I got to fly a Bell 47 helicopter!

This weekend I was in the Orlando/Kissimmee area, and decided to stop by Warbird Adventures. I flew a T-6 Texan with them last November, and it was awesome, so I wanted to take them up on their other offer, a 30 minute flight in a Bell 47 helicopter, the same kind that appeared in that old TV series M.A.S.H!

One thing for sure, flying a helicopter is NOT easy. There are three major controls: The collective, which controls motion straight up and down, the cyclic (or control stick), which controls motion forward, reverse, and side-to-side, and the foot pedals (tail rotor), which control rotation from left to right.

This sounds simple, but a helicopter is far from stable when it's hovering; you have to constantly apply control input on the collective, tail rotor, and stick just to stay in one place! In fact, there were a few times the instructor had to take over for me because otherwise I would have crashed the helicopter.

What's interesting is, in forward flight, a helicopter behaves a lot like an airplane; the control stick becomes your primary control, and the wind blowing past the chopper keeps it stable. But when you slow down to a hover, the torque from the main rotor takes over and you start to turn to the right; if you don't apply left force on the tail rotor, you crash, pure and simple.

It's such a nice rush to accelerate from hovering close to the ground to a nice brisk forward pace; the wind starts rushing past and the ground creeps away and suddenly you're cruising at a nice 80-90MPH. Such incredibly smooth control from a machine designed in the 1940s!

I made a few mistakes, but more or less managed to figure it out by the end. The instructor said I did better than most first-timers, but he probably tells everyone that to make them feel better. }:)

A fun experience, and well worth it. Feel free to check out photos a friend of mine took while I was flying!