The first consideration before the lesson, of course, was where to take the training for the licence. A lot of the cost of a lesson is in the fuel required to fly, being extortionate in the UK. I toyed with the idea of doing the training in America or Australia, but my personal circumstances are such that I really need to be helping my wife with her recovery after a car accident, and so need to be at home, so the decision was made for me. Newcastle Airport it was and Northumbrian Helicopters.

Another big consideration is the funding of the training, at anywhere between £12k and £16k (2009) for a PPL(H), its an expensive path just to private flying. For CPL, you’re looking at a total of not much short of £60k to £70k.

Frustrating start, weather meant the first lesson seemed endless in coming. British Weather !! Another advantage of going abroad is the weather is pretty much “ok to fly” every day !

So, from the moment, I was ready to go to the first day of flying was 10 days !

But the day came and I was so excited, I had to go to the toilet twice before we went up and my bladder is normally great !

Steve (my instructor) spent some time with me before we even went to the helicopter, going through what we would be doing and then we went out onto the apron with our hi-vis overjackets on, to do pre-flight checks. There’s a lot to remember and I didn’t get the hang of the external checks until about Lesson 7.

Once they were done, we got comfy. And then it’s time for more checks (Before Starting Engine Checks), then a bit of radiotelephony (R/T), then Starting Engine Checks, then Engine Run-Up Checks. About 10 minutes later, we were ready to rock’n'roll, my heart going 10 to the second !

At this point, Steve is doing everything and just explaining it all as he does it. Once we were cleared for takeoff, he pointed us in the direction of the runway centreline, hover-taxi’ed and then we zoomed down the runway (about 10 feet off the ground) and then pulled back and we were off. We headed North towards (and past) Morpeth. Once we were in level flight, he gave the controls to me one control at a time. Staring with the cyclic, which is the one that traditionally comes from the floor up between your legs (although on the Robinson R22 Beta, it is a stick that comes up in the middle of the helicopter with a contraption which allows 2 people to control the helicopter. The cyclic controls (in it’s basic explanation) controls forward, backward, left tilt and right tilt. Direction is a bit of an understatement, but good enough for now !

After my flight experience session, I had remembered that you don’t move the cyclic, you just use small pressures. Neil (the flight school owner) had said to think of it as “using the force” (from the Star Wars films). You think the pressure only, don’t apply it, and that pretty much sums up how light your touch needs to be. Of course, you do apply pressure, but it’s so slight !

Next control was the pedals. Now, they control Yaw, which is the movement in the horizontal plane of the nose of the helicopter, ie the direction you face. So, cyclic, direction you travel (in basic terms), pedals direction you face. No problems there, pretty straight forward (or so I thought). In a later lesson, (I am writing this after Lesson 7), I found out that pedals are very important in the hover, but let’s not worry about that just yet.

But, pedals in forward flight are very easy.

Finally, collective. Now, the collective is in the position the handbrake of a car would be in and is operated with your left arm. In basic terms, this is UP and DOWN. Now, EVERY control affects the other controls without exception, so if you increase the collective to get more lift, you need more left pedal to counter the torque etc etc….. It sounds really complicated, and I’d like to say it’s not as bad as it sounds, but it is. The best analogy for what’s it like to learn to fly a helicopter, is what it was like when you first learned to ride a bike. It doesn’t matter how much you understand the theory of riding a bike, the movement of your weight, the fact that if you want to go right on a bicycle, you turn the handlebars to the left initially (seriously, you do), etc etc…. The theory helps, but when it comes down to it, you have to feel it for yourself. It’s so true !

So, all the controls one by one, very straightforward. Together, NOT !

Having said that, when you’re going forward at any speed above 20 kts, it is relatively easy to fly a helicopter, and when steve could see that I was ok with the controls, he let me fly past Morpeth and then do some turns and fly all the way back until we were about 500 feet above the runway and then he did some amazing hover taxi’ing back to the spot we took off from. I was well impressed !

So, in summary, 1st main lesson, use of the controls, their effects on each other, some straight and level flight and turns and some descending too.

Came back from the lesson ABSOLUTELY buzzing ! Loved it.

Bring on Lesson 2