Article: 2698 of rec.aviation.piloting
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From: paul@bosserv.bos.locus.com (Paul Cantrell)
Newsgroups: rec.aviation.piloting
Subject: Bell JetRanger School
Date: 12 Jan 1994 04:01:17 GMT
Organization: Locus Computing Corp
Lines: 186
Message-ID: <2gvsmd$clf@lccma.bos.locus.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: bosserv.bos.locus.com
Keywords: helicopters

I thought people might be interested to hear about my experiences at
the Bell Helicopter Customer Training Facility, in Fort Worth, Texas.
It's a really long article, so you may end up getting bored, but for
those who love helicopters, you might find it fun to hear about.

Some background. I helped to start Langwell Helicopters about three
years ago, as a "part time" instructor. I quote that, because for the
first year I was also the only instructor. Besides working a full
time engineering job, I was flying 7 days a week and logged about 800
hours that year. By the end of the year, the president of the company
had enough hours to satisfy the insurance requirements, and since
then I've been a true part time instructor, working a couple days a
week.

We started the company with a single Robinson, added another Robinson
and an Enstrom which is used both for flight instruction, and for
Part 135 charter work. The intent was to use the Enstrom to get the
135 ticket, and then to get a JetRanger added onto the ticket. This
we did, but for the president and I to fly the JetRanger under Part
135 (or 91 for that matter) we had to satisfy the insurance company.
One requirement was that we attend the factory training school.

The Bell school has an excellent reputation, and after going there I
can see why. We started out with three days of ground school. Ray
(the president of Langwell) and I had memorized an awful lot of
numbers about the helicopter, especially all the limitations. I was
convinced that we wouldn't need these memorized, but it turned out I
was wrong. We were expected to know a lot of numbers by heart, and
the preparation we did really helped us out.

First of all, I should mention that I only had a total of 5 hours
logged in the JetRanger, of which really 2 hours was productive
flight time. Hover autos, but no autorotations from altitude, no
hydraulic failures, really not much besides some hover work, quick
stops, slopes, hover autos, and a few normal approaches. Ray had
about 20 hours, but most of this was straight and level time he got
when he brought the ship back home. So we were both real newbies when
it came to this ship. On the other hand, we had already gone through
an Allison course on the engine, and had spent a fair amount of time
going over the ship doing preflights and quizzing each other. So we
had spent quite a lot of time studying on our own.

The rest of our class was composed of another newbie, and 3 guys who
flew for a state police aviation department. Despite their several
thousand hours in the aircraft, I felt that Ray and I were probably
more up on the technical aspects of the aircraft than they were, but
of course they had a lot of actual experience in the aircraft which
really helps.

Anyway, we spent all of Monday and Tuesday, and half of Wednesday in
ground school. Every system was covered in exhaustive detail,
including possible failures, and looking at damaged parts and systems
installed in partly disassembled aircraft so you can see how they fit
together in the actual aircraft. Ground school ended with a 50
question multiple choice test. The Langwell boys both aced the test,
I'm glad to say :-)

On Wednesday afternoon, we started flying. Ray did a total of 3 hours
in two flights over two days. I did 5 hours in 5 flights over 3 days.
I could have done the 3 hours, but I figured as long as I had gone
all the way to Texas I might as well get my fill. Of course, at
$625/hr for the machine and instructor, you have to draw the line
somewhere!

My instructor was a very competent guy who had flown CH-46's in the
Navy, had gone through Pax River Test pilot school, and had worked
for Sikorsky as a test pilot before going to work for Bell. The
military training showed, as he was a very methodical, cautious guy.

Wednesday had started out 0/0, and even by noontime it was still
pretty foggy. Most people had cancelled their flights for the day,
but I'm pretty comfortable in low visibility and clouds. I talked my
instructor into at least doing a couple of engine starts, and maybe a
little hover work. He was game for this. Starting a turbine is still
a scary experience for me. I had practiced a couple, but was very
aware that a little mistake can cost $10,000 or $20,000 if you cook
the engine. I'm still a little paranoid, which is healthy I guess.

Anyway, we started up, no problem. We hovered up to the helipad and
did a little hover work, some pickups and setdowns, pedal turns,
stuff like that. We did a couple hover autos which are really
misleading in a turbine aircraft, since when you roll off throttle it
doesn't just cut the engine the way it would in a piston engine. The
fuel schedule causes the turbine to spool down very slowly, and you
never really split the needles. A real engine failure at a hover
would be quite different. Still, the JetRanger is a very high inertia
rotor system, so even *with* the needles split, they're a piece of
cake to land from a hover. So we did a couple hover autos, and
finally some slope landings (which, frankly, stunk).

I begged the instructor for us to take a spin over to the practice
area to see how the visibility would hold up. We had about 1/2 mile
and maybe 500 feet, so I was comfortable. He obviously recognized
that I was used to that kind of weather, so we had the practice area
all to ourselves. We spent the rest of that lesson just doing normal
takeoffs and approaches and max performance takeoffs and steep
approaches. Maybe a running landing or two, I can't remember.

During the next few lessons, we spent a lot of time doing
autorotations, hydraulic failures, and various tail rotor failures.
The autorotations and tail rotor failures I practice all the time at
home, so there were no problem. I'd never flown a helicopter with
boosted controls before the JetRanger, and it's annoying but not
terribly difficult to fly with the hydraulics shut down.

The way they practice autorotations is very nice. They have a short
runway (500 ft?), with 5 X's marked at regular intervals. They chop
the throttle on you, and then call out which X you should land on. If
it's too easy, they delay telling you for a while so that you either
have to stretch the glide, or get rid of excess energy. Most of my
time is in Robinsons, so this stuff was all a piece of cake for me.
The instructor mentioned that he could always tell the Robinson
pilots by how proficient in autorotations they are. (they have to be)

In any case, I was pretty regularly nailing the X's within inches
(except for the one time I came in real short, did a shallow slide on
landing and slid about 100 feet to get to the X. I got exactly on top
of the X, but he said it doesn't count to slide 100 feet to get
there!).

As he got to know me and trust me a little, throttle chops started
coming at any time: during pedals turns in the hover, during takeoff
(which is the critical time), on downwind, base, final, etc. Really
easy in the JetRanger. It's a very easy aircraft to autorotate, which
is how it should be. Are you listening, Frank?

Hydraulic failures are fairly simple to handle. Two things happen.
First of all, in the JetRanger with functioning hydraulics, there is
absolutely no feedback or control resistance at all. You can
literally move the stick by blowing on it. I like a light stick, so I
immediately felt at home with this setup. When you turn off the
hydraulics, the stick gets very heavy. You have to switch from flying
with your fingertips to flying with your fist. I found that holding
moderate pressure for long periods of time worked better than trying
to actually muscle the ship to respond the way it normally would in
the pattern, but in the hover (which you would normally try to avoid
with failed hydraulics) you just have to manhandle it.

One very annoying thing about the JetRanger is that with the
hydraulics off, the cyclic and collective couple. Moving one moves
the other slightly. In a hover, if you have to adjust the collective
you really have to pull hard on the cyclic to avoid it moving. It's
hard to be precise when you're using that much pressure on the stick,
so the result wasn't always very pretty.

Generally, you plan a hydraulic failure to be a running landing, with
touchdown speeds of around 5-10 knots. That way you're on the ground
before you start overcontrolling all over the place. In my case, I
found that not making power changes really helped (because of the
collective-cyclic interaction). So I'd make once power change to
start descent, and one power change to cushion the landing.
Everything else was just cyclic inputs. This seemed to work well.
Really, hydraulic failures are a pretty minor emergency. I don't
think I'd want to have one while I was slinging external cargo, but
for normal flying it was pretty easy to handle.

I was surprised how much emphasis Bell put on tail rotor failures. I
seem to be one of the few flight instructors who teaches tail rotor
failures to students. I think they're much more likely to happen than
an engine failure. People stick tail rotors into bushes all the
time... I was happy to see that they teach stuck left, stuck right,
and loss of thrust failures. Again, since I practice them all the
time it was no big deal. I do remember that I had one real stinker,
but the rest worked out very well.

We did a lot of other stuff as well: confined areas, zero-airspeed
autos, quick stops, you name it. All in all, a very worthwhile 5
hours, and I was very sad to have the last flight end. The next step
is to schedule my 135 check in the JetRanger. This should be a fairly
easy check ride, since all I should get tested on will be the machine
itself (whereas on the yearly checkride you get tested on all the 135
regs, the company ACOM manual, etc.).

Total cost for the course was just about $4,000 plus airfare, hotel
and meals. Just about the same as you'd pay for a turbine transition
from a local guy, but a much more complete course. (and you do things
with the machine that no guy in his right mind would do with his own
JetRanger). And the ground school simply can't be matched by anyone
else. I highly recommend it...

Paul Cantrell
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