Low Level River Run.....

[sirlandsalot]

Wow, instructors taking their students on a river run...

 

My instructor never did anything like that, instead we did a couple full-ons to confined areas. Now I know that I went to a good and thorough school and was more prepared for the real world than if I went to another school. When your learning to fly a helicopter you should be getting grilled constantly instead of off having fun.

 

Let's just say that buddy did go down for some mechanical issue. Would anyone hear his ELT very well at the bottom of that canyon?

 

 

Just because an instructor decides to take a student down a river for a wopping .3 dosen't mean that the confined auto's are being neglected I mean come on. I did a tiny bit of low level flight in my training and a lot of **** auto's! The difference was, I was shown how to fly a river or watever at a low level in the safest manner possible. I was shown the potential hazards and what the "get out" options where ie...speed and pull up. I was also taught how dangerous and unessecery it is.

 

I think a great thing to teach a student because everyone knows that a lowtimer is going to do it at some point...might as well do it right!

 

You are so hooped if you go down in a canyon like that, the ELT would be the last of my worries, I would be more concerned of the ball of tumbling steel and the river I would soon to be drowned in!

[T tail]

My instructor never did anything like that, instead we did a couple full-ons to confined areas. Now I know that I went to a good and thorough school and was more prepared for the real world than if I went to another school. When your learning to fly a helicopter you should be getting grilled constantly instead of off having fun.

 

I would have thought that low level training (maybe not skids in the water river runs) would definitely be of a Commercial license. like Sirlansalot I did a number of hours low level learning to identify hazards like towers, wires, dead spars on trees, ways out, how quickly things turn to a ball of crap.. it all becomes automatic so when you start geo/river sampling upwind/downwind sideways and then onto Bird towing moving drills, spraying it makes it all a little easier. In Reality I have more chance of hitting the above hazards when I am working then having to deal with an engine failure...yes we do auto's too 240ft at 55 knots, and what I learnt from that is ...ITS GONNA HURT.

 

As for doing river runs, after the last couple of years of eyeballing butterflies it is quite nice to be far away from the ground when I can

 

TT

[Freefall]

It was my last flight of my 100 hrs after I had my jetranger endorsement and everything else done. I needed one last flight in the 47. On our way to some mountain side landing pads we ripped along the fraser through a couple channels and it was a great way to finish my training I wouldnt trade it for anything. I think I had the auto's down pretty good at that point. We were tempted to land on a barge carrying a big pile of gravel downstream too but chickened out haha.