One less thing on my bucket list..!
 

Passed my FAA helicopter check ride today.... ! It was challenging to say the least, but what a satisfying day today to get this accomplished! #readyforthezombieapocalypse

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Awesome congrats!

Awesome Marc! I did an intro lesson in a Robinson a few years back. I walked away humbled and with a new level of respect for helo pilots. I've had my private sel for quite a while and figured, how hard could it be.....well, damn hard for an ol dog! Congrats!

Congrats!

Flying a helo in shorts: Nice!

What kind of maneuvers do they make you do?

congrats. that is crazy business. flying a plane where the wings are broken and spinning around and around and around.....you got nads man!

Thanks! I did have a lot of memory motor mechanisms I had to change from airplane flying to helicopter flying! For instance, in an airplane, you pull the power to idle, and then flare the nose a little bit to land, and in a helicopter you add power and push the nose forward a bit. Just small crash worthy details like that!! Lol..

Everything was straight out of the PTS handbook. (FAA practical test standards). Pretty much went like this:

2 hour paperwork prep and oral exam, then:

preflight procedures/ checklist usage
normal t/o
normal appr and land
max performance t/o
steep appr
hover autorotation
quick stop
slope landing/pickup
straight in autorotation
180 autorotation
confined area
pinnacle appr/land
settling with power
low RPM recovery
shut down procedures

Maybe forgetting something, and I'm sure I sweated out at least 20lbs!

I have flown RC helis for many years, and I have always been curious about one thing for full scale. Can you take your hands/feet off the controls for 5-10 seconds to say blow your nose or shake off a cramp? It seems like flying a heli requires a hand on the collective/cyclic and a foot on the rudder at all times. IM sure a big bird has active flight stabilization, but what about the robonson?

I was once flying an rc heli with and A bunch of ants crawled up my leg and were biting me. I basically had to let them until I could land.

Congrats Marc! Just curious how look it took for the mental "click" where you could actually control/hover the thing without any PIOs or hand-offs to the CFI?
How many hours before you were ready for the check ride?
Yeah, I remember even after 10+ hours of stick-time trying to air-taxi an R22 from the hanger pad to the active, then hold short, in the wind, was...holy hell. :D
I was a sweaty mess, and that was before the actual "take-off" and departure!

Helicopters don't actually fly, they beat the air into submission! Congrats!

Only 20lbs!?!

Who was the examiner, Santa Claus? :cool:

During a hover it is impossible to remove any of your hands or feet, but in forward flight at a good airspeed your feet are pretty much relaxed and you can move them around and you can move your collective hand around without any issues. I have also move my left hand to the cyclic and use my right hand for changing radios, etc., but pretty hard to do unless you're moving forward at a good pace.

Ants... too funny. I had a bee fly in through the window right when I took off and I had to wait till forward flight before I can try to smash it !!



The legal limit is 40 hours minimum, but I was coming from airplane world so it can be reduced to 30 hours. I took my check ride at about 44 hours, and I definitely think I could've done it a few hours quicker but I took a few extra "practice check rides" just to make sure I was ready. As far as hovering, I was able to do it in about 3 to 4 hours but even then I still need the occasional bump from the instructor. He said it takes most people about 8 hours to get where I was but to get to the point where I didn't need his help at all was probably closer to eight hours. Hovering around the airport is one thing, but trying to go to back to the ramp and land in a small space between other helicopters and other airplanes where you have to be super precise was super challenging! And there is no type of stabilization system at all in the Robinsons. Not sure any small piston helicopter has that. My flight school also has a 66 which is a turbine version, and that it is night and day difference over the piston engines.

Congrats! That's really an amazing achievement!

Congratulations!