Hovering

I told you in Turning a Rotor that my instructor was old. He was a grizzly old World War II pilot. But he still had skills.

I was doing my best to keep the helicopter on a rock steady hover over a single spot. My best at this point was about the size of a twelve foot pool, but it was better than the thirty fool pool the day before. I was working up a sweat, fighting the aircraft left, then right, up and down. I could see my instructor in my periphery sitting in his seat, arms crossed at his chest. Seemingly not at all concerned about my ability to keep us in the air.

Then the helicopter yawed backwards and I grossly over corrected. I knew as soon as I shoved the cyclic forward, I fucked up. Again, through my periphery I saw my grizzly old instructor’s right hand shoot out and pull the cyclic back just a smidge. At least I think he helped me out. I knew I was correcting, but I also knew that I was going to be too late. The ground was rapidly approaching my chin bubble and I didn’t think I was going to save it. I was astonished at how quickly he went from perfectly relaxed, to applying a chin bubble saving correction to the cyclic.

I was fifty years younger than him and don’t think I could have reacted that quickly.

As we hovered back to the pad, him now in control I asked, “Did you help me out back there?”

“A little.” He responded as though it was nothing.

Just a few days later I was hovering nicely. Not to long after, I was hover taxing about  like I was king of the cockpit!

Hovering was the joy that made flying helicopter so much more fun than airplanes.