Helicopter piloting lessons
 

I don't really know which forum to post this in, but I'm hoping that TravelBuzz is broad enough to be aa good bet...if there is a more specific forum where this would fit better, please let me know.

I have about 4 months off late this year, between my bar exam in July and when I actually start work at a law firm in January. So...I'm thinking of using the time to take some helicopter piloting lessons! Just as a hobby. I don't know why I want to fly a helicopter instead of a small plane...it just seems more appealing to me at the gut level. (Or maybe it also has something to do with a certain TV show that I watch, on which I like the Raptor pilots more than the Viper pilots. ;)).

I'm looking to do this in the vicinity of New York City. My questions are:

1. I saw a price estimate on a flight school website, of $15,000 for a full training course for a private pilot license. To those with experience: does that estimate look accurate and honest?

2. Is flying a helicopter easier/harder than flying a small airplane?

3. Is four months enough time to get it all done?

4. What continued training/maintenance requirements have to be met to keep a private pilot license valid, after it is obtained?

A big thanks to anyone who can help!!

It's harder, but you of course 'get the hang of it.'

I once did some consulting work for a helicopter company, and talked to a whirlybird pilot about it. One of his comments stuck with me: A fixed-wing airplane wants to fly, a rotary-wing aircraft wants to crash.

If a pilot of a small plane passes out or dies, the plane will keep flying until it runs out of fuel. A helicopter won't :)

A whirlybird has four controls, called the cyclic, the collective, the anti-torque pedals, and the throttle.

The cyclic is like a plane's "stick" and moves the helicopter in the direction you push it - If you push it forward, the helicopter goes forward. If you push it to the side, the helicopter moves to the side. The pilot's right hand is on the cyclic. The collective is a 'lever' that is to the left of the pilot. You move the lever up and down to move the helicopter up and down. Finally, the anti-torque pedals determine where the front of the helicopter is pointing.

All of that is a long way of saying that a helicopter pilot is controlling all four controls to move his bird. Takes quite a bit of skill.

There's a good overview here:

http://www.howstuffworks.com/helicopter.htm/printable

Of course if you ask a helicopter pilot, they'll tell you nothing is more fun to fly, and having flown in a few as a passenger I have to agree :)

I work in Safety Analysis of Helicopter operations and I can say that:

$15k is a good estimate for the minimum requirement to get a PPL which totals 45 flying hours (dual and solo). It might be enough, but for some it is not, and the price per flight hour is $250-300. Take a look at http://helicopterforum.verticalrefer...howtopic=10851 to read some other people's experiences.

If you plan to do it full time, four months should not be a problem unless you have very bad luck with the weather.

Since I work in Europe I don't know the exact requirements for maintaining a US PPL, so I can't answer that, sorry.

Good luck and fly safely!
:)

I recommend these books to get you started. Good luck!

You should be able to get your license in 4 months time . That should be more then enough time to do it.

$15,000 might do it but realistically you should be looking at $18,000-$20,000 I say this because I think that the average time to get a license is 55-60 flight hours, at $300/hour .

Please remember that if you get a private pilot license, you will only be able to rent a helicopter from the school that taught you. Most places that will rent you a helicopter will want , at a minimun, a commercial pilot license, and to get a CPL you are going to have to have at least 150 flight hours.

And they will still insist that you take a check ride with them before they will rent it to you.

So figure to spend about $45,000 - $50,000 to get the CPL.
(getting the CPL is for later on when you realize how much fun flying a helicopter really is. :-) Just get your PPL first.! )

Thanks!!

Is the check ride required for every rental, or just once per time period X?

Also, what are the maintenance requirements for the PPL, to keep it valid?

Helicopters
 

As a former Army helicopter pilot I can give only three words of advice: Forget about it. Certainly you've heard that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing? A little bit of helicopter flight training is the epitome of that. After 1,000 hours, minimum, you'll agree. Do it as a full time job or don't bother.

Hey, Roneill000, welcome to FT! It looks like you've been here for a while but this is your first post..glad to see you join us and share your knowledge! ^

I'll keep your advice in mind, but also the advice of the other posters, some of whom say that recreational helicopter flying is fun. Are you saying that it's not safe to do?

Err really?

I'm sure there's hundreds of recreational pilots that would disagree with you...

I disagree if you have the right mindset of safety and not going over your limits. I am a skydiver but don't do it often enough. Whenever a few months pass between jumps I always do a personal refresher and one with an instructor. I always jump with quality equipment and don't go over my limits (like problematic weather). When out of practice I also open my parachute higher to have more time to solve problems and set up for landing in the best location. BTW I have had two emergencies where I had to cut away my main parachute and open my reserve, in both my adrenalin shot up and I worked through the emergency procedures by the book.

In your case if you continue to do recreational flying do it with a safety mindset, in the right weather and with refresher flights with instructors

What a great way to waste of money.

I took my lessons in New Zealand.

Much hard to fly than an airplane.

Would waste my money again in a heart beat :)

I did exactly what you talk about -- about a year ago I took 2 months when I had a natural break between jobs, and learned how to fly -- except it was not helicopters, but fixed wing airplanes.

If I could give you some advice/thoughts (although interpret it as it applies to your own circumstances), I would suggest beginning with flying airplanes first.

Two main reasons are that 1) airplane flying will be much, much cheaper and you will learn faster (although you may be one of the very talented people who are prepared and can do either equally well), and 2) airplane flying will be safer (personal belief).

The first point comes from the fact that helicopter rental and instruction rates are to a rough approximation, at least 2x the cost of airplane rental. Generally, a small Cessna 152/172 (the typical training airplane) runs $80-100/hour, with instruction costing $30-40/hour. If you do a quick survey of helicopter rates around your area, I'm pretty sure it will be a factor of 2 or more higher. You can get quite a bit of enjoyment out of flying airplanes -- more time in the air for less cost.

Related to this is that with the airplane, you will have a pretty easy platform to understand how the forces of flight work. There are 3 axes, and your control inputs are pretty well independent of each other. This seems to me a good way to start out if you've never been in the air before, and I think that it will be easier to understand how the different controls work in the beginning. The helicopter controls are quite a bit more complex, and I understand that for example, just to taxi along the ground or hover in place, is a difficult exercise. This may be frustrating. You may find this article by a respected instruction useful (in addition to his entire site): http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/helicopters

I also echo the above post which pointed out the difficulty of renting helicopters, which is what you would want to do after the license. Airplanes are much easier to rent if you go anywhere.

The 2nd point comes is just my unscientific observation about the complexity of helicopters, compared to their maintenance requirements and the general level of skill required to fly them, and what skills are needed if something goes wrong. If the airplane engine quits, you have a good amount of glide range. If the helicopter engine quits, you have only seconds to put it into an autorotation before it falls out of the sky. "You see lots of vintage airplane shows. You don't seem to see many vintage helicopter shows... "

Finally, on the point of the training itself, here is the best advice that I might give:

I don't know what your primary goals/concerns about the training are (whether you're worried about cost, time needed, etc like I was), but for someone starting out, I can say that there are a few things that helped me get through the training in an efficient way -- I ended up finishing in 44 hours:

1. read as much as you can before starting your lessons. Read about the physics of flight, airplane systems, airspace, communications, weather, flight planning, navigation. Read so that you're fed up with just reading about it, and dying to try out the ideas you learn about from reading, in actual flight. I think this helped me, because when I started talking to my instructor and taking lessons, we could begin on a high level and not spend so much time on the very basics, for which you're paying $xyz/hour (which they may assume a random student needs to start at, with no previous knowledge otherwise). I was able to begin with more advanced questions, that reflected I had already been thinking about it for a while -- instead of having the instructor have to teach me the material, I was having him explain those things I didn't understand. and if you read from multiple sources, sometimes that helps to give you different presentations of the same material and understand it more fully. I read variously from the Jeppesen PPL manual, Rod Machado, the FAA flight instruction books (downloadable free pdfs at their website), and especially the AIM. Even old editions of the Jeppesen manuals are good (like after 1990 but before 1999), and can be gotten on ebay or amazon for cheap, if cost is a concern.

2. play a little bit of Flight Simulator or a similar program -- it really does help for understanding certain things, and again, will prepare you for actual flight at a fraction of the cost and you can use it to practice what you've learned as you go along to keep it in your head. You may save yourself the costly in-air initial learning curve of what to expect when you press which controls, so you're not completely new to the cockpit environment, and you can become familiar with what to expect when you start actually flying. For example, although I had been reading about airspeed through the theory for a long time, it wasn't until I actually could manipulate the controls (simulated) that I realized how, for example, the various things like throttle, flaps, pitch, had combined effects on the airspeed and the airplane's motion. In the beginning, I didn't even have the real flight controls you plug into the computer, I would play by keyboard and set a 737 on autopilot heading on an ILS approach, and see how the throttle, pitch, flaps, and airspeed all played together to land correctly. But even that rudimentary game playing was useful to understand how the controls worked.

3. in a similar vein, try listening to tower communications live at www.liveatc.net . Listen at some of the big towers, like DEN, to how the pilots flawlessly give information and receive instructions, according to a standard script so that everyone knows what to expect and how to do it efficiently. This may help you avoid what some students experience, namely being nervous about talking on the radio. I came to really enjoy having tower communications on in the background while doing some kinds of work -- it really has a rhythm to it, and is sometimes beautiful how coordinated and efficient the flow of aircraft/controllers at a busy airport can be. Some of them have good senses of humor and friendliness too, which is amazing it can be conveyed in the 5 second interactions over the radio. It will also get you into the sound of flying.

4. try to plan as much of a dedicated block of time to the flight lessons as you can. It is better to wait (as you have planned) until you have a few months when you're relatively free and unstressed, and can dedicate a good block of time every day/week/month, than to drag it out over years, if you're always having other unexpected obligations pop up and have to put off the next lesson. As others may tell you, the less frequently you take the lessons, the longer it will take because you will need to catch up more and refresh each time. You just need to get that PPL done, and then you're free to do whatever you like at your own pace, but it is best if you can invest that initial serious block of time, to actually save time in the long run. This might apply to the finances too -- better to wait until you can afford it in all one shot rather than work a bit so you're always trying to be able to afford the next lesson which leads to putting off lessons all the time (but that is a very personal choice).

5. use forums like studentpilot.com, purpleboard.net for asking questions -- free advice from friendly people! And great resources like skyvector.com , runwayfinder.com , airnav.com , that you can use to imagine all the places you can go!



That's about all I can think of right now, and of course I caution that some of this advice may not work for you as it did for me -- you have to find where your enthusiasm and learning are best allocated to make it succeed for you. I'm just starting out not much earlier than you, and I wish you the best!

Also, to answer your specific questions about currency requirements -- for airplanes, only what I know:

- to carry passengers, you must have had 3 takeoffs and landings in the past 3 months, which is at least what you would want to have done to keep your skills sharp.

- to carry passengers at night, those same 3 takeoffs/landings done at night in the past 3 months

- every 2 years, a flight review by an examiner.

-----------------------

also, regarding suggestions for training in the NYC area, I suggest you register and ask the experts on this board, in the "Classroom" forum

http://www.purpleboard.net/forums/index.php

they are full of answers

I came back to this thread to post a reply when I had a little more time - it seems TA has beaten me to it!

My only 2c is that fixed wings are easier to fly, fix and control. If you want to come back to flying after a break, it will be a lot cheaper and easier in a fixed wing. You could even "downgrade" to a microlight and still have a lot of fun, but be able to use your skills.

If you want to put on the life CV "Helicopter Pilot", then go for it! If you're looking for a longer aeronautical experience, go for a fixed wing and save some of the $$$ for future flying.

/Land After (A slightly lapsed) fixed wing flyer.

Thanks for the detailed advice from experience!

Okay! I can do that.


Yup! I played flight sim as a kid and landed that Bluesky 737 at OAK tons of times (and crashed it almost as many times when someone had given me the advice to shut off ILS at the last second and bring the plane down manually).

I could never get a helicopter off the ground for more than a few seconds before spinning out of control and crashing however--was that because of game design problems (i.e., too hard to control a helicopter using a computer keyboard), or solely because a helicopter actually is so much harder to control than a plane?

I love channel 9 on UA, and I also played an air traffic control game as kid and directed takeoffs/landings of fake planes as the control tower! :D


Will do! That's the plan. :)