Helen Krasner - Helicopter Pilots Companion: A Manual for Helicopter Enthusiasts

The Helicopter
Pilots Companion

A MANUAL FOR HELICOPTER ENTHUSIASTS

Helen Krasner

First published in 2008 by
Airlife Publishing, an imprint of
The Crowood Press Ltd
Ramsbury, Marlborough
Wiltshire SN8 2HR

www.crowood.com

This e-book first published in 2014

Helen Krasner 2008

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 84797 922 3

Photographs by the author unless otherwise stated.

Frontispiece: The author with a Robinson R22 helicopter.

C ONTENTS

A CKNOWLEDGEMENTS

No one becomes a helicopter pilot and aviation writer without the help of a large number of people, and I would like to thank the following:

Dave and Ben, my instructors at Tiger Helicopters, for teaching me to fly helicopters I know it wasnt always easy.

Jon and Steve of Heliflight, for their hard work, which enabled me to fly well enough to get a CPL(H).

Alex and the staff at Bristol Ground School, for their patience in teaching me the theory for the CPL ground exams.

Kevin, Tim and Philippe in the USA, plus Victor and Sasha in Russia, for providing me with aviation experiences that I could never have obtained anywhere else.

Mike of Fast Helicopters, for turning me into an instructor.

Bob of Hields Aviation, for giving me my first instructing job.

Jeremy of Alpha Helicopters, and Andy of Staffordshire Helicopters, for employing me, and thereby providing me with experience and much of the material for this book.

The editors of the Daily Telegraph, the Croydon Advertiser, She, Mensa Magazine, Outdoor Action, Cheshire Life, and a number of other publications, for publishing my articles over the years, and thus convincing me that I was good enough to keep writing.

Mike, Fidel and Dan of Insight Research, for giving me work as a researcher and writer, and putting up with me disappearing for long periods to go and fly helicopters!

The editors of Pilot, Todays Pilot and Flight Training News, for publishing my aviation-related ramblings.

And finally, my late mother and father, without whom none of this would have been possible in the first place.

I NTRODUCTION

Helicopters fascinate people. Most individuals find these unique aircraft, which appear to be able to go almost anywhere and do practically anything, totally intriguing. This applies whether the people concerned are pilots, would like to learn to fly, or have no real intention of ever setting foot in a helicopter cockpit.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the majority of books about helicopters. This is particularly true of those books designed for the fairly new helicopter pilot or student. Indeed, many of these publications can be difficult to understand and hard work to read, even for the committed helicopter enthusiast. I suspect that a substantial number of them spend far more time sitting on their owners bookshelves than they do actually being read. In extreme cases their greatest advantage is that they provide an excellent cure for insomnia!

Of course, helicopter flying is not easy, and any helicopter pilot needs to absorb and learn a huge amount of information if he is to fly safely. So most helicopter textbooks set out primarily to inform rather than to entertain, and perhaps this is as it should be. Yet do these books need to be quite so dry, or their explanations quite so hard to comprehend? Surely there should be a way to improve things. It must be possible to enthral the reader as well as to inform him.

This was my chief aim a few years ago, when I began writing regular articles on rotary flying for the general aviation magazines. I wanted to grab my readers attention and gain their interest immediately; I planned to write something that they would enjoy reading, rather than just provide them with information. For magazine articles this was in any case a necessity. After all, reading a magazine is a leisure activity, so my articles were intended to be light-hearted, chatty, and based on personal experience although providing useful information was obviously very important too. I wanted my articles to be informative, but also fun!

The feedback I received from readers over the years suggested that I had succeeded in doing what I intended. Everyone, from pilots to students to non-flying rotary enthusiasts, told me not only how much they learned from my articles, but also how much they enjoyed them. It was clear that I had been right in my belief that even complicated subjects could be written about in a way that was accessible to the non-technical reader.

When the idea for this book came up, I decided that it would be based on the articles that I had been writing for several years, and written in a similar style. It would try to cover as broad an area of rotary aviation as possible, from how to go about starting to learn to fly helicopters, to most of the topics needed for the Private Pilots Licence. It would also include useful information for the more experienced helicopter pilot, plus a section for those pilots who were considering continuing on to do a commercial flying course. In addition there would be a fairly simple explanation of principles of rotary flight, a subject that many students find almost completely incomprehensible. It seemed to me that this was crucial, particularly after one friend, a helicopter private pilot and also a Mensa member, said to me, Im supposed to be intelligent, and I cant understand this stuff. Please, please can you explain it in such a way that it makes sense. It must be possible. That is what I have done at least, I hope I have.

This book is not intended to be a textbook for the PPL(H), or to cover every aspect of rotary flying. Also, it should in no way be considered as a substitute for a structured course and flying experience. It aims merely to complement the Private Pilots course, and to be more interesting than those dry-as-dust textbooks that no one actually wants to read. To this end, I have tried to provide information in an interesting and entertaining fashion, always related to my own real-life flying, and have frequently included anecdotes and examples from my own experience. I want it to be a book to be dipped into over a cup of coffee, to be read because you enjoy it and are reluctant to put it down, rather than because you feel you ought to read it. With this in mind, I have tried to explain technical concepts fairly simply, and to make the book a relatively easy read even when the subject matter is quite complex. Therefore I hope the book will also be as accessible to non-flying enthusiasts and fixed-wing pilots as to those who actually fly helicopters.

In summary, I optimistically anticipate that this book will be welcomed by anyone and everyone who has an interest in helicopter flying. So, please, read and enjoy!

1 S O Y OU W ANT TO F LY A H ELICOPTER ?

HELICOPTER MYTHS

I wouldnt fly a helicopter, ever. For a start, Id never manage it; theyre really, really difficult to fly. And theyre incredibly expensive. Besides, the small ones arent any good in strong winds; theyre too fragile. And helicopters are dangerous, you only have to look at the accident rates to realize that theyre far higher than for other types of aircraft.