That is what many people call these flying machines. The most common term though is Helicopter. I have had the opportunity to fly in several such machines. My first time was in a Bell 406 operated by the sheriff to fly along the beach looking for tar balls in connection to a large oil spill. After that I flew several times in the Coast Guards HH-65 looking for signs of oil on the beaches of Texas. 
It was definitely a fun experience, but I still did not know what it was like to actually fly one. About a month ago I was visiting my wife’s family in Missouri and at that time I had the opportunity to take an intro flight in a Robinson R-44.
The beginning of the intro flight was spent doing some ground school. Apparently the FAA has decided that the Robinson helicopters are so dangerous that they have written some special FAR’s specifically for them. The bulk of those SFAR’s were regarding zero and negative G pushovers and how you should not do those in these helicopters. If you do this in the Robinson, you will not recover and you will crash. We also covered the basics of what you should do if you the rotor speed falls below 98%, and that is lower the collective. So now that we are done with the ground lesson it is time to head to the suicide machine, err aircraft. The only thing going through my head is don’t push forward on the cyclic and if anything goes wrong lower the collective. That lowering the collective bit is probably the most counter intuitive thing about flying a helicopter. Any how, on to the flight. The instructor took off and climbed to altitude. Shortly after she gave me the controls and explained how to maintain altitude and airspeed. She then let me do some turns in both directions, so far pretty easy and similar to flying fixed wing. She then asked me how we could increase our forward speed while maintaining altitude. I decided adding collective and moving the cyclic forward was the best way and she confirmed. We then discussed climbs and descents, this is where it started to move a bit away from fixed with flight. There were basically two methods, increase/decrease the collective, or move the cyclic aft/forward or a combination of both. Since helicopters can climb at zero airspeed you could just pull back on the cyclic to climb and let the forward speed decrease to zero. Ok so we have done all of the basic maneuvers, time to head back to the airport and try some hovering, this is after all what helicopters are all about. The instructor brought us back down to the airport and got is in a hover, she then handed the controls to me and the first thing that happened was that we started spinning around, not fast, just I could not keep the nose pointing in one direction. She decided to work the pedals while I concentrated on the cyclic. After a few goes with that when I was able to at least keep it in the general area that she wanted, she turned the pedals over to me. I got to where I could hold it for a minute or so before I would get tense and lose it. She kept saying I was doing really well, but I think she was just being nice. At any rate, the experience in the helicopter was definitely a new one for me, and I have a new respect for helicopter pilots, it is not an easy aircraft to fly. I am now contemplating making the jump to helicopters myself. Only time will tell if I decide to do that. Till next time, keep the blades up, and remember if anything goes wrong, lower the collective…..
