Almost like I know what I'm doing...

Flew at 10am yesterday and damned if I didn't fly like I knew what the
hell I was doing...

I'd been eyeballing the weather since I woke up at 6 and DUATS said
it'd be relatively clear until the early evening so I hopped on the
bike and headed to work - wanted to squeeze in a couple hours before I
made the ride to the field..

I checked weather again just before I left and had second thoughts
about heading home and getting the truck instead of riding the bike
down.. I decided to risk the bike trip and hit the road. About 50
minutes later, I pull up to the hangar and park next to Q's bike. I
checked the time and was surprised to see I was 20 minute early.

I knew we would be working on autos etc so no need to work up a flight
plan so I took my time working up the W&B. Once that was done, I took
the dispatch paperwork up to the office and discovered a new
procedure. No longer do we pull the ship's binder from the racks in
the hangar. Now we've got to get them from the office. Nice of the
school to let us know ahead of time.

Binder in hand, I check the squawk sheet on the way to preflight the
ship. A stark contrast to the brand new ship I flew the night before,
today's ship is a "well seasoned" Beta model. I've got about half my
solo time in this ship so I'm familiar with it's quirks. Preflight
goes ok and I wait for the ship to be refueled before I sample the
gas.

Preflight showed oil was right at 4 quarts and even though I know
that's the minimum oil level, I go ahead and add a quart just to be
safe. I headed to the restroom to pay the rent on the morning's
coffee and wash the helicopter "goo" off my hands. As I head back
out, Q's giving the ship a once-over and we crawl in together and soon
it's up and running - with it's high speed idle and other "quirks"
very evident.

1st up was a trip to the compass rose for some hover autos. I did
about 10 of them and all of 'em were well within standards. Q even
throttle chopped me and I nailed the auto.. Q showed me a hover-taxi
auto and I did a few of those with no problem.

Next up was some low RPM work. Maintaining a hover at 90% and then
recovering was fairly easy, but I had some difficulty hovering at 80%
and then recovering without redlining the MAP gauge.. I found that
milking the collective with VERY gentle throttle tweaking would
eventually get the RPMs up, but it took a while to accomplish and I
touched down a couple times during the maneuver..

Q said he'd do one without touching down and he did the same thing I
did with the collective and throttle and came close to touching down a
couple times, but never did. He did another one with a "unique"
recovery.. Lots of right pedal as he worked the collective/throttle
and we ended up spinning in place for about a minute until the
recovery was complete.

I piped up with "If you're trying to make me dizzy, it's not working."
Q took that as a challenge and next thing I know, we're spinning
again, but even faster than the last time. I'll bet we went two
minutes like that and once back in a stable hover, Q handed the
controls to me and said "I got myself dizzy." I had to laugh and tell
Q how I can ride the teacups at Disneyland all day and I haven't met a
roller coaster I didn't like. I'm sure he'll work up some way to try
and get my dizzy in the future.

Next up was a trip to a local canyon for some slope work and quick
stops. 1st slope was to my side and I got the uphill skid down ok,
but the downhill was kinda sloppy. I finally got it set down ok and
then picked it up and sidestepped away to do a pedal turn and work the
other skid. This one was sweet.. I barely felt either skid touch
down. Almost like I knew what I was doing.

Q took the controls and I thought we were headed to a steeper slope to
do some more slope procedures.. Nope. Confined area operations. Q
set down in a small clearing surrounded by trees and handed controls
to me. "Show me a max performance takeoff". I throttled down to 75%
and did mag checks and double checked the carb heat was down and
locked. Throttle back up, I gave it a few moments to stabilize and
then pulled in the power. As soon as the skids came off the ground, I
pulled to max takeoff power (34") and concentrated on not moving
towards any trees..

About 5' from the highest branch, the climb stopped. Q looks at me
and says, "ok, now what?"

I look to my right and see a small gap in the trees and say "I could
crawl over there to the right and get some airflow across the rotor
disk and climb over those lower trees."

Q says "yeah, but check this out." and takes the controls. He starts
BARELY moving towards the tree in front of us and we slowly climb over
the top. THAT is something I would have liked to have known how to do
a couple weeks ago.

Q got us moving over the trees and handed controls back to me. "Give
me a couple quick stops and then we'll get out of here." I did 4 or 5
of 'em then back to the field to do some autos.

Autos have been problematic for me lately, but I was having a good
day. I entered the 1st one and with very little coaching from Q, got
down and recovered. As I got on the move for the next trip 'round the
pattern I asked Q, "Were you helping out on that one?" Q looks over
and says (as he folds his arms across his chest) "I'm not doing ****."

The next one was kinda humorous. I enter ok and get a bunch of half
instructions from Q as he identifies little problems and stops making
suggestions as I correct them a second after he starts talking...

"get the nose..."

"...watch the RP....

"Nose is dro..."

"OK, fla..."

Once I'm in a hover he tells me "Good. You picked up the problems and
fixed them quickly." He then glances out his side and says "You're
within' 100 feet of your target too."

The next couple are also pretty good but when Q tells me on the 5th or
6th one to really concentrate on hitting my target, I eff it up beyond
belief. I've found if I'm thinking too much about what I'm doing, I
can't do it well.

The next two are within standards and then it's once more around the
patch to do a steep approach to a full stop. As I hover taxi back to
the pads, I comment how well I thought I flew. Q agrees and says I'm
pretty much ready for my checkride, just gotta polish the autos up a
bit and get a couple of running landings and takeoffs in. Oh and
finish up my X-country time..

Days like this make me feel like I've really accomplished something
and give me just that much more confidence I can pass my checkride on
the 1st attempt. (Assuming I can pass the oral portion.. THAT is
what I'm most nervous about.)