How good are you?

[Danb]

Not to good, keep trying to improve for last 40+ years 

[Rwsavory]

In my office we joked that our tag line was “Good Enough for You.”  I think that goes for my flying abilities as well.

[A64Pilot]

15 hours ago, M20F said:

I think we can all agree that helicopter people are not normal people. 

ABC NEWS COMMENTARY 
By Harry Reasoner 
During the Viet Nam War
16 February 1971


You can't help but have the feeling that there will come a future generation of men, if there are any future generations of men, who will look at old pictures of helicopters and say, "You've got to be kidding." 

Helicopters have that look that certain machines have in historical drawings. Machines or devices that came just before a major breakthrough. Record -changers just before the lightweight vinyl LP for instance. 

Mark Twain once noted that he lost belief in conventional pictures of angels of his boyhood when a scientist calculated for a 150-pound men to fly like a bird, he would have to have a breast bone 15 feet wide supporting wings in proportion. 

Well, that's sort of the way a helicopter looks.

The thing is helicopters are different from airplanes An airplane by it's nature wants to fly, and if not interfered with too strongly by unusual events or incompetent piloting, it will fly.

A helicopter does not want to fly. It is maintained in the air by a variety of forces and controls working in opposition to each other.

And if there is any disturbance in this delicate balance the helicopter stops flying immediately and disastrously.  

There is no such thing as a gliding helicopter. 

That's why being a helicopter pilot is so different from being an airplane pilot, and why in generality airplane pilots are open, clear-eyed, buoyant, extroverts. And helicopter pilots are brooders, introspective anticipators of trouble.

They know if something bad has not happened it is about to.

All of this, of course, is greatly complicated by being shot at. American helicopter pilots are being shot at more often and more accurately these days from Khe Sahn to Tchepone than at almost any other time in this whole War. 

It's been a helicopter war all along. And the strange, ungainly, unlovable craft have reached the peak of being needed and the peak of being vulnerable at the same moment.

Everyone who has flown over combat zones in VN in a helicopter knows the heart-stopping feeling you get when you have to go below 2.000 feet. 

Well the men going in and out of Laos rarely get a chance to fly that high. 

They must be very brave men indeed.

This is a War we could not have considered without helicopters.

The pilots are beginning to feel like Mark Twain's man who was tarred and feathered. 

If it weren't for the honor of the thing they would just as soon have missed it.

[A64Pilot]

• Helicopter flight: A bunch of spare parts flying in close formation.

• Anything that screws its way into the sky flies according to unnatural principals.

• You never want to sneak up behind an old, high-time helicopter pilot and clap your hands. He will instantly dive for cover and most likely whimper…then get up and smack the crap out of you.

• There are no old helicopters laying around airports like you see old airplanes. There is a reason for this. Come to think of it, there are not many old, high-time helicopter pilots hanging around airports either so the first issue is problematic.

• You can always tell a helicopter pilot in anything moving: a train, an airplane, a car or a boat. They never smile, they are always listening to the machine and they always hear something they think is not right.

• Helicopter pilots fly in a mode of intensity, actually more like “spring loaded”, while waiting for pieces of their ship to fall off.

• Flying a helicopter at any altitude over 500 feet is considered reckless and should be avoided. Flying a helicopter at any altitude or condition that precludes a landing in less than 20 seconds is considered outright foolhardy. Remember in a helicopter you have about 1 second to lower the collective in an engine failure before the craft becomes unrecoverable. Once you’ve failed this maneuver the machine flies about as well as a 20 case Coke machine. Even a perfectly executed autorotation only gives you a glide ratio slightly better than that of a brick.

• While hovering, if you start to sink a bit, you pull up on the collective while twisting the throttle, push with your left foot (more torque) and move the stick left (more translating tendency) to hold your spot. If you now need to stop rising, you do the opposite in that order. Sometimes in wind you do this many times each second. Don’t you think that’s a strange way to fly?

• For Helicopters: You never want to feel a sinking feeling in your gut (low “g” pushover) while flying a two bladed under slung teetering rotor system. You are about to do a snap-roll to the right and crash. For that matter, any remotely aerobatic maneuver should be avoided in a Huey. Don’t push your luck. It will run out soon enough anyway. If everything is working fine on your helicopter consider yourself temporarily lucky. Something is about to break.

• Harry Reasoner once wrote the following about helicopter pilots: “The thing is, helicopters are different from planes. An airplane by its nature wants to fly, and if not interfered with too strongly by unusual events or by an incompetent pilot, it will fly. A helicopter does not want to fly. It is maintained in the air by a variety of forces and controls working in opposition to each other. Having said all this, I must admit that flying in a helicopter is one of the most satisfying and exhilarating experiences I have ever enjoyed: skimming over the tops of trees at 100 knots is something we should all be able to do, at least once”.

• And remember the fighter pilot’s prayer: “Lord I pray for the eyes of an eagle, the heart of a lion and the courage of a combat helicopter pilot.”

• Many years later, I know that it was sometimes anything but fun, but now it IS something to brag about for those of us who survived the experience.

• If helicopters are so safe, how come there are no vintage/classic helicopter fly-ins?  (owning a helicopter gives me perspective on this one: it’s too expensive to fly it there!)

[A64Pilot]

And finally

LOW FLIGHT

Oh, I've slipped the surly bonds of earth
And hovered out of ground effect on semi-rigid blades;
Earthward I've auto'ed and met the rising brush of non-paved terrain
And done a thousand things you would never care to
Skidded and dropped and flared
Low in the heat soaked roar.
Confined there, I've chased the earthbound traffic
And lost the race to insignificant headwinds;
Forward and up a little in ground effect
I've topped the General's hedge with drooping turns
Where never Skyhawk or even Phantom flew.
Shaking and pulling collective,
I've lumbered The low untresspassed halls of victor airways,
Put out my hand and touched a tree.

[brad]

Tough to beat military training.  Fortunate.  Now fly weekly.

[rpcc]

Ask my girlfriend.  I have some great days and some bad days.

[Hank]

13 hours ago, rpcc said:

Ask my girlfriend.  I have some great days and some bad days.

She agrees that you have some good days? She's a keeper!

[Schllc]

After flying into an uncontrolled field I would rank myself pretty highly compared to others.  But flying into Dulles, or Atlanta maybe I’m not so cocky. 
I think the ranking has to happen on the inner 80% of the bell curve. 
Those in the bottom 10 really give pilots a bad rap, and those at the upper ten we should aspire to emulate.  
Regardless of where I rank myself, I have never felt that I am “good enough”.
Always room for improvement…

[M20F]

7 hours ago, Hank said:

She agrees that you have some good days? She's a keeper!

Weird she always tells me I am great. 

[BDPetersen]

Hold my beer. I’ll show you.