I switched to helicopters back in 2015 by accident. A friend of mine asked me to give him a lift in my TB20 to Warsaw where he wanted to check a turbine EC120B to replace his Robinson R44. I helped him not only with a transportation to Warsaw but also with the acquisition and step up to turbine helicopter. Few months later I had a chance to fly the new EC120B with him and I got bitten by a helicopter bug. For me, helicopter flying is a fulfilled child dream about flying carpet, I do enjoy hovering one meter above the ground and I do enjoy off airport landings. In fact, most of the trips I make in a helicopter start at the airport but the destination is typically off airport.
Since the time I earned my license in a R44 I converted to turbine EC120B and at the time I have around 500hrs on the type. I must say that it is a very docile, stable and easy to fly helicopter and is a good combination of speed and endurance with a real world 3hrs endurance plus 30minutes reserve and 110kt cruising speed at around 80% power.
Typical helicopter trip is around one hour but it is also a good travelling machine, so far I made it to UK – Doncaster, IT – Bolzano, Croatia – Brac, Slovakia – Tatry and quite often to The Netherlands. The only downside of switching to helicopter is that I do not fly fixed wing very often anymore, which resulted in a sale of my TB20 and now I keep WT9 Dynamic ultralight to have “something” with fixed wing and I fly it only few hours a year…
I have been fortunate enough to have flown in ( note not flown, well not in full control) a wide variety of helicopters in many different parts of the world. And I have many friends who either were or still are professional helicopter pilots.
From my point of there is something really special about them. My favourites have always been the Gazelle followed closely by the twin squirrel. However the closest I ever got to buying a helicopter and learning to fly it was the Bell 47. It took me back to my childhood and a tv series called Whirlybirds. The price of the Bell 47 was reasonable enough but then the price of fuel surged and finding an instructor also proved difficult. It’s still a dream but I think I’m too old now or maybe I could try the class 6 ULM.
Just to add an extra plus for the heli is that they can easily be fitted with floats and landed in beautiful small bays around Spain and Italy.
Peter wrote:
In another life, if I got into helicopters, I would buy a Gazelle and get a military instructor to teach me to fly it, and skip the “Robinson sewing machine stage” completely.
I knew someone with a Gazelle, and got a flight in it.
Unfortunately he was killed in a mid-air collision while flying his Bucher.
alioth wrote:
I knew someone with a Gazelle, and got a flight in it.
This was presumably before they flew it into to the pub? 
I guess this thread (especially Pytlak’s and WilliamF’s posts) validates the old saying that helicopters are for those who love to fly but have no destination to fly to 
Ultranomad wrote:
validates the old saying that helicopters are for those who love to fly but have no destination to fly to
I think that this is country dependant. In my youth I worked in oil and gas exploration. We commuted daily to the field by helicopter, and I often had 3 or 4 round trips a day to troubleshoot equipment… quite an adventure. You would fly to the coordinates of the equipment with an issue, then toe in over a river or on the edge of cliff, hop out, do the repair and then be on your way! There is no better way to travel. If you were near a restaurant (with suitable space) you could land at the far end of the parking lot or on nearby grass for lunch!
I also spent a summer surveying the coordinates of mining claims for the diamond mines in the Canadian arctic… we would fly by helicopter to access all of the sites. Loads of fun. I recall a pilot who wore a leather vest, a Harley Davidson hat, and had two prior wives names tattooed on his arm (crossed out with a strike through). He could drink a coffee, smoke a cigarette and fly the machine at the same time!
Helicopters, I love em! Bell 205, 206, 210, AS350, AS355, H120…
If I ever move back to Canada, I would be very tempted to arrange my life so that I could fly a machine from my own property in the countryside! Although my budget is probably more R44 than a turbine machine… perhaps I had better get back to work!
I am aiming to have a helicopter lesson this year. I don’t think I’ll take it up, but just want to try it out.
Something that always concerns me a little is the idea of emergency control inputs being different for fixed-wing (push) and rotary wing (pull). I also talked to one helicopter pilot who nearly stalled in on approach by slowing to allow the preceding aircraft to exit the runway and only realising he was in a fixed wing aircraft when the stall warner went off!
Clearly there are many people who do fly both types of aircraft safely, but I’m not sure that my brain is flexible enough.
I don’t think this is an issue at all. The inputs are actually not different.
Fixed wing stall: push.
Helicopter getting a bit slow: push
Helicopter getting a bit fast: pull
If you enter vortex ring my god you know about it, it shakes… and you can technically exit in any direction to find smooth air. It only ever happens in a high hover and you know you are in a risky place so you remain vigilant. 99% of flights do not contain a high hover for most people.
I thought in an engine failure you want to lower collective and pull?
Well yes – for the engine failure you want to lower the collective, that is your emergency action.
Pull is not necessarily correct – it is then a balance between speed, rotor RPM. If you’re at cruise speed and want to auto-rotate slower, you would pull, but gently in order that the rotor RPM doesn’t skyrocket. For max ‘glide’ range you want low-end RPM and high speed, so pulling would be utterly wrong if you needed to shoot for distance.
