First Supervised Solo - Helicopter
An excerpt from the book Highways in the Sky by David B. Freeman
Date: 11/17/70
A/C Type: TH-55
Registration #: 16446
Route of Flight: My Tho Stage Field, Fort Wolters, Texas
Seventeen hours in the TH-55 helicopter and I still hadn't soloed. The hovering part was hard enough—like learning to roller skate on a beach ball in the ocean during a hurricane—but now I couldn't seem to handle any wind above 15 knots.
Usually I slept on the bus ride to Downey Army Heliport, but not this time. This time I worried. My IP, CW2 Phillips was pulling for me, but his hands were tied. He and I both knew that at this point in my training the Army was looking for ways to wash out Warrant Officer Candidates that weren’t going to make the grade.
Many of the guys in my flight class had soloed after eight to ten hours. Twelve was considered the norm, and fifteen was supposed to be tops. I was over the limit, but Mr. Phillips said he had confidence in me. He knew I was going to make it, but just to keep him and me both out of trouble, it had to be today. You’d have thought that since I had already soloed in airplanes, this would be easy.
That’s what I thought, but it wasn’t the case.
Wouldn’t you know it would be windy again? Why did they have to train us out on the West Texas prairie where there were no trees to block the west wind. It hit us in all of its fury, a biting cold wind that chilled us to the bone and tossed our Mattel Messerschmidts around the sky like little scraps of paper. Why couldn’t I have been scheduled for the morning flight? At least then I might have a chance to solo before the wind had a chance to build up to its afternoon proportions.
After the briefing at Downey Heliport it was time to ride the bus again. My stick buddy, John Almeda flew the first period. Mr. Phillips rode with him in the helicopter to My Tho stage field, where John would practice takeoffs and landings in the traffic pattern for the rest of his flight training period. John had soloed three days earlier.
After the bus ride, I sat in the shack at My Tho and looked out the window at the TH-55s in the traffic pattern. It was too cold for me out there. It was cold inside, too, but at least there was no wind. Mr. Phillips stood out by the flight line with the other IPs who had students flying solo. He didn’t look cold. I was shivering. Maybe it was from the cold, maybe it was nerves.
Looking around the room, I was very much aware of the fact that, except for Jim Johnston, I was the only one in the flight who hadn’t soloed. Jim was not going to make it. He knew it and so did everybody else. I wondered if they thought that about me, too.
After an hour and a half, Almeda set the TH-55 down in the refueling spot. Now it was my turn. He had a little trouble with the wind, bouncing a few times before lowering pitch, but then he was down. Mr. Phillips walked out to meet him. He shook John’s hand as John climbed out of the helicopter. John was in like flint.
I wished I could get rid of the nervous feeling in the pit of my stomach. I prayed for God to take away the fear and give me peace, but I didn’t sense an immediate answer.
The helicopter was refueled, and I went out to do my preflight. Then, I got in, started the engine and engaged the rotor blades. Mr. Phillips came out, climbed in and plugged his flight helmet into the intercom. “Okay, Freeman, today’s the day. Give me three good trips around the pattern and it’s all yours.”
“Yes, sir.” I looked around to make sure we were clear, then eased up on the collective. Remembering what he had drilled into me, I got the helicopter light on the skids and felt around for a neutral cyclic before breaking ground. I took a deep breath and let it out, then willed myself to breathe normally. That concept was quickly forgotten, as holding my breath, I lifted the little Hughes to a hover. In a flash it was all over the sky. The tail tried to swap ends with the nose as I let it drift sideways toward the middle of the field. I knew I must stop it, knew I must settle down and keep it steady, but my hands and feet didn’t get the message.
I fought it. The controls were all over the cockpit. Mr. Phillips didn’t grab for the controls, he just talked to me. “Take it easy, Freeman. Stop fighting it. You’re making your own problems over-controlling. Just settle down.”
That was easy for him to say. I honestly believed he had a “hover button” on his side of the cockpit. Whenever he took the controls, the aircraft instantly assumed a rock steady hover. But he wasn’t taking them this time. He was going to let me kill us both.
“Rest your arm on your leg and hold the cyclic with the tips of your fingers,” he coached. “Keep your feet still. You’re letting this little helicopter get the best of you.”
It is better than me, I thought, then instantly banished that thought. I could do this, I must do this. I allowed the tension in my body to relax. I rested my arm on my leg and held the cyclic with my fingertips, just like he said. I managed to quit fighting the pedals and kept the nose pointed
reasonably straight ahead. The helicopter stopped drifting. It was sinking and I somehow recognized
that it was and eased up on the collective. Easy, I told myself, and I listened! The sink stopped and we didn’t go shooting into the air. I even kept the RPM up. Finally, I was in control!
“Okay, we can leave the parking area,” Mr. Phillips said. I had managed to get the helicopter off the ground and into a three-foot hover. Step one.
The takeoff was a breeze. So was flying the traffic pattern, though I made the turn to downwind a little too tight. When we were abeam the landing spot, I lowered the collective and started my turn. I began bleeding off airspeed. It was here that I got into trouble.
Three problems attacked at once: I bumped throttle into the overspeed governor as I decreased collective pitch—not once, but three times. That meant I wasn’t coordinating my throttle and collective movements properly. The gusty wind was buffeting the helicopter and I was having a hard time compensating. The closer to the ground we got, the more pronounced the effect seemed and the more I fought it. Then, there was the drift. A strong right quartering crosswind was blowing us left of course.
The three problems combined seem more than I could handle. But at least I had identified and evaluated them. Did that mean I was developing what Mr. Phillips called “air sense”? I hoped so.
If I had identified the problems, maybe I could lick them. Time went into slow motion and I began working out the solutions. A murmur of approval came from the right seat. “Now you’re getting it,” Mr. Phillips said. I beamed with pride and almost lost it all. But, I was quick to recover. I was on top of it.
My brain was giving me instructions. Back off a couple hundred RPM and grip the twist throttle with just your fingers, not the whole hand. Don’t fight the buffets. Just concentrate on keeping the right power setting and the right descent angle, and leave the buffets alone. Crab into the wind. Look at the far end of the stage field strip for a better perspective. I was remembering all the things Mr. Phillips had taught me.
We made it down, and then up again. We did it two more times and Mr. Phillips seemed pleased. “All right,” he said. “Let me out. It’s time you did this alone.”
Hovering back out to the takeoff pad, I was too busy to think about the fact that I was finally soloing. But when I made the first turn to the downwind leg it felt like somebody had just given the little TH-55 a swift kick in the behind. Mr. Phillips had warned me that would happen, and the same thing had happened when I had soloed in the Cessna 150. I was still caught off guard, and panicked, but just for an instant. By the time I was midway through the downwind leg, I had managed to settle down. I talked myself through the rest of the flight. I completed the three takeoffs and landings, and turned off the pad to hover back to the parking area where I would pick Mr. Phillips up for the ride back to the main post. The takeoffs were a snap, and the landings were okay. It was the hovering back to the ramp and trying to park that nearly did me in. It was the wind again. It was blowing from every direction except from directly in front of me where I could handle it. The first time I tried to set the little Hughes down, the wind kicked the tail up, pitched me forward and I scooted across the ramp toward the helicopter in front of me. I responded with too much aft cyclic and suddenly I was moving backwards toward another helicopter that had just pulled in to park behind me.
I pulled the Hughes up to about ten feet, got things under control, and then started easing her back down. Again the wind whipped the tail around and again I fought it. I saw Mr. Phillips out of the corner of my eye, standing about twenty feet away, shaking his head. I had to show him I could do it. I took a deep breath, willed everything to be still, and then bottomed pitch. It wasn’t pretty, but the helicopter was on the ground, reasonably close to the marked parking spot, and still in one piece.
Mr. Phillips ducked his head, went around the front of the helicopter and climbed in on the left side. “I don’t know,” he said as soon as he had put on his flight helmet and plugged it in. “You were doing all right until right there at the end. What happened?”
I started to reply that it was the wind that had been giving me fits, but that sounded so feeble, since the other students had been handling it, so I kept my mouth shut.
“I’ve got it,” he said. “You sit back and relax for a while.”
He picked that little helicopter up to the finest, smoothest three-foot hover you’ve ever seen. It made me sick. Then the wind hit the tail and we nearly swapped ends. Suddenly, he had his hands full trying to keep the little Hughes in one spot over the ground. I looked over to see a bead of perspiration on his forehead. So, it wasn’t all me, after all. There really was a butt-kicking wind out there. I was grinning on the inside, but I sure didn’t let Mr. Phillips see it.
On the way back to Downing Army Heliport, we had a conversation that encouraged me.
“You can’t see the wind,” Mr. Phillips started explaining, once we are airborne, “But you can see its effects.” He was flying; I was riding and listening. This was one of those times with him I treasured. It was a time when he was really teaching me, not browbeating me for something I couldn’t seem to do right.
“You watch the tops of trees, the way the water moves on a lake or pond, the way smoke curls, the direction a herd of cows faces, and you learn what this invisible wind is doing. Then, you make your adjustments accordingly. Sometimes, the wind is beyond the limits of the aircraft. When it is, you sit on the ground—if you can. Sometimes you can’t. So you learn how to work with the wind, not against it. It will take you a lifetime of flying. The wind can always rise up and bite you. But make it your purpose to rule it, not let it rule you. Know what it’s doing, try to anticipate what it’s going to do, and always consider it in your plans.”
I listened while he flew and talked, nodding my head as if I understood it all. The idea that the wind could always rise up and bite you, no matter how much experience you had, was not too comforting. But I knew he was right and resolved to learn all the techniques I could for recognizing and dealing with the wind.