Long Line Training ?

[twinstar_ca]

lmaol!!! guess i fit the 1st category since i was only a fixed wing ppl....

[212dude]

 

 

well I achieved my mission. I have my desired result.

 

 

... your greatest achievement has been noted by many on this forum.

 

[RonnyRotor]

Well it was starting to get boring so had to start someting worth arguing about

[Hello-bird]

Well it was starting to get boring so had to start someting worth arguing about

 

I heard somewhere that only boring people get bored.

Sheesh ! When you're fully aware of the entire process of it, breathing is a really friggin' trip!!

Why don't you try listening to the sound of your heart beat for a while.

It's insanely amazing.

[Icewind]

Notwithstanding all of the previous rhetoric, I'll offer some comments on the original question.

 

Some years ago, I undertook to give five "pilots" an introduction to long line work. I'm denoting them as "pilots" because they coudn't have bee any greener since they had just passed their commercial rides, got a 500 endorsement and had done some simple slinging on the 500. Notice I am not saying I was teaching them how to long line - we didn't have enough time together to come close to that. And perhaps it would be better to say we worked on vertical reference work.

 

We approached the challenge by trying to break the skill down into bite-size pieces. Remember we were using a 500 with the door off so they could hang out and look down.

 

The first thing we did was establish about a 20 foot hover (without a line on the hook), then I took control and the student adjusted their position so they were hanging a bit out the door and looking straight down at the ground. Then when they were ready they took back control and worked at holding a steady hover while looking straight down. When they "got" that, I asked them to then work at ascending and descending about 10 feet, still holding the stationary hover. When that was working, the next step was to continue a descent until they could land the helicopter smoothly. And then takeoff into the hover while looking down. That was about all we would attempt in the first session and 3 out of the 5 caught on well.

 

For the next session we added a 40 foot line (with no load). After reviewing the skills from the previous session we went on to "climbing" the line. They were required to move vertically up and down without ever lifting the line totally from the ground. Upon descent they had to coil it in one spot and upon ascent, it was not to waver about. After that, we put a 40 pound hunk of iron on the line. Now they had to repeat some of the hover patterns we used in their early training, with pedal turns etc., requiring them to lift it off the ground about a foot and keep it at that height. At this point, 1 of our students quit the exercise as he wasn't getting it and went back to more straight forward slinging practice. Two of them were progressing very well.

 

The next step was to transition into forward flight. The specific challenge here is to make the transition from pure vertical reference to a bit of both and then to normal horizontal reference for cruise flight. This was quite a challenge for two of them and even more so trying to do the reverse and go from horizontal reference to vertical reference while flying an approach to the target site for the load. In the time we spent doing this, only two of the students were achieving even acceptable standards.

 

A couple of years later, I got to work with a young pilot with about 500 hundred hours, mostly on the 500. We went through the same stepped process and it went very well. Within 4 sessions he was practicing on his own with a 400 pound tractor tire.

 

For what it is worth........

[Plinko]

Rotor Ronny,

 

Most pilots agree that you can't teach someone how to FLY a helicopter in 100 hours, because that will take thousands of hours.......so instructors are really just teaching us the basics and how to go out and LEARN safely.

It's also true that you can't teach someone how to be a hot long-liner.......but you can teach someone how to LEARN how to long-line much quicker than by "just going out there".

 

Here is a great forum topic all about it from this time last year.

http://www.verticalmag.com/forums/index.ph...c=10304&hl=

 

p.s please quit with the comments about "idiots". Those labels aren't welcome amongst such a small brotherhood as ours. Tx.

 

 

RonnyRichteous ain't no brother of mine!!

[Jet B]

 

 

Priceless.

[Hello-bird]

QUOTE (Jet B @ May 2 2009, 04:19 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Priceless.

 

I second that (e)motion.

[Rotorhead]

 

Striking resemblance there Ron.

 

 

[deuce bigalow]

Well there was one thing that I wish someone had warned me about when I was trained to long line in 1979. Unfortunately I had to learn it the hard way.

 

 

Vortex ring state is very easy to induce when you are trying to put a heavy load down. I got it in a 47 Soloy so bad that i coiled most of the line on the ground before I started flying again. Out of control straight down at about 2000' per minute I'm guessing.

 

some scary stuff.

 

I would suggest during training to induce it at around 1000' to give the candidate a chance to fell how the machine starts to shudder and shake as it approaches the "no fly zone". That way theres lots of room to recover.