A Pilot Is Born

Last Saturday the weather was beautiful…about 60-70 degrees, and perfectly clear, winds under 10kts and we took my first night flight.

Prior to our flight, we plotted out our course and filed a VFR flight plan after getting a weather briefing.  No inclement weather to worry about, and no radio towers with broken lights on our route, etc.

I was glad to have my LED Mag-Lite…made the pre-flight almost as easy as it is in the daytime.  After going through that we picked up and left the Olathe airport, heading towards lee’s summit.  Once we left the executive airspace, I made my radio call to open up our flightplan.   We hit Lee’s Summit, trying out the Pilot activated lights. (Click the mic 3 times and the runway lights all come on…pretty cool).  After lees summit, we changed our course to 070 to head to Clay County.  It was a calm flight up there and an AMAZING view…looking forward to another one already.  We were within a few miles of the airport when we clicked the mic 3 times and out of the darkness the runway lit up like a christmas tree.  We overflew the airfield to check the windsock, but it wasn’t moving at all, so we came back around for an approach.  After shooting a few approaches, we departed to the West heading for downtown.

After being cleared for the option on runway 21 downtown, we came in for an approach, stopping short of another runway when our clearance was changed to allow a jet to takeoff.  I brought this approach all the way to the ground (it’s so much easier when there’s no wind).  (The winds had died down completely by that point)  Then I picked her up and we headed back to Olathe.  On the way I heard a life-flight helicopter calling for clearance to the hospital across from my office.

When we got back to Olathe, the tower was closed, so we made calls like at an uncontrolled airport.  After the approach, we came back around so my instructor could show me a run-on landing, then another landing without the landing light.  I taxied us back to our spot and set it down.  (Oh, and at some point in there we closed our flight-plan…..never want to forget that!)

Night flying is a lot of fun…the view is amazing and it’s a way different feel than day flying.  I racked up 1.6 hours of night and another 1.6 of cross-country.  Only a few hours from soloing now!

Forgot to post after my last lesson!

In my mind, it was one of my poorer performances.  I hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before, and while I wasn’t tired, I felt like my performance was very much less than what it should have been.

For starters, I completely missed the part of the checklist which called for adjusting the fuel mixture to full rich, which meant that our idle fuel cutoff was set to allow no fuel in.  After 2 failed start attempts, my instructor told me what I’d done wrong, but unfortunately we didn’t have enough battery power to get the engine to turn over.  DOH!  Luckily, my instructor had one of those battery jump start booster packs, and I learned how to jump start a helicopter.

Lesson learned:  Take your time with the checklists.  I think sometimes I start to rush myself knowing that my instructor is sitting left seat waiting for me, but we have a checklist for a reason.  He’s not rushing me, I shouldn’t rush myself.

After takeoff, I made the radio calls and flew us to Hillside (with almost no help from the GPS) to practice steep approaches and slopes. First we shot 1 or 2 normal approaches, no problem.  Then it was in to the steep approaches.  I can get them started ok…but I have a few problems.  Judging the distance is the first one…just knowing how fast to be moving to hit my spot.  Then there’s the fear of entering a Vortex Ring State (aka Settling With Power).  Get into that at too low an altitude and you’ll be bending the helicopter a little bit.

We did a few approaches…I think I improved a little…I still need to work on entering them at the right time, and judging my closing distance.  After a few of those approaches we went to the other end of the runway to practice some slope landings.  They weren’t really as bad as I’d thought, but definitely freaky.  Basically, you land on one skid (the uphill skid) by reducing power to a setting where you would (with no cyclic) be light on the skids…but your cyclic is pushed so far to the uphill skid that the downhill skid is not touching the ground yet.  You then slowly center the cyclic to touch down the other skid.

I found picking up from the slope to be much easier than putting down on one.  The slope we were on was from left-high to right-low.  Picking up from this slope meant pulling about 20″ of manifold pressure for us (which put us light on the skids), then slowly pulling left cyclic until our right skid was off the ground and level with the uphill left skid.  Then it was a smooth motion of increasing power, then right & rear cyclic.  After once or twice I got this down.  Post flight my instructor said I did very well on these.

After working with the slopes, we took off, got some altitude, and practiced a few autorotations.  My entry was good, rotor RPM kept in the green.  My biggest problem, again, was the closing distance, and trying to judge just how far I’d be able to carry the glide & pick out a suitable landing spot.  I think with a little more practice it will be easier to do.

After the autos we came back and I put us down (pretty well this time) and we spent the rest of our time going over the FAR/AIM.