AMA Livestream with Helicopter Pilot Maria Langer

Recording of the Ask Me Anything livestream I did on YouTube on November 1, 2020.

Thanks to the folks who joined me for this AMA. I think I answered a lot of questions.

Here are some of the videos I referred to in this livestream:

Channel Membership Video: https://youtu.be/sHSqlQqeP1A

Autorotation Practice: https://youtu.be/W9UEqinM0Js

Cyclic: https://youtu.be/ZcqrPXgEWM0
Collective: https://youtu.be/kDqUnirx4Gc
Pedals: https://youtu.be/ohU6LssRgLY

Cost of Helicopter: https://youtu.be/3Cbr4xZObNk

Cherry Drying (Long with explanations): https://youtu.be/t_7W8b0Ej0U

Also:

Blog post explaining the “deadman’s curve”:
https://aneclecticmind.com/2008/04/27/the-deadmans-curve/

Gyroplane Flight: Pattern Work at Watts-Woodland

A video from the Flying M Air YouTube channel.

SIT ON THE MAST OF AN OPEN COCKPIT GYROPLANE as I take it around the traffic pattern three times in Woodland, CA.

I dug deep into my archives for this video from April 2014, which first appeared, in part, on my personal YouTube channel. In it, I’m flying a Magni M-16 gyroplane with a GoPro camera mounted on the mast. There is a bunch of vibration in this video; removing it with stabilization software reduced the video resolution without significantly improving the video quality, so I let it stay as is.

I learned to fly a gyro back in 2014 and got as far as my first solo before calling it quits. (No reason to go on since there’s no gyro in my future and it would be nearly impossible to keep current.) My flight instructor was an anesthesiologist friend who has three planes, including this one, and flies on his days off. He said I was the most difficult pilot to teach and we realized it was because was a helicopter pilot and not an airplane pilot — the idea of touching down when you’re still speeding along at 60 knots or more scared the heck out of me so I kept trying to slow down on final. You can learn more about my lessons here: https://aneclecticmind.com/2014/04/24/learning-to-fly-gyros/

About Me, the Flight Instructor, and the Gyroplane

  • I have been flying since 1998. My nearly 4,000 hours of flight time (as of 2019) is in Robinson R44, Robinson R22, and Bell 206L (Long Ranger) helicopters.
  • My flight instructor, who sat behind me in this video, is George, who makes his living as an anesthesiologist. He also owns and flies two other planes and is rated to fly helicopters. The last time I saw him was the day we flew together from Malaga to Woodland in 2016. (Long story there.)
  • The gyroplane is a Magni M-16 that belonged to George. I don’t know anything about it other than it has a flashy Angry Birds theme paint job that seemed a lot more relevant in 2014 than it does now. It was in perfect condition and well maintained by George, who was its second owner. You can see a photo of the gyroplane in the title screen of this video; that’s me after my first (and only, I think) solo flight.

About the Video

  • The video and sound was recorded with a GoPro Hero 3 camera mounted with an adhesive mount to the gyroplane’s mast. This is obviously not the best setup given the vibrations you see in the video.
  • The video was edited on a Macintosh using Screenflow software. Learn more about it here: https://www.telestream.net/screenflow/overview.htm
  • The intro music is by Bob Levitus, famed “Dr. Mac.” You can find him here: http://www.boblevitus.com/

I try to drop cockpit POV videos every Sunday morning and “extras” with more info about owning and operating a helicopter midweek. (Some channel members and patrons get early access to some of these videos.) I also host occasional livestreams with Q&A chats. Subscribe so you don’t miss anything new! And tell your friends. The more subscribers I have, the more motivated I am to keep producing videos like this one.

Any Amazon links on my channel are affiliate links (https://amzn.to/32PLHTD). If you click one of them and buy something, Amazon sends me a few pennies. Enough pennies make a dollar. Enough dollars buy new equipment. It doesn’t cost you anything so I hope you’ll shop with one of those links. Thanks.

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Autorotation is Controlled Flight

Clearing up something that might not be apparent to non-pilots.

Yesterday, I got the following tweet in my notifications from someone who had never tweeted at me before:

This was mind boggling to me. I replied:

His response came later in the day:

He was referring to one of my YouTube videos, R44 Helicopter Autorotation Practice. That video records my practice session with CFI Trevor Hale at Wenatchee Pangborn Memorial Airport early one July 2019 morning. What I’d hoped to accomplish with the video is to take some of the mystery out of autorotations for non-pilots and to take some of the fear of practicing and dealing with engine failures for helicopter pilots. The video shows the two of us sitting in the cockpit while I simulate one engine failure after another by cutting the throttle and disengaging the drive system from the rotor system. The only thing keeping the blades spinning is me doing what I’ve been trained and tested to do for the past 20 years: full (or almost full) down collective to reduce drag and pitch to maintain optimum airspeed and rotor RPM while flying to a suitable landing spot.

What I guess a lot of people still don’t get is that when a pilot performs an autorotation, she has full control of the helicopter and is flying the helicopter. The pilot does not become a passenger, as she would if she lost control. She can move the helicopter in any direction except up, steering it as necessary to make the spot.

Now let’s say a helicopter has a ballistic parachute system at the top of the rotor mast as this person on Twitter suggests. Can someone explain to me why a pilot might deploy this parachute, thus giving up control of the aircraft, in the event of an engine failure when autorotation makes it possible to stay in control all the way to the ground? I’m not seeing it.

Some of you might know that Cirrus airplanes have this a ballistic parachute system built in. It’s not designed for engine failures, however. It’s designed for situations when the pilot cannot control the plane to a safe landing. All pilots, regardless of what they fly, are trained to deal with engine failures during various stages of flight. If there’s nothing physically wrong with the aircraft’s flight controls or surfaces, there’s really no reason to rely on a parachute to get you to the ground safely. Start the appropriate emergency procedure and fly the aircraft to the ground.

And let’s be honest now: how often do engines fail? Bored one afternoon? Go to the NTSB’s web site and read a bunch of accident reports for airplanes and helicopters. It’s all there. How many of them were caused by engine failures? How many of them were caused by mechanical issues at all? And how many were caused by pilot error?

It isn’t engine failures that pilots should be fearing. It’s their own stupidity. (And yes, I’m a poster child for that.)

So I posted my response, challenging him to explain what I was apparently missing:

I hope I educated him and any others who don’t quite understand what happens if a helicopter engine quits and the pilot does what she’s trained to do.