How helicopter controls work 

I would have jumped on that offer immediately if not sooner! I want to leaner

I was sorry to hear that

Sounds so much better than mystepfather

It's just garble balls anyway!

Crashes and burns: blames atc

@@Felipe-kx4pe He’s hovering 10 feet above the ground. Calm down.

@@armelburgess8651 ever heard about ground control?

@@Felipe-kx4pe Yeah thats not what ground control does lol.

Cody Bonds Dude. That’s super kind of you to say. If you need encouragement to get flying I’m happy to supply it!

hisownfool1 😂 I promise it’s more fun than I made it sound.

wow.. finally someone who thinks like me..😎

Hi... would you like to go for a ride in my “inherently unstable” machine? How can anyone turn down an offer like that?

Thanks, man!

Keith Inouye Cheers!

ヘリコさん Yup. That’s the tricky one.

Nigel Hunt There’s a parallel between riding a bike and flying a helicopter. It seems utterly impossible until...click...your brain engages the mental circuitry needed to fly. As for maintenance, I pay a mechanic. It would be much cheaper to do it myself but to do so legally in the USA I’d need an Airframe and Powerplant certificate. And getting that would require time I sadly don’t have. So, I’m stuck throwing money at the problem.

A motorcycle background doesn't hurt. But as a helicopter pilot and motorcyclist I can verify, the helicopter is much harder to operate. That said, there are no natural born helicopter pilots. Everyone needs training. I'm sure with proper training and seat time you'd get the hang of it.

I know it looks cool when they fly, but piloting one is a whole different story!

WAY CLOSER to a unicycle. VERY COMPLEX

Kevin Roche Maybe I’ll do a proper breakdown of expenses in another video. But in general terms, it costs about $100/hour in fuel to fly my bird using the nearly $6.00/gallon fuel at my FBO. Digging deeper, the other major cost is component times. If my heli was new I could estimate hourly expenses based on Enstrom’s fantastical direct operating cost sheet but my bird is used. That leaves a messier calculation involving flight hours, purchase price, parts, and labor. Truthfully, I haven’t run those hard numbers. My goal is to keep fly and nailing the hourly figure is mostly academic at this point. My ownership experience has been marked by semi-frequent large expenses as we address long-deferred maintenance issues, unplanned airworthiness directives, and make smart improvements. Google “Enstrom 280FX / F28F Direct Operating Cost” and there’s an hourly estimate of $163.70. I’m guessing mine is higher than that but your results may vary.

DashCamDave It does tilt. You can see the rotor disk move in relation to the cockpit when moving the cyclic on the ground.

HOVERING is similar to a unicycle. Cruizing point to point like a scooter

That's probably how Kobe died right

Joshua Padilla 😂 No joke, it sucks. On long flights I use my trusty inflatable lumbar pillow.

Martones Outdoors I highly recommend Chickenhawk by Robert Mason. It’s my favorite helicopter book bar none.

Huey: The Story of an Assault Helicopter Pilot in Vietnam by Jay & David Groen

LeGrandFromage Took about a year but I was limited by budget and time constraints. With unlimited cash I definitely could’ve done it quicker.

Like Micah, it took me about 11 months to get my helicopter license, but many other factors play a roll. The more frequently you can fly, the more of the training is learned and retained. If you take weeks or more between flights, you'll lose a lot of what you've gained, and subsequent flights will be refreshers on your last flight rather than learning new stuff. The longer it takes, the more it costs. I was what they call a "40 hour miracle" meaning I got my license in the FAA minimum 40 hours of flight time, so my license was way cheaper than one would be for a student who required much more training. The average pilot gets it done in 50 to 75 hours, so plan on spending more than the quoted amount, unless you pick it up really quickly. Flying a helicopter is like nothing else, and I highly recommend pursuing a license, even if it's just for recreational flying, like mine is.

Jason Coleman Thanks for the added detail. Spot on!

I started in July 91, got my private in Oct 91, but I flew probably 5 days a week (had a night job). Don't believe the 40 hours they tell you to get a license, that pie in the sky. Or maybe it's possible, you just wouldn't be very safe if something went wrong. Even with years of fixed wing experience I was close to 50 hours when I took my check ride. Another year of piddling around to get my commercial and another intense couple of months for CFI.

R L Great question! Thanks to a vertical stabilizer at the tail, helicopters naturally want to face into the wind when hovering. So, in a crosswind one big limiting factor is the tail rotor’s ability to overcome that tendency. My heli has an unblocked tail rotor, meaning there’s no vertical tail surface to interfere with airflow through the rotor. As a result, it has excellent tail rotor authority to counteract a crosswind. My understanding is the old Bell 206 is the exact opposite and can exhaust the limits of its tail rotor thrust very easily. Depending on the heli and the pilot’s experience a 10-15 knot crosswind should be manageable. Above that it becomes increasingly tricky to maintain a stable hover. It also depends on which direction the crosswind is coming from, which opens a whole can of worms about airflow and turbulence through the tail rotor that might justify a separate video.

Strong winds can be interesting in small helicopters, or copters in general. Wind during a hover can affect a copter in a variety of ways. Wind blowing over the spinning rotor system generates additional lift, so the copter may tend to balloon up, even at a set collective setting, so that has to be compensated for. Depending on the direction of the wind, tail rotor authority can be affected, even to the point where the tail rotor stops being effective (the tailrotor blades can actually stall). As Micah said, the tendency is for the copter to weathervane towards the direction of the wind, and the tailrotor blades have to try to compensate for that. In forward flight, wind has a similar effect as it would have on a small stick-and-rudder airplane. Gusty winds are another story, and when flying a copter with a semi-rigid or tetering style rotor system, like those on a Robinson or Jet Ranger, gusts can create low gravity situations, and those are hazardous for those types of helicopters, but that topic's specifics would require a whole lot more explanation.

auto rotation meanz. NO POWER⚠️ the air iz going UP thru now ... when u r near the ground u PULL collective HARD to bite the air. Hopefully stopping safely. Yer most welcome

Josh Pinchuk Sorry. That was a bit unclear. It’s the grip part of the collective I’m holding with my hand. It rotates to add or reduce throttle.

Thanks, so NOW I am ready for the zombie apocalypse.

Matthew King Pressing forward on the cyclic control tilts the main rotor down at the nose and up at the tail. As the rotor tilts forward it pulls the helicopter forward as well.

Oh ok i see. Thank you

ast5515 Under powered flight, engine speed is a limiting factor on the high end of the green zone. Most helicopters also have a higher rotor speed redline that’s limited by the structural strength of the spinning parts during autorotation. On the low end there are two dangers. 1: Increased likelihood of blade stall. 2: If the blades spin slow enough there won’t be enough centrifugal force to hold the blades in the horizontal plane. In that situation the upward rush of air would cause the blades to fold up. Bad stuff.

I'll add to Micah's comment. There are green "arcs" for the engine RPMs and the rotor RPMs. Like Micah said, exceeding the engine RPM (in a non-governor equipped helicopter) can cause similar problems as any overrevved engine. Exceeding rotor RPM limits in an autorotation can cause blades to be damaged, or worse, separate from the copter, and you can image what happens next. Low engine RPM will also cause a subsequent degradation of rotor RPM, and below 70 percent (in most copters) the blades stop producing lift, and the helicopter simply falls out of the sky. I typically fly Robinson R44's, and they use a correlator and engine governor so the engine and rotor RPM's stay matched in the green arc, greatly simplifying the flight experience.

It’s like riding a bicycle. The control inputs eventually click for your brain. After that the movements do become a natural response.

I’ve done all my recent instruction at Antelion at Long Beach airport. Their instructor are top notch and friendly. I’d recommend them with zero hesitation.

J MAC It all depends. There are a few things you can do in certain situations that can cause bad things to happen quickly. But generally speaking if you make too small or too large an input a trained pilot can make appropriate corrections without issue.

@@MicahMuzio cool man thanks for the response that's awesome! Stay safe brother I like the content you have put out a lot.

Dancing shoes. I'm a TERRIBLE dancer.

When properly set up, they will stay where you leave them.

FRICTIONAL lox

Before lifting off you get the helicopter light on its skids and see which way the nose turns. You then adjust the pedals accordingly.

Sleepy The little foamy bit is clearly not up to the task. Clearly I need more foam!

The pedals change the pitch of the tail rotor. That changes how much the thrust the tail rotor produces. By changing that tail rotor thrust the pilot can counteract the varying levels of torque from the main rotor to keep the nose pointed where they want.

I'd budget $15k-20k.

Yup. You are correct about the cyclic and collective both changing main rotor pitch. As for the collective, raising it makes the helicopter will climb. Lowering the collective makes the helicopter descend. The further you move the collective in either direction the more quickly the helicopter will climb or descend. You can also find the sweet spot with collective position where the helicopter doesn't climb or descend. That's what happens in cruise flight or when holding a steady hover.

Oh okay gotcha! What determines the collective sweet spot?

@@sammysainz5 That’s just whatever position the collective needs to be at so the helicopter neither rises nor descends. That position varies depending on the helicopter’s current weight, wind, air density, and a bunch of other factors.