Today was my first day flying “Sky 12”, Richmond, Virginia’s only traffic helicopter. Sky 12 is a Bell 206 Jet Ranger that has been fitted with a Wescam gyro-stabilized camera mount and a microwave link back to the TV station. Normally the helicopter is operated by a single pilot who simultaneously talks to the TV news producer, aims the camera, and positions the aircraft. However, for $125 per hour the contractor, HeloAir, sells the right seat to rated helicopter pilots who want to build 206 time or, like me, just have some fun. The left seat is occupied by an expert with thousands of flying hours, a flight instructor’s rating, and years of experience doing TV work. This morning it was Alisa, one of only a few hundred female commercial helicopter pilots in the U.S. [Young female readers: this is a great career for a woman because there is a certain amount of preferential hiring on the basis of sex and employers want pilots who are as light as possible so that they can fill the rest of the ship with equipment or passengers (just don’t expect to earn more than $60,000/year and much much less for the first five years)].
Starting a turbine engine is more complex and fraught with potential for expensive damage than starting a piston engine. You begin by holding down the starter button and holding it until the turbine has been spun up to about 15%. Then you roll the throttle to flight idle, which introduces fuel into the turbine. You continue holding the starter button down until the turbine has reached 60%, at which point turning, burning and cooling become self-sustaining. If at any time the turbine outlet temperature goes into the red, indicating a “hot start”, you must roll the throttle back to “off” to take the fuel out of the system while again keeping the turbine rotating with the starter so that it gets cooling air.
Once started we lifted off from the ramp and climbed to 1200′ to circle downtown Richmond and await instructions from the station. Upon being told to film a particular bridge we would try to approach it so that we were heading into the wind. Then we brought the helicopter to an “out of ground effect” (mid-air) hover, with the airspeed coming down below 30 knots. Remember that we were into the wind so even if we weren’t moving over the ground we were still flying forward through the air to some extent. This maneuver violates every principle that I had been taught in the light piston Robinson R22 during training. The R22 has almost no inertia in the rotor system. If the engine quits the blades will spin down dangerously slow within about 1 second. You must immediately lower the collective to begin gliding but also usually pull back on the cyclic to transfer some of the forward speed energy into higher blade RPM. If you didn’t have any forward airspeed to perform that flare the blades potentially could spin down below about 83% in which case you fall like a rock and can’t recover without restarting the engine. The Bell 206, by contrast, has a lot more inertia in the engine, spinning at 30,000 RPM, and the heavy rotor blades. In the unlikely event that the engine were to quit there would be plenty of time to notice, react, lower the collective, and push the cyclic forward to regain airspeed to be used at the end of an autorotation the ground.
The Jet Ranger is mostly easier to fly than the R22 because it is so much heavier and therefore more stable. Transitioning pilots will need to get used to a bit of lag after power adjustments are requested, watching the ball instead of yaw strings and using more anti-torque pedal in general, and the lack of feedback from the cyclic due to the hydraulic boosting.
One thing that I loved about the Jet Ranger was the lack of vibration in the ship overall and in the cyclic. Some R22s feel like they are about to come apart and, even if you aren’t worried, the vibration is fatiguing. Whether that smoothness is worth an extra $500 per hour is another question…
It aways interesting to read your adventures Phil. Although the only piloting I do is with MS Flight Simulator, I’ve been a flight enthusiast since the age of 5.
I hope you post some pics from above Richmond on photo.net
There you are!
http://www.nbpa.rotor.com/pictures/wwbtsk12.htm
Look forward to your comments on your flying this week. Hope the weather stays good. Looks like a few showers on Th-Fr-Sa. Temp looks great!
What hours do you fly?
Where is the machine based?
Why the change to the Cirrus? More room for the dog?
Hey Phil! I found this blog via your “SQL for Web Nerds” -which I LOVE and is proving very helpful in entertaining –thank you btw- and being the curious person that I am, I went to the site root philip.greenspun.com/ and to my surprise found that you are, among a hundred other cool things, a helicopter pilot! I’m a check ride away from finishing my rotor-wing the R-22 beta myself. Flying helicopters is one my favorite activities. I live in Grand Rapids Michigan and go to Western Michigan University as an aviation flight science major. I’ve always worked IT related jobs and recently picked up a position at Grand Rapids Community College as PeopleSoft Upgrade Analyst and part-time db assistant. That’s why I’ve been working my way through SQL tutorials and learning as I go. Sadly, WMU mothballed the rotor program so I’m helicopterless and shy a check ride. I think that’s awesome you can grab some logable seat time onboard the 206. What an awesome idea. Other than Kalamazoo EMS AirCare Dauphin2 365N-2 which I job shadowed on for a day the R-22 is all I’ve known -I have a whop’n 52 hours in helicopters and ~ 300 in airplanes. I’d love to log some turbine time. Guess I better learn my SQL, start making the big bucks so I can afford to fly again! Thanks for sharing all your adventures and knowledge.
*do any 206’s come with / have FADEC or is that only on the 407’s? Is it an option for 206’s?
Happy hovering-
Jason Johnson
Grand Rapids Community College
Information Technology – PeopleSoft Upgrade Analyst / dba Assistant
Academic Support – Professional Tutor
________________________________________
jason johnson – student / geek / pilot
w -homepages.wmich.edu/~s0johns2/
e – helicopterhead@gmail.com
b – http://www.anxietysociety.blogspot.com
aim – cyclicswitch@mac.com
The only helipcopter I’ve ever been in was a Bell Jet Ranger that was used for agricultural spraying in a County Mosquito Commission. The pilot was actually so small (light) that when transporting passengers for drop off only and flying back on his own, they had a bag of lead that accompanied him, as he was reportedly too light to fly alone. This was rare, since most often the helicopters had a big tank and agricultural booms installed, but there were occasions when they would need to transport staff to remote locations on the salt marsh and leave them behind.
I got to fly with them once as an excuse for ballast, since Skip (the small light pilot) was dropping people off. It was also my chance to fly, which was part of the fun of the job, but rarely done by us lab monkeys. We dropped off the passengers, then he showed me some beachfront property from the air, showed me what AG turns were, did a little bit of an autorotation to tell me just what would happen if the engine DID quit. Then we flew back. The interesting part of this place is that the helicopter pad is very near a cemetary, meaning you fly out over it, and fly back over it anytime you’re headed North South or East. (You had to because of homes in the area, I was told). Flights west were very rare, but you were permitted to take off that direction.
Another side note, my wife is named Alisa – a rare name, to be sure. 🙂
Great explanation of the joys and dangers of helicopter flying.
Someone I grew up with died in a helicopter crash. Not in combat either, unless you consider the airspace over New Jersey a war zone.
Do you know, what are the safety statistics on helicopters compared to fixed-wing planes?
Phil: the Cirrus should be a bit more comfortable and quieter than the Diamond Star and the quiet is especially important to the dog (no headsets for him). We flew the helicopter every morning at 6 am and every afternoon at 5 pm, based at RIC.
Jason: I don’t think any 206s are FADEC-equipped; that is only for the newer/fancier Bells.
John: helicopters are not as dangerous as the news reports of military crashes would lead you to believe. The military does stuff that is inherently challenging/dangerous. If you go airport-to-airport in a helicopter it can be very safe, especially if professionally piloted. I think the Jet Ranger was/is a little safer than the Cessna 172 and other super-safe single-engine airplanes. But that statistic is a little skewed because the $1 million Jet Ranger is almost always piloted by a professional whereas the $50/hour C172 is usually piloted by a weekend amateur. If you want to be safe, of course, you need to go from huge airport to huge airport on a clear day in a twin-engine jet piloted by two professionals.