Left Handed Pilots (rotary)

[407 too]

just curious as to the training difficulty -if any- experienced by some of the southpaw pilots.

 

i know some people are quite interchangable but prefer left, and some are downright lefties.

 

was there a large time adjustment to learn fine and co-ordinated movements with the right hand on the cyclic ??

 

any exercises prescribed to work through this ??

[sharkbait]

I don't think there is a big problem for us lefties.

Remember - all you do with your right hand, in most helicopters, is steer, key the mike, forcetrim, perhaps the outopilot disconnect and hook.

Left hand does starts, throttles, collective, eng beeps, fire T handles, change radio freqs, volumns, programn the GPS, fill out the flight log and ect. ect.

So I would say your left hand is busier than your right.

I have never heard of any lefty having a problem VS right handed Pilots.

Either way the whole things a problem.

Mind you - those who have seen me fly may disagree violently with my opinion! I have never been accused of making fine co-ordinated movements!

[Rotorhead]

We have about a 50/50 mix of lefties and righties here on our base. One of the training pilots think that Lefties make better pilots because they use the right side of their brain.

 

I like to use both sides of my brain. :up:

 

RH

[Iceman]

Once in a while I'll hold the cyclic with my left hand and it makes me very glad I am a righty. Funny thing is it feels perfectly natural to fly fixed wing with my left hand, guess you don't have much choice sitting in the left seat.

 

By the way, I think I saw a discussion in another thread about left and right command seating in helicopters, I remember when I was training in the 47 being seated on the left like in a 500, most likely because there is room for a middle passenger and sitting on the left keeps the collective away from them.

[407 too]

thanks for the info, was just curious, seems to not be an issue at all