The OTHER Kevin in San Diego wrote:


For me personally? Less than a second. I'll 'splain why in a sec..



I would
be very surprised if this didn't require more than a couple of seconds.
Also a pilot of a low inertia, though not as low as the R-22, helicopter.
This would make for interesting reading in our magazine as well as provide
some advertising for your simulators.

You'd be amazed at how fast you get back to the collective when an
evil lead programmer likes to mess with you in the sim. Each sim we
build gets test flown by me for about 4 hours to make sure all the
systems are working properly and without fail, partway through the
testing of every one, the lead programmer would sneak in and fail the
engine or tailrotor on me - usually when I'm flying left handed and
scribbling a note on my "gotcha" list. At first I'd lawn-dart the
thing, but now it's practically a non-issue. My hand gets back to the
collective at something approaching the speed of light and the skin
begins to peel off because of air friction burns.



Kevin hit it on the nose. You will be surprised how fast your training
takes over when something major like an engine failure occurs. The
pilots that flew with me were always on their guard because they all
knew I liked reducing the throttle to idle just when they were
concentrating on a freq change or clearing the aircraft to the right.
Even when I did catch them completely off guard their hands were on the
collective in a split second. You will get there too. I can see the
dedication in your posts. Keep after it, you will never regret flying
helicopters.

--

boB
Wing 70

U.S. Army Aviation (retired)
Central Texas
5NM West of Gray Army/Killeen Regional (KGRK)