Thursday, June 06, 2013
Hover Exits and Entries
Things have been quiet on the blog front, but not so on the job front!
Last Friday we did helicopter hover exit and entry training. There were some surprises for me:
1. When you're hover exiting a helicopter, you don't jump.
The key to a good hover exit or entry is a smooth and steady transfer of weight as close as possible to the helicopter's centre of gravity, as the pilot has to compensate for your movements at all times in order to keep the helicopter flying. So when you're exiting, yes you have to move yourself out the door and lower yourself down until you're hanging by your arms. But then you just hold on and let the pilot carefully lower the machine until your feet touch the ground. At that point you smoothly and gently let go then duck yourself down just off to the side of the helicopter within the rotor disk while the rest of your team exits, one by one. Once everyone is out (which for a well-trained 3-person crew should happen in 1-2 minutes), the helicopter will lift off and go back to your pre-arranged full landing site where it can pick up your gear on a long line and drop it in to your location.
2. You generally don't pass gear out of the helicopter when you hover exit.
Yes, you might bring a small pack or a chainsaw (to clear a better landing pad), and the first person out always carries a radio in case the helicopter has to abort and lift off suddenly. But other than that gear is dealt with separately to the hover exiting process. The goal is to minimize the time the helicopter is hovering, as it is a risky manoever. Hovering means the pilot would not be able to use autorotation to his or her advantage should the engine fail and so such a problem would probably result in a bad crash.
3. When hover entering, the helicopter gets so low to the ground that you can put your knee onto the skid.
Again it's all about a smooth weight transition, and that's a lot easier if you put a knee up on the skid and slowly shift your weight from your standing leg onto the knee on the 'copter. It's actually probably a little easier than doing a hover exit. But it's a lot more rare since generally-speaking, there is less urgency to leaving a fire, you're already on the ground so normally you can clear or build a proper landing pad, and there tend to be more options to hike out to a better pickup point.
I will add another post with a video of ME hover exiting/entering once I get a copy of it but meanwhile here are a couple that I took of my fellow firefighters.
Last Friday we did helicopter hover exit and entry training. There were some surprises for me:
1. When you're hover exiting a helicopter, you don't jump.
The key to a good hover exit or entry is a smooth and steady transfer of weight as close as possible to the helicopter's centre of gravity, as the pilot has to compensate for your movements at all times in order to keep the helicopter flying. So when you're exiting, yes you have to move yourself out the door and lower yourself down until you're hanging by your arms. But then you just hold on and let the pilot carefully lower the machine until your feet touch the ground. At that point you smoothly and gently let go then duck yourself down just off to the side of the helicopter within the rotor disk while the rest of your team exits, one by one. Once everyone is out (which for a well-trained 3-person crew should happen in 1-2 minutes), the helicopter will lift off and go back to your pre-arranged full landing site where it can pick up your gear on a long line and drop it in to your location.
2. You generally don't pass gear out of the helicopter when you hover exit.
Yes, you might bring a small pack or a chainsaw (to clear a better landing pad), and the first person out always carries a radio in case the helicopter has to abort and lift off suddenly. But other than that gear is dealt with separately to the hover exiting process. The goal is to minimize the time the helicopter is hovering, as it is a risky manoever. Hovering means the pilot would not be able to use autorotation to his or her advantage should the engine fail and so such a problem would probably result in a bad crash.
3. When hover entering, the helicopter gets so low to the ground that you can put your knee onto the skid.
Again it's all about a smooth weight transition, and that's a lot easier if you put a knee up on the skid and slowly shift your weight from your standing leg onto the knee on the 'copter. It's actually probably a little easier than doing a hover exit. But it's a lot more rare since generally-speaking, there is less urgency to leaving a fire, you're already on the ground so normally you can clear or build a proper landing pad, and there tend to be more options to hike out to a better pickup point.
I will add another post with a video of ME hover exiting/entering once I get a copy of it but meanwhile here are a couple that I took of my fellow firefighters.
Hover Entry
Hover Exit
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