slow taxi's and not ever even have to go anywhere! Can't do that in a fixed wing! Flying helicopters always puts a smile on your face.

I found the R-22 had a tendency to roll left in a hover and would coach my students to lead in with slight right cyclic pressure. This would help alleviate the left translation. Any left cyclic pressure in hover would result in rapid acceleration to the left, avoid this!

I realized this was half the battle in teaching cyclic hovering skills.

Now, for forward and aft translation, focus your view well outside and in front of the helicopter. Keep the “relative” horizon (i.e. hedge line, tree line) along a specific point across the windscreen using slight forward and aft cyclic pressure. Through your peripheral vision note where the wet compass is relative to the horizon to help refine your forward and aft cyclic inputs.

I’m assuming the wet compass is still mounted on the windscreen support at the pilots eye level.

You’re already familiar with the theory and feel of cyclic control lag and PIO so don’t try to hold a precise position in a hover. Instead, hold in that right lateral cyclic, then, as necessary, move the cyclic forward and aft against that right cyclic pressure to keep the helicopter level in pitch. Don’t worry if the helicopter drifts as long as you are level (both laterally and longitudinally) you’re somewhat in control now. Over time you will refine your cyclic inputs and develop the muscle machine memory skills which will allow you to maintain that steady hover. Good luck and have fun. You will get it.

Remember:
1.) Eyes outside on the horizon.
2.) Lead with slight right cyclic pressure to prevent the helicopter from rolling to the left. This is very important!
3.) Work the cyclic forward and aft against that right cyclic pressure to keep the helicopter level in pitch.
4.) Remember, as long as you’re not pitching and rolling excessively, you’re somewhat in control. Accept a little forward and aft drifting initially and don’t chase every translation. Allow the helicopter to settle and reach equilibrium/hover trim.

That’s how i do it Gordy! Usually get the student to fly circuits and transition to a slow hover taxi for a 100m or so then transition to another circuit, then repeat! Slowing it down on each circuit, I find it counter productive if you just go out and do hovering for 30min - 1hr. I try not to dwell on hovering too much as the student can end up
over thinking it.

As all the others say, it’s like riding a bike, one day it’ll just ”click” and you’ll think, why couldn’t I do this yesterday! I still remember my first day of actual hovering.

Good luck!

SS

Exactly---works everytime.

Exactly my experience - However it immediately went to shi1t as soon as my instructor said I was hovering :-).

It will come, and when it does you will wonder why it took so long. My hover square was next to a patch of potatoes, and it was a great feeling the day I stopped drifting over them!

When we first did hovering in the Huey in the early 70s, there was no real teaching on what to look for, it was just "stop moving around." Somehow we found the hover fairy and we all went solo in the circuit with 12 hours total.

When I came back years later as an instructor, the lesson plans spoke of the Hover Attitude. Bingo. The light came on about what the brain was really doing, and I was asking "why didn't they tell us this when we were learning?"

Was that stab out John? ;)

Had a 222 demonstrator pilot and airframe turn up at work and went for a fly, lifting off the pad and trying to hover taxi was a fools errand, quickly handed over, first ride in a 47 10,000 hours previously was far, far better

I was also a late bloomer when it came to flying.
I dug out the old logbook, dredging up a few R22 memories (or is it traumas? :} ).
I had 3.5 hours under the belt when we started hovering exercises, I remember it being a bit frustrating at the time, when you are a bit older you are determined to succeed and it just does not work that way..
Got it right after 2 hours, it was also a case of splitting sessions between circuits, mainly to break the cycle of getting stuck in your own head and trying to choke the cyclic to death.
Happy days.

I have seen some guys really struggle, especially if they aren't flying often enough, it makes it much harder to build the muscle memory and get the feel right.

No, Megan-stabilator left in auto, so full trailing edge down for this hovering event.
Check PM for related Hanover event.

Well, it is really interesting reading everyone's memories about learning to hover.

I really struggled to get a grip of it. My instructor kept saying " see the attitude change and correct !" (Sometimes, in a bit more forthright manner) Then one day it started to drizzle while I was trying to hover. A matrix of small water droplets appeared on the windshield, which when viewed against the horizon gave me that SEE THE ATTITUDE CHANGE.

From then on, I knew how small the magnitude of change was, to which I needed to respond.

Keep practising. Just like learning to ride a bicycle....... It will come to you

Unfortunately that T bar cyclic arrangement isn't as stable as a proper cyclic.

BUT, being able to rest your hand on your leg so you only use small, dextrous finger and wrist muscles instead of big shoulder muscles makes a huge difference.

Understand that you are looking for VERY SMALL changes in the attitude - if you can see that a picture on the wall is wonky, you can see the changes in the attitude starting to happen - that is the learning process for hovering, anticipating the aircraft movement as soon as the attitude changes even a tiny bit.

One of the more difficult things is to recognise the difference between a small lateral movement and a small yawing movement - the picture out the front initially looks the same as the world is moving laterally in the windscreen. That does come with practice.

Early on, I was getting close to keeping it still, but it would bobble about. The Boss said ‘spell your middle name. Alright, now backwards’. While concentrating on that, I noticed the world had frozen - the aircraft seemed nailed there. Got to the end of the backwards spelling, bobbling started again. I concluded that the trick was to concentrate on not thinking about it.