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Flight Training Phase 3A

Preparation At Spurling's June, 2nd 3rd 4th and 5th

2002

Prior to going to RotorWay in June, 2002, for my Phase III training and final check ride I went to John Spurling's place outside Tulsa, Oklahoma. The intention was catching up on my flying prior to going to RotorWay the following week. For starters I hadn't flown since January when I did my cross country trip and only about an hour in Florida at Sun 'N Fun. The plan was to get my air legs back on for the check ride. Another part of the plan was to fly with a CFI fellow there named Frank Sweet in my ship. Frank and I flew for a few hours and we did close to everything in the PTS book you can do safely with a RotorWay from A to V except running landings, settling with power and hovering autos I think. The last day there we only had time to do two auto rotations, which in hindsight I would have done nothing but autos if I had it to do over again. We flew in what I call major winds especially on June 4th. Winds were 14 mph mean with maximum sustained winds of 52 mph and maximum sustained gusts of more then 33 mph. A few folks have told me I had to be wrong on these figures I posted on here so if youd like you can see it in print at Almanac.com if you'd like to. Anyhow I know few pilots that would even think of flying of in more then 20 knots so at first it was a hair razing thing for me to get past. Frank told me how the ship would react to the wind and how to handle it and he was right to a tee. I didn't have a moments trouble handling the ship. Backing the ship directly into the wind was a real trick. At one point it was like I'd backed into a brick wall or something. I was trying to gain ground and the wind completely kept the ship from backing up any further. This isn't something you'd want to do on purpose as a sport pilot but if your ever in a situation where it happened to you you'd better know how to handle it because it sure can go to hell in a hurry if you make the wrong decision.

I did pretty well with Frank he and I both thought with an exception of one sorta minor/major mistake which I did manage to recover from. It was a Kodak moment for sure lol. I just about had to get some new underwear when it was over and Frank just about had to throw his coffee out the door and take the controls.

One day We were flying into a place called Judy Ann's to have lunch. The winds were 20 knots with gusts of 25 or better at times and it was a fast trip running with a tail wind all the way there. There were three other helis we were following, John Spurling and our daughter in his RotorWay, Chris Stevens and a fellow named Greg in Chris's RotorWay and a fellow I got to meet that also lives in Tulsa that also flies a RotorWay. All in all it was about eight or so miles and it only took what seemed four minutes to get there following the roads. The first three ships went in first and Frank and I were last to set down. We took the long route circling around to come into the wind. We started descending in the small turn over the field right by the book. On decent I anticipated needing a bit more power rolled on because the field had 2 to 3 foot tall grass on it, and dialed in some extra power. Just as we were about to go into transition over the grass the rotor rpm was beginning to run up a little to high "just above the green" so I thought I would make a minor adjustment and bring it down a tad. Well a little wasn't a little it was alot and amounted to rolling the throttle off alot instead of a little. With a fairly loud "Oh S*#@" I Immediately rolled the power back on "all the way to the stop" and we just barely had enough power to stay in a hover. I was milking the hell out of the collective and every other trick I knew of but there just wasn't any more power to be had and the ship would only hover about 2 feet off the ground over the grass even in all that wind. We hovered to a CFI suitable landing spot and Frank had me set the ship down left side low which kinda freaked me out but thinking it was all part of the plan I did it lol. The three other guys and my daughter of course saw the whole thing so you can imagine the razzing I got at the lunch table for that great maneuver lol.

Here's my excuse of what happened to me, it may not be a good one but it's my story and I'm sticking to it lol.

My throttle is a little stiff to start with and with the passengers collective installed it kinda rachets instead of being able to make minor adjustments smoothly, it jumps in jerky increments instead of smooth movements. John and a few other people have mentioned it before and as a matter of fact we spent some time trying to free it up earlier that week but it was still a bit sticky. We completely cut off the grips where they make friction on the collective tube but it didn't do anything for it. When you remove the passengers collective it's loose as a goose to the point where you'd better not let go of it or it rolls the throttle off.

We finished lunch and headed out to the ships for the trip back to Westport airport. We took a look at the way out and decided the order of departure for everyone. Everyone else took off first ahead of Frank and I from the small field. Last is good lol,,,, and besides I didn't want anyone to see me do a LH low slope lift off after that really cool transition to a hover I made coming in. Hopping over a set of power lines in about 100 feet was cutting it a little to close for me because I'd never done anything like that before. I lifted up the ship in a semi sorta pretty damn good lift off from the slope we were on and we were airborn, hovering anyway lol. The wind was blowing even harder by now coming in from a south, south east direction. I had to back the ship up about 75 feet to get a good run at the power lines I had to cross over and my plan was to cross the at the lowest point of the hanging wires between the poles. Frank said the place to cross over the wires was at the pole because you know that there aren't any wires you over looked making it the safest place to cross so I changed the heading a bit and we took off and up and over the power pole we went. No problem, the ship flew like it knew how much room it had and we crossed over the pole with more than adequate clearance "even for my pucker factor lol". That was just one thing I learned flying with Frank and there was many more. The trip back took much longer than the one there due to the wind we were fighting. The three other fellows had a blast zig zagging and checking out various sights along the way while I stayed on a direct southern route and level altitude of 500 AGL. It was only about eight miles until we turned east toward Westport. I can't remember how long but the ground was just barely creeping by underneath us but we finally made it and I turned the ship east crabbing about 45 degrees into the wind to maintain a due east heading along the south side of highway below. This was a new experience for me because prior to coming here and flying with Frank I hadn't flown in anything more then 10 knots due to the restriction put on me from RotorWay. I'm a weekend flyer and after about 9:30 in the morning until about 8pm in the evening in Tennessee the winds are just about always 12 to 20 so I couldn't fly during these times and it really made it tough for me to get in as many hours as I would have liked to.

We got back to John's airport and sat down for a bit and took another break for about half an hour before heading back into the air again. We did more go arounds, penical takeoffs and steep and shallow approaches until I got them down pat. I was running out of time and the last thing we had to do were the autos and we only got around to doing two of them before I had to leave for Phoenix. We made a tight RH pattern around the airfield and at 65 mph dropped the collective and down we went toward the spot we had picked out and as usual I was beginning to screw up at the bottom so Frank talked me through it until we got the ship leveled and into transition and did another go around for another one. Well the second time wasn't much better than the first, well maybe a little lol, but it was time to head out so we landed the ship. I had it down from the glide to the bottom where as usual I'd screw up and want to flare too soon. For some reason I want to begin the flare about fifty feet just as I did when I was at Phase II last year. In my mind all I had to do was wait a little longer and I would have it in the bag, no big deal I thought!.

Frank updated my log book while Brandy and I stowed the ship in John's hanger for safe keeping until we returned from Phoenix and we were off and running on the second leg of our trip.

These are random pictures mostly of me flying around Johns airport.

These are pictures Brandy tried to take of the bridge that got knocked over on I-40 in Oklahoma. Our camera doesn't do well with far away objects as you can see lol.

This is a picture of a crazy birds nest, midfield, about 6 inches off Johns runway. Hovering near this spot got the mama bird pretty ticked off and she would challenge my helicopter when ever I got near her nest lol.