Category Archives: Flying

Stories about flying — for pleasure or for hire — and the things I’ve learned.

Going Back to My Flying Roots: Stick Time in an R22

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Was it really that bad?

Last week, I wrote a blog post in my series about becoming a helicopter pilot. In it, I make an often-repeated statement:

They say that if you can fly an R22, you can fly any helicopter.

I’d heard the same thing said recently in the Rotorspace helicopter site I haunt regularly. And I agree with it. But it also got me thinking…was flying an R22 more difficult than flying the R44 I’ve been flying since January 2005?

So I decided to find out. I’d planned a trip to Seattle for this week anyway. I used the opportunity to book an hour or two of flight time with a CFI named Matt at Helicopters Northwest at Boeing Field.

Matt and the R22

Matt and the R22 we flew together.

Matt is a great guy. With 800 hours of flight time under his belt — including a few good, long cross-country flights — he has a good, positive attitude and likes to teach. He’s the kind of flight instructor the industry really needs: friendly, level-headed, sincerely interested in teaching and learning, not in any hurry to build his first 1,000 hours and move on. He showed amazing patience with me. Oddly enough, when I came out to the helicopter and sat inside it, I actually had some fear.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

N7139L

My old R22, parked out in the desert. I loved that little ship, but now I don’t remember why.

We went out to the helicopter and I was immediately reminded of how tiny R22s are. I owned one — N7139L — from October 2000 to October 2004 and built my first 1,000 hours on it (or R22s very much like it). I remember now how huge the R44 seemed to me when I first started flying it. But now, the R22 is just tiny.

We did a preflight, splitting the chore. I looked under the hood and checked the tail rotor and warning lights. He climbed up (one step!) and checked the rotor hub. Then we rolled the helicopter out from parking to the flight line on its tiny ground handling wheels. (To be fair, I use oversize wheels on my R44, making the stock R22 wheels seem even smaller than they really were.)

We climbed on board and buckled up. My hips are definitely wider than they were when I was 20 pounds lighter in my R22 days and I almost had trouble getting my hand between the seats to the collective. Sheesh. I used the checklist to start up and was so surprised at how quickly it started that I forgot to engage the clutch. That’s when I started wondering if I was making a mistake.

The helicopter’s cyclic friction did not work. I had to hold the stick as we warmed up.

They were doing taxiway construction about 100 feet from the flight line. Trucks and men were moving around. I started getting worried about picking up the helicopter. About what might happen if I screwed up. I realized — and this is hard to admit — that I was afraid to try.

So when the time came, I let Matt make the radio call, pick up, and take off. I felt like a first time student. It was a humbling experience.

But I took the controls as we climbed out, heading south toward Auburn. I immediately felt the stick push hard to the right. I remembered the trim knob and pulled it. That helped a little. But I knew my shoulder would be aching by the end of the flight. No hydraulics. I would be fighting the stick pressure the whole time.

When I released the collective, the manifold pressure immediately dropped from 20 inches to 15. Auto-land mode, one of the other instructors joked later.

Had my R22 been this much of a chore to fly? I don’t remember, but I don’t think so.

We came in for a landing on the taxiway at Auburn airport. I made a nice landing and set down. And a nice pickup. I was working hard to do it, though.

We did a few maneuvers. Standard takeoff, standard landing, steep approach, a few autos, two quick stops.

The autos weren’t anything like I remembered them and, after thinking about it for a while, I know why. When I learned back in the late 1990s, we’d start an autorotation by cutting the throttle first. We then had about 2 seconds to dump the collective. You could feel the drop in your gut. Nowadays, they start an autorotation by lowering the collective first and then rolling off the throttle. It’s a non-event — and not very realistic. I did the first one okay but set up for the second one badly and let airspeed drop too low for success. Got a low rotor horn on the power recovery. No big deal, but not very good, either. Sure wouldn’t pass a check ride.

The first quick stop sucked, but the second one was okay.

We climbed out and headed to my friend Don’s house. He lives on the outskirts of Auburn and has a helipad at his house. He’d suggested that morning, half joking, that we should try landing there. I knew we could land, but wasn’t convinced that we could take off. The place is surrounded by tall trees — a true confined space. I showed it to Matt. He was game to give it a try.

I’d landed there several times in my R44, so I knew the preferred approach. There was just about no wind. I came in low over the trees — even Matt didn’t see the LZ until I was ready to start my final descent. I lowered us into the area and hovered there for a moment. It hadn’t been difficult at all. But the real trick was to get out. I made a 180° pedal turn and pulled pitch, easing the cyclic forward to gain airspeed. (I hope I didn’t scare Matt with my soft chant: “Airspeed, airspeed, airspeed.”) We slipped through ETL when we were about 50-75 feet up, level with the tops of the trees quickly approaching. Then we were up and out.

I told Matt that I’d tell Don we’d managed it with full tanks of fuel. (A lie, of course; I really don’t think that would be possible.)

We headed back to Boeing field. I’d had enough. My shoulder was aching and I was tired of supporting the collective. I landed at the flight line. After shutting down and rolling the helicopter back to parking, I took a moment to whine a little to the owner/mechanic about the collective droop, cyclic friction, cyclic trim, and intercom static.

I really think my old R22 was in much better shape.

So yes, I can still fly an R22. But now I realize that I really don’t want to.

So You Want to Be a Helicopter Pilot, Part 9: Pay Your Dues

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There’s no automatic in, no fast track to the dream jobs.

The thing that bothered me most about the Silver State debacle was the way the company misled potential students in their sales seminars. Radio commercials would lure people in by claims that anyone could become a helicopter pilot earning $80,000 a year. The combination of cool job and big paycheck was enough to get dreamers in the door. The seminar, which often included helicopters on stage and pilots strutting about in flight suits, visualized the dreams, making them tangible. With bank representatives standing by to guarantee financing, is there any wonder so many people signed on the dotted line?

The trouble is, although Silver State (and some other organizations) made it sound as if all you need is a commercial helicopter certificate to qualify for a high-paying dream job as a pilot, in reality, you need a lot more than that. All your certificate gets you is a chance to get your foot in the door. You’ll need to pay your dues to earn a good job as a pilot.

Paying Dues

When I say “pay dues,” I mean that metaphorically. You’re not actually paying money — you’ve already done enough of that to get your certificates, haven’t you?

I mean working in one or likely more less desirable jobs in order to build the experience you need to qualify for better jobs. Like a recent college graduate climbing the corporate ladder, you can’t expect to get the CEO job while the ink is still wet on your diploma. Instead, you start at the bottom and work your way up.

The goal of paying dues is to build experience. In the world of flying, experience has several components I can think of: time, skills, aircraft, and confidence.

Building Time

At its lowest level, experience can be quantified by stick time: total time, total helicopter time, and PIC time. The vast majority of non-entry level employers won’t even look at your resume unless you have at least 1,000 hours of PIC time; that number varies depending on the job market and availability of pilots.

Most pilots build time as flight instructors — which is why it’s so common to get a CFI rating as part of pilot training. So the first job you’re likely to have is as a CFI, sitting in the same kind of helicopter you probably trained in while someone sits beside you, learning to fly.

I can make a valid argument about why time built as a flight instructor isn’t worth as much as time built actually flying missions. In fact, I made this argument in a blog post I wrote back in 2009. Unfortunately, unless you have access to a helicopter and an opportunity to fly real-life missions, you’re not likely to build much of your early time that way.

The point is, flight time builds experience. No matter how that time was built, a pilot with 1,000 hours PIC has more experience than one with 300 hours. Be prepared to take any job you can get to start building that time.

Oh, and one more thing: if you’re interested in adding bulk time to your log book, don’t pay an organization for the privilege of doing so. There’s at least one company out there using low-time pilots to fly relatively dangerous missions. That company is not only getting the pilots to pay them $200/hour (or more) to fly but is also collecting money from clients for the missions being flown — a practice known as “double-dipping.” Legitimate employers don’t charge their pilots a fee to fly; they pay their pilots. They also don’t ignore manufacturers’ safety notices regarding qualifications for missions being flown.

Building Skills

You might think that building time leads to building skills. It does — but only to a certain point. Look at it this way: If you do the same thing over and over, you’ll likely get pretty good at it. But you won’t get very good at anything else.

Take, for example, a flight instructor job. You’ll get good at hovering and preventing student pilots from crashing while trying to hover. (I can still remember how good my CFI was at steading the helicopter when I was learning to hover.) You’ll get good at performing basic, advanced, and emergency maneuvers to private and commercial standards. You’ll get good at doing traffic patterns and planning the same cross country flights to the same handful of airports.

While there’s nothing wrong with those skills, there are a lot more skills that a commercial pilot needs in his bag of tricks. Landing direct to fuel at an unfamiliar airport, avoiding the flow of fixed wing traffic — in other words, stay out of the traffic pattern. Planning cross country flights over unfamiliar areas with multiple stops at unfamiliar airports. Landing off-airport someplace other than at the same handful off practice areas. Calculating weight and balance and performance for a wide range of flight profiles. Dealing with demanding passengers, unreasonable air traffic controllers, obnoxious airplane pilots. Making changes to a flight due to weather or other unforeseen circumstances. These are the kinds of skills you build by flying real missions.

And then there are the specialized skills. Landing in snow or on water. Conducting photo and video flights. High altitude operations. Sling loading, long line work. Fire suppression by bucket or snorkel/tank setup. Spraying crops, drying cherries, preventing frost damage. Search and rescue. Flying with night vision goggles. These are the skills that are hard to build because they’re part of jobs that require experience. But these are also the skills that lead to high-paying pilot jobs.

If you have an opportunity to get real training in one of these skill areas, it might be worthwhile to pay for it. For example, if a flight school offers a long-line course and you want to get into fire suppression work, having that course on your resume might help you get your foot in the door for a job that’ll get you the experience you need to move in that direction. But again, don’t get suckered into a “job” where you pay to sit beside someone who is “training” you while actual work is being done for clients. Instead, look for a course that combines ground school with flight time where you manipulate the controls beside a flight instructor. In other words, real training.

Learning Aircraft

Your stick time in different aircraft is also an important part of experience. You’ll likely start out in a small piston (reciprocating engine) helicopter, like a Robinson or Schweizer or Enstrom, but the real jobs — the ones that come with big paychecks — are usually in far more impressive aircraft.

They say that if you can fly an R22, you can fly any helicopter. I think that’s true — to a certain extent. Small helicopters with their limited control systems and squirrelly flight characteristics offer challenges you won’t find in larger helicopters. They also can offer opportunities to learn how to deal with limited performance in challenging conditions. But, at the same time, larger, more complex aircraft have their own challenges to learn through experience.

The biggest aircraft distinction is piston vs. turbine engine. That engine difference leads to two major concerns:

  • Start-Up. If you screw up while starting a piston helicopter, it won’t start. If you screw up while starting a turbine helicopter, you could have a hot start that melts the turbine, leaving the helicopter disabled (or dangerous to fly).
  • Power. If you pull too much power in a piston helicopter, you’ll likely get a low rotor warning. If you pull too much power (torque) in a turbine helicopter, you’ll over-torque and damage the transmission. (Either way, if this happens in flight you could have some serious problems.)

Beyond that, the only differences are in the systems you need to learn to understand how the helicopter works, do a preflight/postflight, and troubleshoot problems. Still, the differences are considerable.

Another example might be hydraulics. An R22 doesn’t have a hydraulic system, so there’s no worries about hydraulic failures. A larger aircraft does. But not all aircraft hydraulic systems are equal. I’ve been trained to deal with hydraulic failures in Robinson R44 and Bell 206L helicopters and can confirm that a lot of upper body strength is required to control the helicopter and land safely without hydraulics. I’ve also heard that even more strength — possibly more than I possess? — is required to deal with a hydraulics failure in a Eurocopter AS350 (AStar).

Obviously, the more aircraft you’ve flown, the more prepared you are to deal with issues that might come up in flight. For that reason, the more aircraft types a pilot has flown, the more marketable he is.

There are opportunities to pay to fly specific aircraft models. For example, there’s a guy in the Los Angeles area who does ENG work and will let you fly his turbine helicopter on assignment with him for a fee. And even I offer long cross-country flights twice a year to pilots interested in building 10-12 hours of R44 time over two days. Is this worth it? It depends on your need. If you just want to get familiar with an aircraft or you only need a few hours of flight time to qualify for something else, it might not be a bad idea. But if you need 50 or 100 or 500 hours of experience in an aircraft make and model, do you really want to pay for it? Wouldn’t it be better to take a less attractive job and get paid to fly that aircraft instead?

Building Confidence

I hesitated to include this because I don’t want readers to confuse confidence with over-confidence. There’s a fine line between them and being on the wrong side of that line can kill you.

Simply stated, the more you do anything, the more confident you should be that you can do it successfully.

Example. Do one autorotation. Do you feel confident you can do one perfectly every time you try? Probably not. Do 150 autorotations in a month. How do you feel about it now?

Of course, it’s not enough to perform a maneuver or task multiple times to feel confident about your ability. You have to perform it successfully. The higher the percentage of times you successfully perform a maneuver, the more confident you should become about being able to perform it successfully in the future. You can do 150 practice autorotations in a month and if more than half of them are bad — wrong airspeed, miss the spot, etc. — you shouldn’t be nearly as confident as if you nail it 90% of the time.

Off-airport landings is a good example from my own flying. I do a lot of off-airport landings — in fact, in the work I do each summer, I’d estimate that 95% of my landings are off-airport. Years ago, I was a nervous wreck when landing on anything that wasn’t paved and level. But now, after so many landings on all kinds of terrain and surfaces, I’m pretty confident in my ability to find and land on a suitable landing zone where I need one. But that doesn’t mean I’ll try to set it down anywhere. I still go for the smoothest, most level surface I can find. I set it down slowly and I fly it all the way down to the ground. If I don’t like the way it feels, I’ll pick it back up and move it — sometimes only a foot in one direction — until I feel good about where I’m parked. I’ve done this solo and with a ship full of passengers, front-heavy or side-heavy. I’m confident I can do it.

Over-confidence occurs when you think you can do something better than you actually can. Instead of putting real effort into it, instead of concentrating to complete the task with all of your attention, you become complacent and go through the motions without thinking. That’s when things go wrong and accidents happen.

Work Your Way Up

The better a job is, the more experience you need to get it. That’s why you’ll need to work at possibly low-paying, low-interest jobs before you can qualify for more interesting or lucrative ones.

This is normal in any industry or career path. You should not expect it to be different for a flying career.

A career conscious pilot will keep this in mind with every job he gets. I remember a fellow pilot at the Grand Canyon when I worked there in 2004. He told us, from day one, that his goal was to build 500 hours of turbine time in that job. While the goal was achievable, he put himself on the fast track to make it happen. If he was idle and another pilot wanted to give up a flight, he’d take it. If he had a day off and another pilot who was scheduled to work wanted the day off, he’d swap. As early as July, he’d built the 500 hours he wanted — most other guys were lucky to reach that milestone by the end of the season. He stuck around, of course — we were under contract for the full season — but was the first pilot to leave for a better job when we were released.

The point is, it’s not enough to just get a job and go through the motions. You need to use each job as a stepping stone for your ultimate goal. Look for jobs that’ll get you the experience you need; work hard to put yourself at the front of the pack to get that experience. Yes, you might wind up doing a job you hate or working in a place you’d rather not be. But the quicker you do it and get it over with, the quicker you can qualify for the job you really want in the place you want to be.

Next up: why the learning should never end.

So You Want to Be a Helicopter Pilot, Part 8: Be Willing to Travel

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Simply put: you have to go where the jobs are.

Back in July, I got an e-mail message from a reader with a question. His message is reproduced below, with his name changed to protect his privacy:

Hello, my name is Joe. I am 16. I live in Indiana, and I have been thinking a lot about my future career. I was thinking about all of the jobs that I would be interested in doing, and one of the big ones was a helicopter pilot. I read all of your posts about getting a job as a helicopter pilot, and I am confident that I have a chance in piloting as a career. I am willing to move around the country to get the right training on being a helicopter pilot, and I am willing to find a way to make it through all of the expensive training that you talked about. The only thing that really bummed me a lot about being a helicopter pilot was that once you make it through all of the training that it takes to actually get a job, the hours for piloting jobs can be unappealing, and I was just wondering if that is the case with all piloting jobs. Because some of them require you to be away for long periods at a time, and I was curious if all piloting jobs have strange hours, because I am kind of a family guy, and I don’t know if being away for long periods at a time on the job would be the thing for me.

I think it’s an excellent lead-in to my next topic in this series: travel.

Look at it Logically

For a moment, think about the kinds of jobs that are out there: doctors, mechanics, lawyers, restaurant servers, bankers, construction workers, accountants, supermarket managers, insurance agents — the list goes on and on. These jobs might be very different, but they all have one thing in common: there are job opportunities everywhere. Unless you live in the middle of nowhere, chances are that you could find people in all of these jobs within 5 or 10 miles from your home.

Now think about pilot jobs or, more specifically, helicopter pilot jobs. How many helicopter pilot jobs do you think there are within 5 or 10 miles from your home? Unless you live in a big city or tourist town, you can probably count them on two hands. Even if there are more jobs, they’ll likely have strict requirements for experience, certification, and skills, making them difficult to qualify for until you’ve been flying for a while.

Travel May Be Unavoidable

Let’s look at the big picture based on time:

  • Flight Training. If there’s a suitable flight school in your area, you might not need to travel to get your training. My first flight school was 90 miles from my home; I later trained at a second location of the same school that was only 70 miles away. That’s a lot of driving, but I was able to sleep in my own bed at night. When I had a falling out with my flight school and needed to finish up my commercial rating elsewhere, I went to Long Beach, CA, which is not driving distance from my home. (Fortunately, I only needed 10 more days to get my rating.) Whether you have to travel for training is dependent on what’s available near where you live. And don’t pick a flight school just because it’s the only one nearby; consult Part 4 of this series, “Choose a Reputable Flight School,” for more on choosing a flight school.
  • Time-Building Job. Your first job as a pilot is very likely to be as a CFI. This is, for most people, a time-building job. In other words, the only reason you’re doing it is to build flight time so you qualify for another job. If you’re lucky, you’ll be able to get a CFI job either at the flight school you trained at or another one close to home. But again, this isn’t always the case. That first job is often very difficult to get — especially when, for a while, flight schools were churning out new helicopter pilots at an alarming rate. If you want to move forward in your career, you must get a time-building job. If the job market is tight, you might have to take the first job you’re offered, no matter where it is.
  • First Pilot Job. Once you’ve build enough time, you’ll be eligible for a “real” pilot job — one where you’re actually doing all the flying (as opposed to sitting beside someone else who is trying to). Again, there aren’t many entry level jobs. Some of them are seasonal tour jobs, meaning they’re only available during the season. I wound up at the Grand Canyon, which I recommend because of the challenging flying conditions. Other people go to Alaska. The more time you have, the more options will be open to you. In many cases, this first job will also be your introduction to turbine helicopters. (Frankly, I don’t see much difference between turbine and piston helicopter operations — except how much damage you can do if you don’t start it right or try to pull too much power.) Employers make a big deal about turbine time it so you should probably try to get into a turbine ship as soon as possible. The point is, once again you’re required to travel to where the job is available. And there’s probably no coming home on weekends if you’re working in Alaska.

Sometime after that first “real” job, you’ll begin qualifying for other flying jobs. In my mind, they fall into three categories:

  • Contract Jobs. A contract job is where you are hired as a pilot to fulfill a contract for specific work. The cherry drying work I do in Washington State is an example of a contract job: I’m hired to provide services for a short length of time. I’m paid a per diem amount to be available each day of the contract and I’m paid an hourly rate when I fly. My duty hours are all daylight hours, 7 days a week until the end of the contract, which is normally 2 to 6 weeks. I’m not employed by anyone — in other words, I don’t get a paycheck, have taxes deducted, or have benefits. I’m also out of work when the contract is up. Firefighting is another example of a contract job. Contract jobs tend to be seasonal and require specific skills, equipment, and/or certifications. These jobs require the most travel — you could be in Arizona fighting a fire one week and two weeks later be in Montana waiting for a fire call.
  • Schedule Jobs. What I’m referring to as a “schedule” job is when you work for a specific employer on a schedule — for example 7 days on and 7 days off or 14/14. I worked 7/7 at the Grand Canyon, but they also offered 4/3 schedules (I think; my memory isn’t as good as it was). 7/7 and 14/14 is common with EMS and Gulf operation jobs. Some contract jobs — especially firefighting — work on 14/14 (or similar) schedules. These schedules are designed, in part, to make it possible for pilots to “go home” between work shifts. They’re recognizing that pilots don’t always live where the job is and, indeed, they don’t. When I worked at the Grand Canyon, most of the pilots on the 7/7 schedule went home on their off days, including me.
  • Regular Jobs. What I’m calling a “regular” job is one where you work “regular” hours at the same place for a specific employer. ENG and law enforcement jobs are good examples. An ENG pilot might have to fly morning and afternoon rush hours and be available during the day for breaking news. But he might get nights and weekends off. A law enforcement or EMS pilot might work a 12-hour day shift for a week, get a week off, and then work a 12-hour night shift at the same base. These are the folks most likely to live where they work. And if their job is stable enough, they can have a home life pretty much like anyone else’s.

Of course, there is overlap between these three broad categories and someone else might come up with a different way to distinguish between them. This is just my way of looking at them and how travel is involved.

I should also point out that a “regular” job might require travel. For example, you could argue that Phoenix-based Flying M Air is my employer and I normally work out of a Phoenix airport. However some photography or survey assignments require that I travel to other locations — Lake Powell, Bryce Canyon, Kingman, Winslow, etc. — for a day or more. If clients need a helicopter where there isn’t one, I’m sometimes called to bring mine to them.

In general, however, to answer Joe’s question about hours, I’d say that 95% of helicopter jobs have what you might consider “odd hours.” If you’re looking for a 9 to 5 job, a career as a helicopter pilot is not for you.

Living Conditions on the Road

A humorous look at this aspect of being a helicopter pilot.

It’s worth a moment to look at some of the living conditions you might find if you do get a job away from home. While they’re not always terrible, they’re not usually very good.

At the Grand Canyon, pilots were offered housing in double-wide mobile homes about 30 miles from the airport. For a reasonable fee, four pilots shared one four-bedroom house in a subdivision of mobile homes. I was fortunate in that I had other living arrangements available to me, so I didn’t need to take advantage of this opportunity. My understanding was that living conditions depended on your roommates and and their habits. The area was so remote with such limited facilities that our employer actually warned us before we were hired about the lack of night life and social activities so we couldn’t use that as an excuse to back out later on.

In Central Washington State, I now live in a fifth wheel RV that I own and transport to my various bases of operation. It’s very comfortable, although it does have limitations that vary based on where it’s parked. In previous years, I spent a whole month at a motel in a very cramped room with no cross-ventilation. (The motel did have a pool, so I really can’t complain.) Other pilots doing this work are often called on to live in housing provided onsite — usually small travel trailers. One pilot I know was put in an 18-foot travel trailer with no bathroom; she had to use a portable toilet (think blue or green outhouse) and walk to the orchard owner’s home to shower. Her cell phone didn’t work there either, so the only way she could get or make calls was to drive into town.

A friend of mine who works fire contracts is typically put up in a motel near the base. Because the base can change at any time and he has to carry his gear with him from base to base — sometimes in the helicopter when he repositions — he’s limited on what creature comforts he can bring along. Motel quality and cleanliness can vary widely depending on what’s available.

Yet another friend of mine who works fire contracts typically travels to Greece, Italy, and Australia for work. I don’t know the details of his living conditions, but I sure do like the idea of going to places like these with someone else footing the travel bill.

Living conditions are a crapshoot that depends on many factors. If you’re picky about where you sleep at night, a career as a helicopter pilot might not be for you.

Be Willing to Travel

The point of all this is that you need to be willing to travel and willing to deal with less-than-perfect living conditions to move forward in a career as a helicopter pilot. But that’s part of paying dues — which is up next.

So You Want to Be a Helicopter Pilot, Part 7: Stay Slim

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Fatties need not apply.

As strange as it might seem, one of the biggest barriers to building a career as a helicopter pilot is size — pilot size. Simply put, if you’re a heavyweight, you’re going to have a heck of a time learning to fly and getting your first job.

How Big is Big?

What do I mean by “heavyweight”? Well:

  • N7139LHow much do you think you can squeeze into one of these?

    If you weigh more than 250 pounds, you may as well forget about learning to fly helicopters for a flying career. Most training helicopters simply can’t accommodate a big guy (or gal) plus a flight instructor. Even if you did learn how to fly, no one will hire you as a flight instructor.

  • If you weigh between 200 and 250 pounds, you might find a flight school that can accommodate you for training, but it’s highly unlikely that you’ll find one willing to hire you as a flight instructor. After all, the more the CFI weighs, the less capacity there is for the student pilot. A big CFI could only train small student pilots; flight schools simply don’t want to deal with this limitation.
  • If you weigh between 180 and 200 pounds, you’ll likely find a flight school that can accommodate you for training and might consider hiring you as a flight instructor. But you’d have to be really good with no serious competition to get that job.
  • If you weigh less than 180 pounds, not only will you have no trouble finding a flight school, but if you prove your worth throughout training, you probably won’t have much trouble getting a job as a flight instructor either.
  • If you weigh less than 150 pounds — listen up, ladies! — and you’re a good pilot with the right attitude, you will be sought after as a pilot.

Remember, the less the pilot weighs, the more other stuff — passengers, cargo, etc. — can be loaded on board.

Real-Life Examples

Don’t believe me? I can back this up with a two real-life stories.

One guy who flew with me on my annual journey from Arizona to Washington state needed to build R44 time to qualify as an R44 CFI. He was a tall guy — probably at least 6 ft 2 in — and weighed 220 pounds. This was not a fat 220 pounds; he was tall, thin, and fit. He’d been told flatly by the school he hoped to get a job with that he weighed too much to be a CFI in R22s. He figured he’d go after a job as a CFI for R44s. What he didn’t realize is that flight schools don’t want CFIs limited to training in just one aircraft model. They could easily prep a 180-pound R22 CFI to train in an R44 — in fact, they could use that possibility as motivation (think carrot) for their R22 CFIs. I don’t know if this guy ever got a CFI job, but I tend to doubt it.

A very tiny female pilot who has been flying helicopters for years at the Grand Canyon weighs in at only 115 pounds. While it’s true that she’s too small to fly solo without ballast in the EC130 she flies at work, her employer loves her, referring to her as their “secret weapon.” Indeed, I saw her value one spring day when I dropped off two passengers for a flight over the Grand Canyon. The aircraft originally had only four passengers who would fly with one of the other pilots. When two more passengers showed up for the same flight, they pulled the other pilot — a man who probably weighed in between 180 and 200 pounds — and put her on board instead. They’d gained at least 65 pounds of capacity by simply swapping pilots, making a flight that may have been over gross weight now under gross weight. What company wouldn’t see the value of that?

And if these two examples aren’t enough for you, take a look at helicopter pilot job listings. You’ll see that a surprising number include maximum pilot weight as part of the requirements — or ask you to include your weight with your resume. In other words, fatties need not apply.

Don’t Disregard this Advice!

This is not advice that should be disregarded. This is vitally important for career pilots.

If you’re a 220+ pounder and a flight school trying to sign you up tells you not to worry about it, they are lying to you to get your business — as they may have done to the 220 pounder who flew with me. Sure, they may be able to squeeze you and a tiny CFI on board an R22 for flight training. Or maybe they’ll convince you that you’ll be better off training in an R44, which costs about twice as much per hour to fly. But you’ll still find it impossible (or nearly so) to get a job as a CFI when your ratings are in hand. And unless you plan to pay to build your first 1,000 hours, you’ll need that CFI job to move forward in your career.

It should go without saying that even if you start on the slim side, it’s important to stay that way — at least until you’ve reached a point in your career where your personal body weight doesn’t matter as much.

For example, I have two not-so-slim friends who are well along in their pilot careers. Both are utility pilots; one flies medium twins like Hueys and Bell 212s and the other flies Sky Cranes. Both of these guys are between 200 and 240 pounds. But they (obviously) weren’t always that big. Pounds are often added with years.

Yet another friend of mine was a medevac pilot who allowed his weight to creep up over time. When his company started closing bases, he was one of the first pilots to go. Coincidence? I don’t think so. At the time, he probably weighed about 250.

What You Can Do

If your current weight is above 200 pounds and you know some of it is body fat, it’s time to go on a diet. Do your best to get your weight down to what I consider the magic number for helicopter pilots: 180. If you can keep your weight at or below 180 pounds, weight will not be a barrier to your career.

Keeping slim and trim will help you throughout your life. Not only will it make it easier for you to get work as a pilot, but it will keep you healthier. Obesity-related illnesses such as high blood pressure, heart problems, and diabetes can end your career. If this isn’t motivation to take care of yourself, nothing is.

Next up, I’ll talk about what I consider the best part of being a helicopter pilot — but what others hate: travel.

So You Want to Be a Helicopter Pilot, Part 6: Study Hard

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Flying a helicopter is more than just knowing how to move the controls and perform maneuvers in flight.

As with any other skill you might acquire in life, learning to fly helicopters is made up of many components. The most obvious is getting the motor skills — including reflex reactions — to handle the actual mechanics of flying: working the controls, etc. But behind all that is the knowledge you need to acquire so you fully understand what to do, why you need to do it, and how it works.

Ground School

Ground school — time spend on the ground with a flight instructor learning the what, why, and how parts of flying — is an important part of flight training. Unfortunately, it’s not usually the fun part and, because of that, most pilots try to minimize it. Instead of learning as much as they can about ground school topics such as aerodynamics, aircraft systems, weather, and physical (or medical) issues, some pilots learn only as much as they need to know to pass the written and oral tests that come later.

This is not a good idea if you intend to build a career as a helicopter pilot. At some point in your career, the gaps in your knowledge will be noticed — perhaps by the chief flight instructor you hope will give you your first job or by the chief pilot who can put you in the seat of a turbine helicopter. Or maybe by the mechanic who asks you to perform and document power checks in flight and you clearly don’t understand what he’s talking about. Or maybe by the new pilot you’re asked to show around — the pilot who did study hard and realizes how clueless you are.

Ground school is where you can learn what you need to know, with an experienced flight instructor who’s there to answer your questions. Dig in and learn. Make sure you understand everything — if you’re hazy on something, ask questions. Discuss topics with other student pilots and flight instructors. When you fly, try to understand how ground school topics apply to flight. Take notes, review them, jot down things in the margins when you connect the dots between topics later in your studies or during flights.

Hitting the Books

There are many books and study materials that can help you understand and learn the topics you need to know.

I’ve already pushed the excellent FAA publication, Rotorcraft Flying Handbook, several times on this blog, but I can’t recommend it often enough. Where else are you going to find a free, generously illustrated guide that explains much of what you need to know about flying helicopters in terms anyone can understand? It’s an excellent starting point for your studies.

FAR on iPadAnother pair of must-have publications is the Federal Aviation Regulations (FARs) and Auronautics Information Manual (AIM) which are often published in the same volume. The FAR is updated throughout the year and most publishers publish new editions annually. You should get the most recent edition when you begin your training and try to update it at least every two years. Or do what I do: buy it in app format for an iPad (shown here) or iPhone. You can find them both on Tekkinnovations.com; once you buy them, updates are free (at least they have been so far for me).

Another handy book to have in your possession is a copy of the Pilot Operating Handbook (POH) for the aircraft you’ll be flying during most of your flight training. Yes, I know there’s one in the helicopter — it’s required to be there — but unless you plan to sit in a helicopter to do you studying, it’s nice to have your own copy to jot down notes, etc. I learned to fly in an R22 and bought a copy of the POH the first time I attended the Robinson Factory Safety Course; I added all kinds of notes in the margins during that course.

Cyclic & CollectiveThere are other books about flying helicopters. Many of them have been written by experienced helicopter pilots. One of my favorites is Cyclic & Collective by Shawn Coyle. This is a huge book jam-packed with information that goes beyond the basics offered by the FAA.

It’s likely that your flight school will also recommend or require certain books to help you study. The Jeppesen books are a big hit — especially to your wallet. But, to be fair, they do have excellent illustrations to make important points clear.

But remember, buying a book isn’t enough. You have to crack it open and read it.

Going the Video Route

There are also training videos that you might find helpful to reinforce what you learn in ground school and on your own. I used the King School videos. Although the series is designed for airplane pilots, there was an extra video in the set that covered helicopter operations. In general, I found the videos painfully boring at times, but I admit they were informative. By the end, however, I wanted to grab John and Martha King and crack their heads together. This, of course, was more than 10 years ago; hopefully, the videos have been revised by then. There’s also a good chance you can some of this material on their website.

I think Sporty’s has a set of videos that compete with the King’s — so you might want to check that out as an alternative.

If you decide to buy the videos, I bet you can find them used on eBay or Craig’s List for less than regular price. You can always sell them when you’re done.

Make It Count

Your flight training will cost as much as — if not more than — a college education. You need to take it just as seriously.

If you fail to learn the concepts by studying hard and asking your flight instructor to explain things you’re struggling with, you’re not only throwing away the money you’re spending on your education, but you’re setting yourself up for failure in your career.

Make it count by putting real effort into it and studying hard.

Next up, I’ll explain why you shouldn’t hit the books with a bag of chips within reach.