My first flight in a helicopter, a half-hour ‘intro lesson’, I was already a rated fixed-wing pilot. In the air, the instructor offered me the controls. I was able to fly straight-and-level. Then he told me to make a left turn. How do you turn an aircraft? Piece of cake. Left stick, left rudder, and a little back-pressure, right? Yeah, in an airplane. Helicopters fly differently from airplanes. They don’t have a rudder; they have an anti-torque rotor. So no pedals. You don’t use back-pressure to maintain altitude in a turn; you raise the collective. (Which increases torque, so you do need to adjust the pedals slightly.) And helicopters are much more sensitive to control inputs than a Skyhawk. The moves are subtle. So I ended up turning left, slowing down, and slewing.
On the drive home I went over the flight in my head, and realised flying a helicopter was a bit like a video game. Point the cyclic – gently – where you want to go, and the helicopter goes there. There’s a lot more to it than that, but I learned on that first lesson (or on the drive home, actually) not to over-control. When I started my actual training, I had no problem on my first lesson flying straight-and-level or turning.
