Hovering

[Tommy Zoom]

Dear all,

 

I am in my 10th Hour learning to fly in an Enstrom 280fx. I cant seem to relax while I am near the ground, and tensing up causes over correction. Am I being too hard on my self? At altitude my control is good, paying attention to gauges, ect. Now that I have all controls, it seems to be not coming together near the ground.

I find that looking out at the horizon helps, but as you know, there is a lot going on

Any advice or tips would be greatly appreciated.

[kodoz]

There's more than one way to learn to hover. Here are some tips from previous discussions on this list: [link]

[AStarB3]

if you are squeezing the cyclic when you grip it point your index and pinky out. This will make it harder for you to squeez

[rick1128]

Rest your forearm on your leg and hold the cyclic with three fingers. Make very small and slow movements. Best way to describe it is to only have fantasies of having thoughts of moving the flight controls. And relax. We all went through that phase and managed to get through it.

[Gomer Pylot]

There is only one secret that I know of. Practice. Comfort comes from familiarity, and the more you fly the more comfortable you will be. I remember having diamond patterns permanently set into my flying gloves way back when I was learning to hover and fly, from having a death grip on the cyclic. It just takes time. You can try all manner of tricks to help you relax, but practice is really the only thing that works.

[BOATFIXERGUY]

Tommy,

First, let me commend you on picking the best piston helicopter on the planet to get your rating in! Congratulations!

 

As for your hovering issues, it will come. We all sucked early in our training. All great advice from the forum already!

[MileHi480B]

I did the same thing and so did every other helicopter student in the world.

 

Wanna know why? Cause we watch too much You Tube and we realize that a few feet (or inches) from the ground is where all those videos are made of people "losing it".

 

Seriously. We are anticipating something bad happening. So in addition to the fine teaching techniques you will read here and hear from your instructor, I have 2 additional suggestions. And I promise you ... you will report back that THESE things helped a great deal!

 

1. Let you instructor show you the "worst case scenario". In other words, you are concentrating too much on setting her down perfectly and not screwing up. So bring it in to within a foot and drop it! (With supervision). My instructor did this to get me over my "near-ground jitters". He said, "Watch", then dropped the collective. His point was NOT that this is how you want to land but that you can land this way if you get nervous and simply want to get down without dancing. Once you know that "plopping" is an option, the near-ground stuff gets less frightening becasue "plopping" won't hurt you (given a smooth,flat surface -- not slopes!) Make sense?

 

2. Next ... after knowing worse-case, visualize the air cushion beneath you. Then visualize your self about to sit down on an easy chair. You will use the collective to lower your butt into the chair.

 

Call me crazy ... but they work!

Edited May 6, 2010 by MileHiR44

[r22butters]

Try moving the helicopter, then stopping it, (like hover taxiing to a spot, stopping, then moving on to another spot). Do this a few times both forwards and sidways. When I was having trouble hovering over a spot, this helped me a great deal! We did it over a turf area, going from sprinkler head to sprinkler head.

[heloidaho]

I got hovering the day I thought of it like a video game. There was a bug on the windshield and I just thought of that as my "reticle" and tried to kill a tree in the distance.

 

It was night and day. I stopped worrying about the controls and started worrying about taking out a tree.

 

Good luck and don't stress.

[ADRidge]

I got hovering the day I thought of it like a video game. There was a bug on the windshield and I just thought of that as my "reticle" and tried to kill a tree in the distance.

 

It was night and day. I stopped worrying about the controls and started worrying about taking out a tree.

 

Good luck and don't stress.

 

That's about what I did. The day I finally found the hover button was when we were in a field and I found myself looking at some bird on a power line way off in the distance. I looked down and "oh hey, I'm doing it!"

[Tommy Zoom]

Thank you all for your Advice! This site rocks! It is nice to know that there are others with the same desire "disease" Affliction, love of helicopters. Thanks.