Airbus Eurocopter EC120B Colibri helicopter flight and review + how to fly

[Music] hey hey more helicopter reviews woohoo so this week we are flying one of my favorite helicopters um favorite him manyways uh and if someone wants to buy me one of these for Christmas that would be all good uh this is of course an ec120b which is a Eurocopter helicopter now Airbus um and these are fairly new aircraft you know they started producing these first FLW about 1995 and they sell 10 15 of these a year so there's about 500 500 5 to 600 uh around uh it's a slightly larger brother uh which is the ec130 which is uh this model is is a more popular helicopter because it holds more this ec120 is a four passenger helicopter you got the pilot and then three passengers in the back and and one passenger up front uh so the the ec130 which is basically the same frame um and similar to um similar to other aircraft that uh europ produce or Airbus now produce uh holds three people One Pilot two passengers and four people across the the back so it's a lot more popular the ec130 because it has a large pass passenger capacity uh and what of course is unique about these um these these EC aircraft is that they have this this enclosed tail uh and the reason for the enclosed tail is is a number of things firstly and probably mostly it's it reduces the sound believe it or not in helicopters most of the sound actually comes from the tail rotor not the main rotor uh especially a main rotor that's got three or more blades is a little quieter than a than a twin rotor helicopter but yeah this the the enclosed tail substantially reduces the the the noise that helicopters make and where helicopters have to operate um and make as little noise as possible it's these helicopters which are very popular in those environments so yeah this um this ec120 is uh is obviously a turbine helicopter it means it's it's run by a jet which goes through a uh a turbine which then reduces gears and runs the the rotors uh so it's got a it's got a turbine engine and we'll talk a bit more about that when we take a tour around the outside of the aircraft but uh it produces about 500 horsepower I believe this helicopter is also pretty fast it will cruise at 120 knots which is about 130 mph uh and it can go pretty high it can go up to about 177,000 ft so it's a it's a it's a high performance light helicopter basically and uh and it's got a modern cpit as well we we'll go over the copit when we start up but uh it's a bit more of a glass display where most of the functions are uh replicated on the um on the LED displays as opposed to the old-fashioned um gauges and and so forth um but just as a reminder before we uh jump out and um talk to John who's going to be our pilot again same pilot as last week's helicopter um I'll quickly run you through the controls one more time so that you're familiar with what we're doing when we're flying the helicopter today I'll be uh I'll be doing a little bit of flying as well as John so that's going to be fun but yeah so once again the the the three main controls are the um cyclic which is this lever right in the middle here which does the uh the the forward back side to side movement of the helicopter um down by my left hand you can see it here as well is uh the big Collective which collectively changes the pitch of the rotors and lifts the helicopter up and down or makes it go faster when it's moving forward also on that Collective is the throttle which as you're pulling in more power you need to add more throttle depending on the helicopter some helicopters this one included has what has what's known as a governor which automatically manages a throttle for you and then of course down at your feet what looks like rubber Rudder pedals but are actually adjusting the uh the pitch of the of the tail rotor blades so that as as the helicopter's engine is turning the rotor one way the helicopter has a tendency to turn the other way and that's what the tail rotor is what stops it from doing that of course it provides a a degree of steering as well so yeah the the anti-torque rotor pedals on the floor there is what keeps the helicopter straight and allows you to turn on your own access so those are the basics of the controls this is a much more complicated helicopter than than uh than the one with the Bell 47 we flew last time um and so it's going to take us a little longer to go through some of the features but you know this is uh believe it or not as helicopters get newer they actually get easier to fly because there's a lot more automation involved and the helicopter helps you with a lot more things so believe I find the larger the helicopter actually the easier they are to fly often so that's about all I've got to say about the uh the the ec120 what we're going to do is we're going to take a bit bit of a quick tour around the outside then we're going to go through the startup procedures and then we're going to take it for a flight and uh try a few Maneuvers in it and then come back and land so I hope you guys enjoy uh another Helicopter review from Nick Murray and hopefully uh we'll make it back safely as always and um I'm going to keep trying to bring you helicopter reviews throughout the summer uh depending on how much you guys enjoy these uh you know I really enjoy flying different types of helicopters so I enjoy making these videos and um and so I'm going to try and do a few this summer for you anyway on with the um outside tour thanks okay so you probably recognized John from last week's video he's going to be uh flying with me again today and he's uh the chief pilot for this helicopter the ec120b and um anything you want to say about this fine aircraft John oh it's uh it's beautiful uh it's all composite um it's a beautiful Airbus product um flies beautifully um virtually maintenance free and um uh a lot of lot of luggage space right should we take a walk around outside of it absolutely uh this this aircraft here is fitted with the uh emergency floats yeah as you can see now now I've read that the the shape of the landing gear is so that wires will run unimpeded along the bottom if you hit a wire have you heard about that no I have I have not but it makes it makes sense I guess makes sense um except on this if it hits the floats you might screwed yeah yeah screwed yep uh nice thing about this aircraft is this big sliding door right um and uh this seat pack here detaches with two pins oh so this comes out very easily it comes out very easily so this aircraft is very versatile you can have um you know this door off and the sliding door open okay uh one of the Beautiful Things is doing aerial photography or video work during the winter time we can have the door closed get on station and open it we open close the door during flight as long as we slow down to 80 knots and is there is there a pass through between the cabin and the storage in the back there is there's a uh panel removable panel there um so all this all this area in here is accessible if you wanted to put two fours or ladders yeah in there it passes all the way through it can pass all the way through and according to the flight manual ual oh wow you can take that rear door off so that P this panel right here is the one that's removable oh I see oh it's got a big storage area down here yeah so you got all this area good good Smugglers aircraft yeah and and you can take this rear door off and fly without this on okay and I've actually done that if you want to take a look at the other side of the bagage all right you got more circuit brakers up here as well so what's the engine it's a 500 horsepower around about yeah it's a 9 uh shaft horsepower turbo Macer yep uh and of course the most distinguishable thing about these aircraft is this is this fenestron y ter rotor anti-torque system yeah it's um and these are staggered for noise reduction are they correct um it's actually the stators on the yellow side yeah that oh okay that that are staggered that uh reduce some of that noise emissions yeah makes a cool sound though yeah it does yeah this is uh I believe the quietest aircraft in production quietest helicopter in production right right this is a 200000 2000 model oh okay and this was uh air buses or previously know known as Eurocopter this was a demo machine right and these seats these seats are unique as well and this is these are anti crash seats aren't they right they're um they they're uh crashworthy seats and uh the seats are good for 10 G's oh W so they'll they they'll collapse the landing gear is good for 20 G's okay so combined you've got a crashworthiness rating of 30 G's something for us to try later on today yeah sure yeah so anything else um of note this aircraft has windshield wipers on it but we knew almost almost never us it had scratch the Pixy glass wouldn't it yeah yeah very nice okay let's um hop in and take it for a flight I think all right sounds good thanks John yeah it just helps me sink the out all right okay we got our seat belts on right seat belts are on all right rot blade position is good I checked it on the tail okay we don't like to start it uh we don't like to start the aircraft with a blade over the exhaust it's not a manufacturer thing it's just us right you know yeah um all right so we set our clock here actually this is why is that clock oh clock stops every time you turn the mains off no it just if you don't crank it once in a while okay all right um so we're going to check the lights y this is uh basically checking the the two softwares between the two uh screens y they should be matching right they should be matching right and this is just checking that all our warning lights are working properly here's our air speed indicator attitude indicator altimeter y vertical speed tells us how high how fast we're going vertically this our uh rotor speed rotor RPM yeah so um and the free turbine the NF is the free turbine the uh free turbine the one that catches catch catching the gas it right uh and then our rotor speed right here okay and you get these also on here the no no it doesn't duplicate the displays no no no okay does not right here is our fuel fuel quantity in pounds 332 lb right it burns about 200 lb per hour so we have an hour and a half uh our T4 is the turbine temperature okay there's it's cold so there's no no temperature the NG is the gas producer that's um that's the the uh combustion side of of turban engine and the torque is measuring the the amount of uh the amount of power appli and that's a percentage perc come up to 100% right right and is there any state that you'd ever go past 100% or it gets damages the aircraft immediately past 100% um no you got a you've got a a momentary up to that Delta okay um 11% in emergencies yeah okay um and if if you get to that point for more than uh two seconds it's going to it's going to log it in the in the maintenance computer so you can't lie about it okay nor would you want to cuz you could have damaged damaged the engine and then and then you know uh you're kind of flying on a wing of prayer then and so uh if you ever have a over limit in any aircraft whether it's a fix wi or a helicopter fast up to the screw up let maintenance take a look at it might be expensive but found dress up cuz uh you're playing with playing with fire there so uh we checked the we checked the light test right now we'll check it has uh fire sensors in the engine bay uh so we checking that the twist grip if the twist grip is not all the way up right you could try and take off with this twist grip not fully engaged in Flight right and if uh that were the case you could droop the rotor speed and you don't want that so we'll bring that back to off so you got extra switches and buttons here on the um on the collective this is our Hydraulics right so it's a hydraulic Master yeah this is the this is the hydraulic Master okay and this is just for the uh for the isolation Okay Ling light here's your uh fan you can just have a regular fan okay or air conditioning oh does go air conditioning it does fancy in here huh um and this is this is your heat and do Mist up here all and this is where your your heat will come out of here oh okay and the overhead Vents and the air conditioning also comes up over here portion here and you've got a rotor brake I assume it's our a rotor brake and fuel shut off emergency fuel shut off okay all right and radios down the bottom yeah radios some circuit break is right yeah very good all right let's start on the checklist there's a button back here it says call Pilot oh yeah what happens if you do 5 4 3 2 1 okay right so um so when we start the engine here this is actually the switch that starts it take this index line we put the put this index Mark right on that slide this forward right and what's going to happen is uh the the start generator is going to start cranking the engine so that so what what initiates the start sequence just having it here yes right and then I'm going to slide this forward to engage the starter oh okay so that engages the starter right and it unlocks unlocks the throttle unlocks the throttle so I'm going to engage a starter okay gas producer is going to start spinning y the temperature is going to start coming up once the going going because we W have any temperature until we introduce gas boy right yeah well there's there's a little bit of gas right right so it's not like another the older turbines where you have to get up to a certain speed right it's not like a jet Ranger md5 okay um so what we're going to be looking for is uh 50 c NG to release a starter um and what we're trying to do is we're trying to control the temperature the T4 right around 700 Dees right so so it doesn't have a spike like you had in the AO it it it'll it'll come up yeah it'll come up probably to around 600 650 okay it'll peek out and then start falling off okay so you have to start advancing the throttle a little bit more to keep to keep the uh the start sequence going okay start the modulation all right C onear turning got oil pressure and oil temperature here comes right there right there it's going to peek out's going to start dropping off now just going to advance the thrott a little bit keep the gas turb speeding up 507 off the starter going to keep advancing now this change is over to What's called the first limit indicator uh it does that automatically it does it automatically got it take the pump off ready gone just going to roll thrt back just a little bit where the uh gas producer stabiliz to be about 67 55% I'm just going to increase a little bit to about 70 to check the hydraulic tur off actually okay I'm do is I'm checking the accumulators oh okay there's little emergency how long how long would I run it for um they actually deete uh asymmetrically so so you'll feel one side right and then the so the emergency procedure for hydraulic fa it just slow the aircraft down yeah shut the Hydraulics off which it shut off right here okay so right here now check that this will shut off and that if I did lose the hydraulic I have control of the airri so you make sure the collector head is locked set the Hydraulics off feel how hard it is now ah you would want to fly like that good Lord not for a long time nice all right Hydraulics back on and the warning lights up it a little bit of a warm up here what is this warning light on that's for thep that I mentioned before okay you want that all the way up into the pl just double check check good we check the hor coming up yep so you can't hear the horn on your side I can hear so I want to make sure that that shuts off the warning shut off at 370 r l and shut off the light came off but the thing to whenever you're aircraft you always want to keep the work under 40% I like to try and keep it below 30 but below 40 is really the rule so we're almost at fullt here and we're at Full Throttle and the pl is gone out a little bit water away good back then off set good over good you online the colletive and here we go a little bit of a clearing turn here but what are we watching for while we're while we're s of Waring out still um watching this the fli the first women indicator here yeah okay so we're at eight right now which is just a number I got um so what we're looking at is our ngg the gas producer the T4 which is the temperature and our torque okay if we wanted to we could change this and have it all individual okay so that's like a traditional sixpack okay uh T like in a jet Ranger here we are with half a tank of gas and three adults on board and we're using about 80% to hover that's normal of to yeah yeah absolutely so in this aircraft as well you can do uh the performance charts here y um and you can do it right fromhe y but and it knows what we have with fuel yep and it knows our pressure altitude the outside air temperature so it gives us our INR effect cover and autog the cover change this back to the pack them and um we may as uh kind of do a Max perform take off here while we get established in the traffic p take off PR much 96 and a half 97 and a half see how that number gets underlined yeah yeah so it's that's telling you that's your first limit right okay now we clear our obstacle yep just going to nose it over slightly get M yeah we're clear on the right and on left guys left okay okay all right I'm going to cross over 6 North soui hey R off y was talking about before stop it sideway this way and we'll just do a quick clearing turn here clear we [Applause] so it's important to have the right takeoff profile um you know you you want to stay out of that like velocity diagram also known as a dead man y you know you you don't want to be too high and too slow uh CU something could happen you need that energy stored up between the air speed in your altitude run so you can tell that the aircraft kind of leads to the right a little bit yeah I feel it um from the uh from the right and it's just kind of ping yeah kind of the way the aircraft likes to to lean a little bit kind of straight out a little bit once you get a little bit closer to the ground but a whole L I guess we can hovering Auto from here because the ples turn backwards on this aircraft orway uh you see that so it's going to be the same procedure except when I rollt off the door going to want to go the other way but but no's going to want to go to the right so I'm going to have to add left P so we'll just do this uh nice gentle three one 2 3 very nice very nice just walking the the throttle we'll go around we'll uh we'll do a simulated 3 7 hor pler in the anyway aircraft actually uniform how fuel open nice tail clear on the right let's just take a look down the Lan anybody coming okay good clear on the right and we're clear on the left and I have feel on the controls oh absolutely goad go ahead okay come on okay why don't we uh let's do this we'll get a little bit of altitude we you level it off just a little bit okay Bo there's no viation through the controls is now it's so smooth okay I'm I'm uh I'm going to just start kind of coming off the control I'm going to be right here with you sure but just to get give you a real feel okay look at way out there that's Province Town way out there look at how lit up it is yeah yeah that's over 30 m away yeah yeah that's beautiful oh this is such a smooth e after fly is it it is so we're at 900 ft now we're still climbing yeah there's a little bit of a noise left a little bit we'll get a little more altitude not needed but just to kind ofate this look at look look how close looks yeah yeah just the lighting yeah beautiful oh beautiful yeah okay you want to try to practice rotation here yeah sure 2300 left 2 up otherwise we're not going to make a spot up you normally have 40 to 60 KN yeah 65 okaying a rock but now it over a little b459 Yankee 5 miles to the north oh that's beautiful oh there the ground too not bad yeah niely you know as we did 4 second we kind of we get the roll back in s the bottom these aircraft very expensive we don't want to be banging them up too high to simulate the last three ft all right so Che out the line and hit that t and are good just uh good A little circle field for the northwest all right we're back all right we're going to shut the radio though huh y and the horn off at the same time position right and 00 okay 1 minute after the one minute slide to switch up yep [Applause] back shut down rolling the thr back will sh it to kill the [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] that

Channel: Nick Murray

Views: 1,467,282

Keywords: Eurocopter EC120 Colibri (Aircraft Model), Helicopter (Invention), Airbus Helicopters (Aircraft Manufacturer), Airbus Group (Business Operation), EC120B, Colibri, Hummingbird, Flying, How to fly a helicopter, Helicopter flight training, flight training, Airplane, Aircraft (Type Of Fictional Setting), Aviation (Industry)

Id: YCu3XsPt1yE

Length: 37min 12sec (2232 seconds)

Published: Mon May 11 2015