Helicopter SOLO!!
05/22/11 21:40 Filed in: All
First Helicopter Solo!!! Well, we finally got a break in the crappy weather. After some hovering and a couple of laps in the pattern, Corey jumped out and I was on my own. Now, I remember my first airplane solo like it was yesterday. Heart racing and sweating buckets. It wasn’t that bad this time, but still pretty intense. It got the heartbeat to the aerobic stage I am sure. There is no greater sense of focus than flying a new type of aircraft by yourself for the first time.
Probably working against me was the fact that I watched the Robinson R22 safety seminar video on DVD the prior night. They go through the many ways that R22s fall out of the sky and how to get into and how to avoid unrecoverable situations. Pretty damn sobering and definitely forefront on my mind as I took the mighty R22 up on my own. All was fine, though and as with my airplane solo, the first couple patterns and landings were probably my smoothest to date.
Cool. Cool. Cool. 10 more hours of solo and 3 of checkride prep and we’ll be pretty darned close to the rating. More incentive to get cracking on that Helicycle. Let’s get back to building!!!
Probably working against me was the fact that I watched the Robinson R22 safety seminar video on DVD the prior night. They go through the many ways that R22s fall out of the sky and how to get into and how to avoid unrecoverable situations. Pretty damn sobering and definitely forefront on my mind as I took the mighty R22 up on my own. All was fine, though and as with my airplane solo, the first couple patterns and landings were probably my smoothest to date.
Cool. Cool. Cool. 10 more hours of solo and 3 of checkride prep and we’ll be pretty darned close to the rating. More incentive to get cracking on that Helicycle. Let’s get back to building!!!