Tag Archives: aviation

On “Air Vortexes”

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The media stumbles over a basic aerodynamic aspect of helicopter flight.

I was on Twitter Thursday evening when manp, one of my Twitter friends, tweeted:

So, what is this ‘vortex’ condition with ‘higher than expected temperatures’??? @mlanger any idea?

To be honest, I had no clue what he was talking about. But I Googled “vortex condition with higher than expected temperatures” (don’t you love Google?) and saw an article about the helicopter that went down during the Bin Laden assault in Pakistan. Moments later, manp sent me a link to a Bloomberg article titled “Helicopter Carrying SEALs Downed by Vortex, Not Mechanical Flaw or Gunfire.” The first paragraph read as follows:

A United Technologies Corp. (UTX) Black Hawk helicopter carrying U.S. Navy SEALs to Osama Bin Laden’s hideout was downed by an air vortex caused by unexpectedly warm air and the effect of a high wall surrounding the compound, not mechanical failure or gunfire, according to U.S. officials and a lawmaker.

Whoa. What a mishmash of information. You have to read further into the article where the phenomena they’re trying to explain — vortex ring state — is explained at least two more times by people who actually have a clue what it is. But that first paragraph sure is misleading. It makes it seem as if there was come kind of weird warm air vortex in the compound that brought the helicopter down.

Any vortexes, however, were caused by the helicopter itself. My educated guess of what happened, based on this article and knowledge of helicopter aerodynamics, is this:

As the helicopter was descending inside the 18-foot walls — a descent that was likely nearly vertical — it encountered a setting with power — or vortex ring state — condition. This occurs when the helicopter settles into its own downwash. This may have been made worse by the change in the flow of air due to those 18-foot walls — as suggested in the article. It may also have been made worse by the outside air temperature being warm.

This image from the FAA’s Rotorcraft Flying Handbook helps illustrated what the vortexes are and how they manifest themselves in a hover far above the ground and close to the ground:

Hover Vortexes

As the Rotorcraft Flying Handbook explains:

Vortex ring state describes an aerodynamic condition where a helicopter may be in a vertical descent with up to maximum power applied, and little or no cyclic authority. The term “settling with power” comes from the fact that helicopter keeps settling even though full engine power is applied.

In a normal out-of-ground-effect hover, the helicopter is able to remain stationary by propelling a large mass of air down through the main rotor. Some of the air is recirculated near the tips of the blades, curling up from the bottom of the rotor system and rejoining the air entering the rotor from the top. This phenomenon is common to all airfoils and is known as tip vortices. Tip vortices consume engine power but produce no useful lift. As long as the tip vortices are small, their only effect is a small loss in rotor efficiency. However, when the helicopter begins to descend vertically, it settles into its own downwash, which greatly enlarges the tip vortices. In this vortex ring state, most of the power developed by the engine is wasted in accelerating the air in a doughnut pattern around the rotor.

Vortex Ring StateIn addition, the helicopter may descend at a rate that exceeds the normal downward induced-flow rate of the inner blade sections. As a result, the airflow of the inner blade sections is upward relative to the disc. This produces a secondary vortex ring in addition to the normal tip-vortices. The secondary vortex ring is generated about the point on the blade where the airflow changes from up to down. The result is an unsteady turbulent flow over a large area of the disc. Rotor efficiency is lost even though power is still being supplied from the engine.

There are three ways to recover from settling with power once you’re in it:

  • Cut power – you can’t settle with power if you don’t have power. This is usually not a good option when you’re very close to the ground.
  • Lower the collective – this reduces the blade pitch. This is also not a good idea close to the ground, since it will result in a descent.
  • Get some lateral airspeed – this breaks you out of the vortex ring state so you’re not settling in your own downwash. This is not possible when you’re surrounded by an 18-foot wall.

(They train us to recover from settling with power using a combination of the second two methods, but we always practice at altitude, since you can get a good descent rate going if you’re really into it. Indeed, settling with power is a serious danger during aerial photo missions requiring hovering at high density altitudes or heavy weights.)

So the pilot did the only thing he could: land hard. Fortunately, although his hard landing damaged the helicopter, it didn’t cause injuries to to men on board. They were able to complete their mission and come home safely. And they left a souvenir lawn ornament in Bin Laden’s yard.

I realize that this is a pretty complex topic and it’s probably not reasonable to expect the press to get it right. But I personally believe that all technical content published in the media should be reviewed by an expert — or at least someone knowledgeable — to make sure it’s not misleading or unclear to the layperson who will read it.

manp is a pilot — although not a helicopter pilot — and he couldn’t figure out what they were talking about. I can only imagine how much that opening paragraph confused the average reader.

So You Want to Be a Helicopter Pilot, Part 5: Check Your Attitude at the Door

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Attitude is everything.

You think you’re a hot shot because you’re learning to fly helicopters? Check that attitude at the door. It won’t do you any good if you plan to make flying a career.

Attitude is everything when it comes to any career. A cocky, overconfident attitude will not help you in training and it certainly won’t help you get your entry level job — likely as a flight instructor — when your training is done.

Be open to what your instructor and other knowledgeable pilots have to say. If you don’t understand something, admit it and work with your instructor to learn. Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Show respect for your CFI, chief flight instructor, flight school employees, other students, and FAA examiners. Act mature. (This isn’t high school, grow up.) Be helpful and cooperative. Don’t be a whiner.

Beyond the Flight School Environment

Attitude also extends beyond training and into your jobs.

Just the other day, while flying in the high-traffic area around the Hoover Dam, I had the displeasure of conducting a useless radio exchange with a tour pilot. This little twerp probably had half the flight experience that I have, yet he talked down to me in a sarcastic manner that was obviously his [failed] attempt to prove how much smarter he was. The radio exchange wasted bandwidth and provided little useful information about what could have been a traffic conflict. It was clearly more important for him to try to intimidate me than to provide me with the information I needed to avoid his aircraft, such as position, altitude, and flight path.

Yet only moments later, another pilot operating nearby communicated exactly what he was planning to do and even offered to wait a minute or two until I was clear of the area.

Which one had the better attitude? Which one do you think other pilots would want to fly with? Or employers would want to hire?

Attitude Extends to Safety, Too

And it’s not just a positive attitude that will help you achieve your goals. It’s a safe attitude. If you don’t conduct yourself as a safe pilot, you will simply not move forward in your career.

Back in 2009, I had a run-in with a tour pilot in Sedona. He was upset that I’d parked my helicopter in the spot across from his at the airport. Apparently, he liked that spot kept free so he could fly through it on departure. To “show me a lesson” he departed nearly right over my passenger’s heads as we waited for him to leave the area. His action was foolish and dangerous. I reported him to the airport manager and the FAA. I later learned that this same pilot had demonstrated his bad attitude at the local FSDO within earshot of one of the inspectors. It was the pilot that was taught a lesson that day.

Accidents like the one at Grand Canyon West in 2001 are teaching employers the importance of their pilots flying safely. The accident pilot had a history, backed up with videotape, of performing aggressive maneuvers during tour flights.

One of the [past] passengers stated that there were particularly exciting episodes during the tour that were frightening to some of the others. As part of the tour, they flew over a site that was used in the commercial motion picture film Thelma and Louise, and the pilot pointed out the cliff. … During the return to LAS, the pilot asked if they wanted to know what it was like to drive a car off of a cliff. She stated that they all said “no” to this question; however, he proceeded to fly very fast toward the edge of the cliff and then dove the helicopter as it passed the edge. The passenger reported that it was “frightening and thrilling at the same time but it scared the others to death.”

On August 10, the pilot and six passengers were killed; the other passenger received serious burns on most of her body that have likely destroyed her life. The NTSB report’s probable cause was:

the pilot’s in-flight decision to maneuver the helicopter in a flight regime, and in a high density altitude environment, in which the aircraft’s performance capability was marginal, resulting in a high rate of descent from which recovery was not possible. Factors contributing to the accident were high density altitude and the pilot’s decision to maneuver the helicopter in proximity to precipitous terrain, which effectively limited any remedial options available.

Evidence shows that the pilot may have been attempting to perform the “Thelma and Louise” maneuver when the aircraft crashed. (You can read the details of this accident to learn more by downloading the full NTSB report as a PDF.)

You can bet that if there are any questions about your attitude regarding safety, you simply will not get hired as a pilot.

Start Now

Getting into the habit of having a good attitude should stick with you throughout your career — and your life. Start now, before you even begin your search for a flight school.

Next up, I’ll remind you why flight training is like any other school.

So You Want to Be a Helicopter Pilot, Part 4: Choose a Reputable Flight School

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Get what you pay for.

The quality of your training will be determined by your flight school. And believe me, you want the best training you can get.

Some Basic Tips

Here’s a bunch of tips for choosing a flight school; sadly, most of them are “don’ts” because of the kinds of marketing tactics some schools use:

  • Don’t be lured by ads for cheap training with promises of jobs at 300 hours of flight time. These schools are not interested in turning out quality pilots. They’re interested in attracting as many wannabes as possible to fill out their bottom line.
  • Don’t get fooled by schools that make verbal promises about hiring all graduates as flight instructors. A verbal promise isn’t worth more than the paper it’s written on. Many flight schools will tell you anything you want to hear to get you to sign up. Besides, wouldn’t you rather get trained at a school that chooses the best CFIs as instructors than the one who takes any CFI as an instructor? And do you really think they can hire all of their graduates? What happens when graduates hired as CFIs outnumber students? How many hours of flying will you get then?
  • Don’t look at the biggest or smallest schools. Look at schools somewhere in the middle. These are the ones where you’ll have the benefit of several CFIs on staff while still getting some level of personal attention.
  • Check into the experience of the training staff. Find out how many hours of flight time the chief flight instructor and some of the other flight instructors have. Find out whether any of them have real-life flying experience. Flight schools that offer tour and charter services also offer opportunities for their CFIs to get the kind of experience they’ll use in future jobs.
  • Once you’ve got the flight schools narrowed down to one or two, talk to some of the students and flight instructors there. See what they think. Try to get the contact information for one or two graduates who have moved on to see whether they thought their training at the school helped them succeed.

Don’t be lazy and take shortcuts here. Your future starts with your training. Do your homework. You’ll be amazed by what you learn.

Equipment

Learn to Fly Here SignThere are a lot of people who make a big deal over the kind of equipment used for flying. There are three basic helicopters used for training: Robinson R22, Schweitzer Schweizer 269/300 (which has a bunch of other names), and Enstrom F28F and 280FX. News flash: They’re all good.

The R22 is an extremely “squirrelly” helicopter. It really takes all of your attention to fly. Its two-bladed system makes it unsafe for aggressive or low-G maneuvers, but ground resonance is not an issue. Robinsons are widely respected and widely used in flight schools.

I can’t speak firsthand about the Schweitzer Schweizer since I’ve never flown one. I know that as a helicopter with a fully articulated rotor system, it’s capable of performing far more aggressive maneuvers than a Robinson. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing. It is susceptible to ground resonance. I have heard that its glide slope in autorotation is steeper than an R22 but can’t back that up with facts and figures.

I have flown an Enstrom and, in all honesty, I wasn’t impressed. The excessive vibrations really turned me off, but that could have been caused by the blades being out of balance or some other maintenance issue on that particular aircraft. It also has a fully articulated rotor system, but I can’t recall hearing anything about one getting into ground resonance. I don’t know enough about its flight characteristics to pass judgement on it.

Most pilots favor the helicopter they trained on. That’s true with me. Not only did I learn in an R22, but I owned an R22 Beta II for four years and put at least 1,000 hours on it. But who knows? If I’d trained in a 300, I might have all kinds of love for it instead.

I’m hoping that folks reading this who have more knowledge about the other two aircraft will comment on their experiences. (Warning: I will not allow an equipment-bashing comment thread to form for this post. Present facts about what you know; not hearsay about what you don’t.)

I certainly don’t think you should pass up a flight school because of the brand of its equipment. The age, maintenance quality, and condition is far more important. You want a flight school with its own hangar and maintenance facility. You might even want to take a look at it to make sure it’s relatively neat and clean and the mechanics look like they know what they’re doing. A place with friendly mechanics who are willing to talk to you when you have a mechanical problem or question will certainly help you get more out of your flight training.

There’s one other thing to keep in mind. Some flight schools have one or two turbine helicopters on hand that they use for charter work or even training. When trying to get you to sign with them, they might hint or even promise that they’ll give you a certain number of hours of turbine flight time. Get any promises in writing. It is not uncommon for flight schools to give students the impression they’d get turbine transition training in a package deal and then, for some reason, not provide it. Either the aircraft was down for maintenance or there were too many other pilots queued up for time in it or there was an additional fee that was never discussed. If a turbine aircraft is dangled like a carrot in front of you, get all the facts about flying it before signing up.

Beware of Package Deals

And that brings up the topic of package deals. My advice is this: Do not sign with a school that forces you to enter into a contract for all training and pay them a bunch of money up front. (This was also pointed out by Damien in comments for Part 2 of this series, which discussed funding your flight training.) You do not want to be contractually tied to any flight school (at least not without a contractual way out that won’t cost you anything) and you certainly don’t want them getting money upfront (beyond reasonable prepayments) for services yet to be rendered.

If there’s anything the Silver State debacle taught us, it’s that flight schools aren’t always around forever. If they fold with your money, you’re out of luck.

Equally important is that if you decide after a few weeks or months of training that you don’t like the flight school and want to continue training elsewhere, you have the freedom to do so. And believe me; this happens more often than you think.

Networking Potential

Keith, who has far more experience flying far more equipment in far more places than me, pointed out in comments to my earlier post about age:

I know several aspiring pilots who I have counseled about the helicopter business but I hesitate to recommend a school to them. My usual advice on schools has been pick the best ranked school that provides the greatest possible chance to get that first job.

It is a little discouraging to me to have to tell an aspiring career pilot that all the good grades, excellent flight reviews and mind numbing study may come to not if they don’t make that first job happen for themselves. Perseverance helps but choosing the right place to train and the connections and recommendations that come from certain schools and/or instructors might make all the difference. It is still a small industry where more positions are gained through personal recommendations and associations than any quantity of paper credentials. Your reputation in this industry begins at day one and for good or bad will follow you your entire career.

This is excellent advice for career pilots. I know of at least once school — now defunct — that had a terrible reputation for training. It got so bad that many employers would simply not consider any pilot that had that flight school listed on a resume. That’s a difficult hurdle to jump when you’re just starting out.

But I think what Keith’s saying goes beyond just choosing a flight school. I think it also has to do with how you represent yourself throughout training and your first few jobs. That’s attitude and I’ll cover that next.

So You Want to Be a Helicopter Pilot, Part 3: Start Young

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The younger you start, the farther you can go.

In the last part of this series, I discussed the financial aspects of learning to fly helicopters and getting the ratings you need to move forward. I’m thrilled to see that a few folks have added comments from their own experiences. With luck, others will do the same. The more real experiences that are shared, the more real information readers can pick up here.

In this post I’ll discuss another important topic: age. Ideally, you want to have all certificates in hand by the time you’re 30 years old. Even better would be 25. This means you need to start young.

Look at it this way: if you were going to college for career training, wouldn’t you want to have your degree so you could get to work in your chosen field before the age of 30? This would give you plenty of time to pay your dues (discussed in another post), get your foot in the door, and work your way up the career ladder to the kind of flying job you want.

How Young Can You Start?

I honestly don’t know the minimum age for starting helicopter flying lessons. I’ve seen airplane flight schools offering training for kids as young as 14 years. On the helicopter side, however, I noticed that some flight schools require students to be at least 18 years old. I think that’s a pretty good minimum age for getting on the controls of a helicopter.

Rotorcraft Flying HandbookBut that doesn’t mean you have to wait until you’re 18 to start learning. There’s plenty to learn before you begin taking actual flight lessons. A good place to start is with the FAA’s Rotorcraft Flying Handbook. This free 207-page book in PDF format is an excellent source of information about helicopter aerodynamics and maneuvers. In fact, it’s the book I turn to to brush up on topics like gyroscopic precession and coriolis effect for my annual Part 135 checkride. Start here — no matter how old you are — and get a head start on the basics before you even meet your first flight instructor.

Midlife Career Changes

I get lots of e-mail and comments from guys who are in their 40s or even 50s or 60s who claim that they’ve always wanted to be a helicopter pilot. Always? What I want to reply is: why didn’t you do it when you were younger?

Reality check: 40 is not a good age to start training to become a career pilot. I’m not saying it’s impossible — hell, I was 37 when I started learning to fly. (An airline pilot I knew at the time told me point blank that I was too old to start a career as a pilot.) But it won’t be easy to build your career.

Part of the problem is this: although you’d think that entry level employers would be more inclined to hire older, more mature pilots, they aren’t. They want young guys who will do anything they’re told. They don’t want people who can think and reason based on life experiences. They want cheap robot pilots who will stick around just long enough to fulfill a contract that ends with the tour season. I experienced this first-hand at the Grand Canyon, working with guys young enough to be my sons.

If you’re starting to get up there in years, give this some serious thought before diving in. Do you have many financial responsibilities? Are you prepared to give up your current salary and start at the bottom of a helicopter pilot’s pay scale?

I am fortunate in that my other job as a freelance writer makes it possible to work around my flying activities; I’ve been working two jobs since I began flying for hire. I could never survive in without a serious lifestyle change on what I currently earn as a pilot.

Maybe you’re in a similar situation and have an income that will continue. Or maybe your first career has left you with enough residual income that you don’t need to worry about future income. Or maybe you’ll just prove to be the exception.

If you do decide to go for it, don’t wait. The sooner you start, the better off you’ll be.

And here’s one more thing to keep in mind: you don’t have to make flying your career to be a pilot. A man I knew got his private helicopter rating on his 65th birthday. No, he wasn’t a career pilot. He just wanted to fly helicopters.

Next up, an important decision: choosing a flight school.

So You Want to be a Helicopter Pilot, Part 2: Save Up

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The more you pay up front, the less you’ll pay in the future.

Education is expensive. Helicopter pilot training is very expensive.

The good news is, financing is often available for flight training. The bad news is, the rates can be high. And did I mention that the training is expensive?

The Cost

Let’s look at the real cost of obtaining your ratings. Remember, at a minimum, you’ll need to get your Private and then Commercial helicopter pilot rating. That’ll cost at least $40,000 that’s if you manage to do it with nearly the minimum number of required flight hours. A more accurate number might be closer to $50,000.

Now unless you have access to a helicopter that you can fly to build another 900 hours of pilot in command time, you’ll likely need to get an entry level helicopter pilot job. In the U.S., that’s a Certified Flight Instructor (CFI) which requires yet another rating. If you want to make yourself more marketable in the future, you’ll likely go for your instrument rating (which will help if you plan on flying in the Gulf of Mexico or in a medevac job) and, if you’re going to do that, you might go for your CFII so you can provide instrument training for other pilots. Getting all that and building the time you need to get the CFI job will add another $10,000 to $20,000 to the cost of your training.

Don’t forget ground school, books and study guides, flight computer and related flight planning tools, test preparation, tests, and check flight costs.

So you’re looking at a total training cost of $50,000 to $80,000. That’s easily as much — if not more — than degree at a private college or university.

Speaking of which, you may want to get a degree while you learn to fly. Some flight schools are associated with major universities and can make that happen. The benefit is that when you finish your education, you’ll have more than just a pilot’s license. You’ll have a degree that can help you get your foot in the door for any aviation business job.

Financing: Do the Math

Many flight schools offer financing through deals they’ve made with local or nationwide financial institutions. One flight school I know not only offers financing to its own students, but extends financing to students at other flight schools. (Why would it do this? Do the math and the answer is easy.)

While it might seem like a no-brainer to you to sign up for financing, stop and think about the deal you’re being offered. What is the interest rate? What’s the payback period? When do payments start? This information is vital to calculate what the loan will cost you in the near and distant future.

One of the commenters on my popular blog post, “The Helicopter Job Market,” wrote:

Also, how is someone to payback an $80K loan at 19% on an entry level salary of 30K/year? That’s a freakin’ house payment each month without having a house! My “off-the-cuff” figuring say’s that equates to about $800 a month for 20-30 years!

His point was on target but his “off-the-cuff” calculations were way off. Using Excel, I calculated $1,271 per month over 30 years — if they give you that long to pay. (The monthly payment is even higher if the loan term is shorter.) That’s a total of $457K. Ouch!

(To be fair, that 19% number quoted by the commenter was evidently the going rate at the end of 2007. The rate is probably much lower now. At least I hope so.)

Do the math.

The simple truth is, financing your training will leave you in deep debt at a point when you’re least likely to be able to pay it off. While I’m not saying you should pay for the whole thing out-of-pocket — although if you can, do it! — you should try to minimize training debt as much as possible. The more you pay up front, the less you’ll pay in the future.

And do you really want to be saddled with a huge loan just when you’re starting out on a new career?

Pay as You Go

One way to minimize training debt is to do your training part time while working at another job. That’s what I did. It took a long time — 18 months to get my private certificate and another six months to get my commercial — but I didn’t have a penny of debt when I was done. (Of course, my other job generated a good cash flow, so I wouldn’t say my situation was typical.)

On a pay-as-you-go plan, you might give the flight school $2,000 on account and then fly and do ground school until it’s done. Then another $2,000 and so on. Obviously, the faster you train, the more money you’ll need to come up with. Perhaps you can work a deal with financing to pay part of the costs as you pay the rest.

Something I did early on was to join AOPA and get an AOPA MasterCard. Back in those days (late 1990s) the card gave cardholders 3% cash back on training and FBO expenses. I’d make my $2,000 account payment on my card and then pay the card balance when it was due to avoid interest charges. I’d then collect 3% of the training costs at the end of the month. While that doesn’t seem like much, it did add up. The card has since switched to a point system that also offers some cash back; I use it for all my flying expenses.

One drawback to the pay-as-you-go method — especially if it considerably slows down training: if you don’t fly often, you’ll need to fly more hours to get and keep the skills you need to pass a check ride. For a while, I only flew once or twice a week; I found in the beginning that I was “rusty” and needed at least half of a flight to relearn motor skills. I also took off an entire summer — you try practicing hovering autorotations in 115°F weather! Because of this, I probably required at least an extra 10-20 hours of dual flight time over the 18 months of my primary training just to be ready for my Private check flight.

The Military Option

If the military is an option, remember that the GI Bill (or whatever they’re calling it these days) will pay for all or part of career flight training. Do your homework to find out what’s involved and whether this can work for you.

If you’re already in the armed services, you might quality for pilot training. There’s nothing better than having your Uncle Sam foot the bill for flight training and pay you to build hours of experience. (Especially, of course, if your Uncle Sam is your mom’s rich brother who needs a pilot.)

If you’re not already in the armed services but you’re young enough to sign up, consider it. It’s not as crazy an idea as you might think. If you’re young, exposure to a disciplined lifestyle and trying circumstances can make you a better, stronger person. It can also help you mature quickly. And you’ll build relationships with other men and women from all over the country — relationships that’ll last a lifetime.

Remember that not all flight schools are eligible to receive GI benefits. Do your homework before you sign anything.

Ignore this at your Peril

Of all the advice I give you in these articles, this one is likely to be the most ignored. Why? Because in our society we want immediate gratification and don’t think twice about going into debt to get what we want.

Sure, you can ignore this advice and finance your entire flight training. Just remember, when you’re struggling as a CFI trying to build time at a flight school that hires all of its students as CFIs — more on that in a later post — that that loan is likely to be a heavy burden when you also need a roof over your head, food in your stomach, and gas in your car to get to work.

Next Up: Some age advice.