FlyGirl

Wow... Did about 45 minutes today of autorotation and I am wiped. Autorotation, for those unaware, is the method whereby you "glide" a helicopter if you lose engine power for any reason. Like hovering, there's a lot of things to balance at the same time... In the R22 you have to keep the forward airspeed as close to 65 knots as possible while trying to keep the rotor RPMs in a pretty narrow range (max dev of 5% of max speed) all the while while steering the helicopter -- both translationally via the use of the cyclic as well as controlling the yaw using the tailrotor pedals.... It's a lot to do all at one time.

The instructor did two autorotations and then asked me to try it -- as I said, a lot to balance -- but I think I did fairly well. I ended up doing three of them. The only part I had a really hard time with was at the end when you need to "flare" because this involves pulling back on the cyclic to slow down. This is where my fixed-wing "instincts" work against me. It's REALLY hard for me to pull back on the-thing-that-feels-like-the-yoke and get the "nose" *that* high when I am doing less than 40 knots! I keep feeling like I am going to stall!!!

Next lesson planned for Saturday.