camwyn | (no subject)

Had flight school on Saturday. There were bands of snow moving through the area, which made things interesting. First time through the pattern, the instructor wanted me to show him a normal approach to our landing spot. Would've gone a bit more smoothly if I hadn't made my turn much too early, necessitating a landing spot much farther up the runway than the normal area (generally helicopters are supposed to land on the numbers at the end of the runway, or close to them; I was so close when I started my approach that I had to pass the numbers and the thousand-foot markers and land at an intersection with one of the taxiways, which was embarrassing). Second time through the snow was getting worse, but we still had about three miles of visibility in most directions, so my instructor said that after I turned far enough out, he wanted to see a steep approach. I managed that- by the way, the hardest thing for me on a helicopter landing is this overwhelming urge to adjust either my airspeed or my engine power when I'm about 2/3 of the way down, because my brain starts screaming that I'm going to overshoot my spot or hit the ground much too quickly. This is nearly always wrong, but monkey brain was not evolved to deal with that kind of descent or speed... anyway, that one went okay and we took off again, and then the tower asked us when we called in at the mid-field point what the visibility was.

About a mile, my instructor told them. (Yours truly has next to no ability to look out at the landscape and say 'that, there, that's one mile, that over there is two miles, that there is three'.) To me he says, let's do an autorotation this time around. If you've been reading any of my flight school entries before this you probably remember that 'autorotation' is rotorhead for 'oh noes! the engine is basically off! how do we land without going crunch!'. So, okay, I had to get us up to around a thousand feet above sea level (boy howdy but it's snowing) and sixty-five knots airspeed (did I mention the snow?). Which, fine.

Huh, I can't actually see the other end of the five thousand foot runway.

Helicopter 3217 X-ray, we've got *something indistinguishable because the tower guy sounds like he has a mouthful of biscuit crumbs* on the radar, cleared for runway 5, delta intersection, full stop, says the tower.

'Full stop' when you are driving a car means 'no seriously, you actually have to stop at the stop sign, you don't get to sloooowlyrolluptoitand then drive off at normal speed'. 'Full stop' when an air traffic control tower says it means 'land on the runway at or before the location I am specifying and then take your aircraft back to its hangar because you aren't allowed to fly any more'. So, yeah, we did a simulation of Helicopter Engine Death Without Helicopter Pilot Death during snow conditions that were fundamentally too hazardous for someone without an instrument rating to be allowed to fly in.

A, I survived, and B, when we were about two thirds of the way back to the hangar the tower called again and said the snow was clearing out of the area and visibility was back up to three miles and did we want to take off again, because he'd clear us if we did.