So there I was, fat dumb and happy, flying along at 800 feet and 90 knots, enjoying the view.
Suddenly, the helicopter yawed to the right, the nose dropped, and the controls began to shudder violently. Audio alarms screamed at me to return the aircraft to normal flight or it would soon lose irrecoverable energy from the rotor turning overhead.
Only seconds ago, the ground was 800 feet away. Now it is 500 feet and rapidly approaching the windscreen. Despite my herculean efforts to return to level flight, the nose only pitched down further. Crap!! It dawned on me that I may not recover from this incident - and I didn't.
Then the instructor paused the computer, turned up the lights, and asked me what had just happened to my aircraft. Welcome to day one in the simulator: emergency procedures.
If any of you are still wondering if I'm alive, I am. However, if this was a real-life emergency, I would be nothing more than a smoking hole in the ground. That of course, is one purpose of the simulator - to expose student pilots to in-flight malfunctions that could very well occur on any day.
To sum things up, I won't be flying in the air very much for the next few weeks. Instead, I'll be participating in an expensive, full-motion video game and hopefully building my skills with respect to aircraft emergencies.
If you're wondering what happened to my aircraft in the above emergency, I lost components from the tail rotor - not a good day by any means!
Below is a picture of the helicopter simulator. It's a full-motion video game with a 270 degree field of view. Despite all the advanced technology that goes into making the simulator as real as possible, it is nearly impossible to hover, land, or take off! Nothing beats the real aircraft.
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