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counter clockwise to clockwise helicopter?


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How hard is it to go from flying a counter clockwise system to a clockwise system? I always wondered. It just seems like going through your first 1000 hours of flying you constantly reinforcing corresponding pedal and collective inputs, then you move on and have to change that. And what about jobs that have you flying both types interchangebly throughout the week?

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How hard is it to go from flying a counter clockwise system to a clockwise system? I always wondered. It just seems like going through your first 1000 hours of flying you constantly reinforcing corresponding pedal and collective inputs, then you move on and have to change that. And what about jobs that have you flying both types interchangebly throughout the week?

 

The power and yaw correlation comes pretty quickly with each change. I find myself over-compensating in the rotor turn-ups and on initial lift, sometimes. After that, it's generally not an issue, pedals do pretty much one thing- keep the nose where I want it. Besides systems management between different airframes, the biggest issue I encounter changing types is the cyclic. First, different models have varying control "proportionality", and that takes a second or two to adapt to. Example- the typical semi-rigid Bells take lots of fore and aft and very little side to side stick input compared to articulated Eurocopters. This becomes most obvious to me in the first lift, the Aerospats rock to the right, and the Bells to the left by varying deck angles and cyclic displacements. If this isn't fairly precise, as soon as I break ground the aircraft will translate laterally. A couple, three T/O and landing cycles, that issue minimizes.

Systems take little longer to acclimate to: notes, checklists and cheatsheets are very helpful.

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For me, the takeoff isn't much of an issue, because as Wally said, you just keep the nose straight with the pedals. Where I've sometimes surprised myself is on the initial power reduction to start an approach. After flying one model for some time, it gets to be a habit to drop the collective and push pedal at the same time. If you push the wrong pedal, you'll definitely be reminded very quickly, and push the other one right away. Changing from one model to another, no matter which way the rotor turns, always takes a little getting used to, so it's prudent to do everything slowly for awhile, until you get up to speed in the new model. I don't really think the direction the rotor turns makes that much difference.

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