Confused after Discovery flight

[TravisUK]

So I just got my fixed-wing PPL about 4 months ago and kicked around the idea of doing helicopters. So I finally took a discovery flight in an R22. The instructor hovered, took off, and let me fly in the cruise, he then let me try to hover a little bit before we came back to the airport. I think I was able to make it hover for all of 5 seconds lol.

 

So here is my experience though, I was kind of bummed. I mean I love flying but it really isn't all the excitement that I thought. I think it may be because I really wanted to do the cool things like hover and do the approaches and take-offs. I consider the cruise part of flight somewhat boring so it was kind of a let down.

 

So now I am confused. I want to fly for a living, but don't know if I should continue down the road to fixed wings or rotor. I'm just not all the in love with the rotor, but I think it is because I felt almost lost today. I understand it was a Discovery flight and not really a lesson, but I wonder if it will be different during training.

 

Maybe i'm just bummed because I felt so confident flying the airplane, now I am in a new machine and feel like I am back at square one again....

 

Anyone have any words of advice/encouragement? Specifically thoughs that had fixed wing experience?

 

Travis

[Eric Hunt]

In the cruise, a fixed-wing driver can fly a helo.

 

In the hover, you can't.

 

So, the IP allowed you to do the bits you would be able to do, and gave you a short go at hovering, and you lost it after 5 seconds. This is normal, it takes many hours of practice to get hovering under control. If he had spent the whole time hovering, you would have been frustrated out of your scone, because you couldn't do it.

 

Similarly with approaches - as the airspeed decreases, it becomes more unstable, so if you were shooting an approach to a confined area, you would have dropped short into the trees while spinning furiously. Again, you would feel frustrated. Or dead.

 

A TIF (never standardised it to be either Trial Instructional Flight or Training Introductory Flight) is the chance to have a go, and also see that there is a long way to go.

 

The difference is, an aeroplane flies, but a helicopter must be flown.

[dlo]

travis,

 

completely agree with you about the discovery flight, I was not all of that impressed either, I don't know why, i think i just expected so much more, it was kind of boring flying strait and level. I also did not get the chance to hover much, now i am into my training just a few lessons and I am kind of confused still, the flight is kind of like an airplane, from what i have experienced and it is not all that exciting. I know it could be if I was competent and could just hover and go up and down and practice bank turns and landing. my instructor is really hard on letting go of the controls, i know he isnt supposed to, but i don't feel as if I have controled the helicopter yet. when will I get too, I don't know. a discovery flight is too short of a time to tell, so if you really want to know, take about five lessons and see if it gets better, make sure you and your instructor click and he knows how competent you are, so you guys arn't argueing all of the time.

 

as far as which choice to make, airplanes vs heli, just imagine yourself flying the object when you look up in the sky and see if you want to stay local and short distance with special types of work, or do you want to fly in an airplane all day possibly and fly alot of strait and level.

 

i am going through the whole process as well, don't know what the hell i want to do. but i just came down to it. that if money was not an issue at all, not the cost of training or the salary i will make later on. I really came up with the whole heli deal, I know I like flying, even strait and level, but i know i like to go on short flights, not five hours long. I know i would like to do ems flying, law enforcement flying, fire fighting, sling loading, small jobs, which require more attention and more percise skill. I like to be able to land where ever I want, i like to hover, fly low, get the best possible views of things. stationary flying, flying very low to the ground. the plane thing turns me off, in my opinion because, my friend is a pilot and he says it is the most boring job, he flies big 727's. he sleeps and plays game boy while flying. he jokes that one time he fell asleep, and when he woke up , he was the only one awake.. ha ha, hence everyone was sleeping. he says every airport looks the same and their is nothing hard about flying the airplane. the airplane flies itself. these are just some of the things going through my head when making the decision what to do .... th

 

the heli deal was not as fun as I thought it was for my first time and flying the heli is harder than I thought... after my first two lessons, I felt a little better and also realize that my instructor was harder to get along with than i wanted. I can't explain why... good luck in whatever you choose and do...

[Witch]

Try a few more hours and see how it goes. You had me beat, I oculd hover for about two seconds before we ended up at the gas station in the next county.

 

Like I said, try a little more, and if you aren't liking it then you still have the airplane to go back to and enjoy

 

Either way, flying's fun.

 

Later

[hatchetfist]

your a fixed wing pilot and you thought hovering was boring, man i'd stay out of the aviation field!!

[FauxZ]

I'm seeing a lack of adventure in all these intro flights. My intro flight was some very brief straight and level, an auto demo (power recovery @ 200'), and a Pinnacle demo, then about 10 mintues of hover practice. Just enough to get a taste for many of the things I'd be doing, but not enough to get bored with any one thing. A buddy of mine did an intro flight and got the "straight and level, hover practice" routine and he felt bored too.

[FUSE]

I'm with FauxZ. My demo flight was nothing like you guys are explaining.

 

We went up, first thing was straight and level, he let me play with the cyclic, then the collective, then the pedals. Each separately then all of them together. This was for maybe 7 or 8 minutes. Then we flew over the water at about 90kts at about 100 feet. Took it up a bit more then did a nice crop duster turn. On our way back to the airport I played with everything again. Then he took it up to about 1300 feet and did an auto. Once off the active and on the ramp the then showed my how you can go straight, then sideways, backwards, and then just spinning while going in a straight line. This was all within 30 minutes. I didn't look at it as an instuctional flight, but a demo flight into what flying a helicopter is like.

[DukeChin]

Yeah, I too thought my intro flight was rather entertaining and not boring at all! Did a quicky-show and tell about initial lift off, taxiing, then went off straight and level around 900 I believe and let me have the controls for a good while. We went out to a very small barge floating in a small tree-lined creek/river and landed on it for a second, departed and went back up for a power recovery autorotation ending at, shoot it couldn't have been more than 10 feet. He said he would have went all the way down but there were recent heavy rains in the area and the field was rather muddy and squishy. So then let me take over again for most of the approach back to the field and let me take over again when we settled down into a hover just shy of parking. He turned control over to get a feel for keeping a hover and I asked him if I could try crabbing right a little bit to which he agreed. It wasn't pretty by any stretch of the imagination and I probably didn't go very far but damn it was fun. I did "okay" with the hover until he told me to try walking it towards the pad. Yeah, I got "dumb feet" at that point. Had me the death-grip going on as well. I wish I had read about keeping a light touch on these forums before I did my flight.

 

This was in a 300CB - I'm looking to do another discovery flight in an R-22 at a different school here in the next few weeks. I expect my hover, if i'm allowed, to be brutal, ugly, and not much of a hover at all.

[joshroyse.com]

My TIF was amazing..it confirmed the fact that i want to fly helis for the rest of my life....my intructor began by giving me a brief description of the controls...we took off and within 10 minutes he had given me a demo of what a heli can do...he gave me the controls nearly the entire time and i fell in love....but emm....the hovering bit was pretty ugly as well...i was wobbling around for about half a minute but he said i did better than most of his ten hour students....all i know is that you shouldnt give up on it bro...helicopters are the way to go...after all...how fast can a plane fly backwards?

 

josh royse