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No. 3 Reported Member Helicopter Training Struggle, "Landing" Hey, there, this is Kenny with Helicopter Online Ground School. We will call this Episode No. 3 of the flight training hurdles. We're answering the responses to our customers that are writing in and letting us know what their struggles are and their problems with their helicopter flight training and the ground training. So, the question that we posed is this: What is your biggest hurdle you face while you're working towards your helicopter rating? We know for most it's normally the ground knowledge. But, we'd like to know more specifics. Please tell us in detail what you feel is your biggest concern. You can answer with as much information as you like. Brief is okay too. So, the next one coming up is landing. And, at first, I was kind of surprised. But then, when I think about it, I can remember when I first got started, I can remember struggling with landings. I think takeoffs was a little easier to pick up than what landing is. So, I'm going to go through and read to you what the responses are so far. The first one is simply "landing," which that's cool. I said it could be brief. The next one, "Knowing what I am capable of and not capable of doing under certain set of conditions such as wind strength, changing weather and traffic, and making the go, nogo decision, or go around decision." The next one is, "The last 100 feet of autorotations." That's definitely something that comes a lot. The next one is, "Confined area landings are tough because they, by nature, are confining. It can be intimidating to land amongst the trees and wonder if you have the power available to get back out of the hole you've put yourself in." So, that's a good one. We'll come back to that in a minute as well. The next one is, "Weather and landing with no power." And, then, "Landing with no power or engine." And, then, "Pedal, power, push, when I'm landing, it just seems counterintuitive." So, let's just start with the general landing. I can remember back when I got started. You know, I've trained with some good people, and I've had some awesome instructors, and all I've done is taken the things that they've taught me and used them when I was on the aircraft teaching people. And the things that come to mind are, number one, you have to have a good set up. So, this should go back before you even start your landing, is getting a good setup. If you set it up nice, it's going to be nice. If you enter it sloppy, then it's probably going to be sloppy the rest of the way down. So, that's the first tip. The next thing that comes to mind is remember, collective controls your angle, cyclic controls your speed. Learning that coordination between those controls on the approach really is key. When you first get your approach set up, you should have like an imaginary line from the nose of the aircraft down to the spot that you're landing at. And the whole time you're coming in, you're adjusting that collective up and down, just little movements to try to stay on that line as you're approaching your landing spot. Then, the next thing I'm thinking of is your speed. It should always look like you're approaching those numbers at the same speed. As you start out, most likely, you're going to be probably usually at 60. It might be 50. It might be 70 depending on what you're flying. But, we'll use 60 for an example. You want to slow the aircraft down from the very beginning all the way down to the end. It should be a slow progression meaning, if you start at 60, by the time you get down to the end, you're going to be at zero. And you want to gradually slow the aircraft down the whole time that you're coming in. Now, some guys teach a faster approach. And, if you're doing those faster approaches, that takes more work when you get down to the end because you're coming in fast, then you've got to put a flare on it, and then level it back out, then you're changing power, and you're changing your pedal settings, and you might be having to mess with the throttle. That's what makes these landings a lot harder. If you use the style of approach where you come in slower and if you do it right and you come in nice and slow, all those changes are going to be very minute, in turn, making a nicer approach. Now, I know some instructors like to argue and say, "Oh, but, you got to keep that speed all the way almost to the end because of the high velocity diagram." No. 3 Reported Member Helicopter Training Struggle, "Landing"