R44 Helicopter Panel Overview

hi I'm Maria Langer and I'd like to take you on a tour of the panel in my Robinson r44 Raven 2 helicopter what you're hearing right now is the gyro spinning up I have two gyroscopically controlled instruments and you're also hearing the avionics fan I've turned the power on so these things light up and do what they're supposed to do obviously I'm not flying so you're not gonna really get the full effect so I'm gonna start at the top and work my way down this thing at the top is a radar altimeter it tells me my altitude over the ground which right now is one foot because I'm on the ground and this instrument is required by the FAA for part 135 operations in a helicopter I should mention here that it's pretty much useless to me because I'm required to fly VFR that's visual flight rules so I should never need this instrument to tell me how far I am from the ground I should be able to look out the window and see for myself but the FAA says I need it so there it is underneath there you'll see the top row of idiot lights like you might find in your car warning lights the clutch light will go on when the clutch is activating when it's moving right now it's turned off so it won't won't go on at all sometimes it goes on in flight but generally it goes on when I start the helicopter and if you watch any of the videos I've made of me starting the helicopter you'll see that light on Mr Tim is the main rotor temperature and that will go on if the main rotor gearbox gets hot next to that is Mr chip main rotor chip and that is goes on if the chip detector inside the transmission picks up any metal which would might be a bad thing next to that is the carbon monoxide detector which seems to go on an awful lot in this video in fact I did one recently where I departed from an orchard and that light was on for a good portion on the flight starter on comes on when I pushed the starter button and it should go off when the helicopter started if it doesn't that means I have a starter issue TR chip is tail rotor chip detector same thing metal inside the tail rotor gearbox low fuel is my land now light even though it's not red that means that I've got I think five gallons of fuel left and five gallons of fuel is only enough theoretically for 20 minutes but now in that light you don't want that light to go on and if it does go on I get to the ground as quick and low rotor rpm that goes on with an annoying horn here's the horn yeah when the the rotor rpm is below 97% that's how it's set in an r44 what it means is that my rotor rpm is drooping it's getting too slow and I need to give it some more throttle or this number of other things I can do to get that light to go off to get my rpm back up now my instruments you've got the vertical speed indicator I should mention you that a lot of these are also in airplanes now you're seeing reflections in it I've got something on the seat there the vertical speed indicator is my ascent or descent rate and it's in feet per minute or hundreds of feet per minute next to that is my artificial horizon and what that does is it tells me if I'm in a bank or from going straight level or from it ascending or descending this instrument is really used more for instrument flight but it's required for part 135 operations and that ball down below will tell me if I'm in trim and I finally found a nice level parking space so I am level and that's a great thing airspeed indicator tells me how fast I'm going this is in knots and miles per hour generally we used knots that's the outer ring it's got colors on it telling you what's good they at 100 knots you'll see that that's got a special marker on it that's my never exceed speed for autorotation it's my never exceed speed for doors off its I think it's my never exceed speed nowadays for turbulence and they just added that to the pilot operating handbook and then there's a red bar at 1:30 that's my never exceed speed a period I shouldn't be going over that at all but my never exceed speed does drop down to lower numbers depending on conditions my altitude for example outside temperature things like that next to that is my engine and rotor rpm this is a helicopter instrument you all find this in an airplane the needles in flight should be matched as when you start up the engine the engine one starts moving up and then eventually the rotor rpm one catches up with it and throughout the warm-up process those needs to be matched and when you're in flight they should be matched at a hundred percent if the needles are split that means that you your engine is not well need you have a problem first of all usually if it's split it means that the engine has quit or powers down or whatever and then that means you need to go into an auto rotation and there's a test that we do at the startup to make sure that those needles do split you want to be able to disconnect the engine the rotor system if you have an engine failure and that's one of the checks that we do at startup over here is my altitude and that's above sea level and that is adjusted by changing the number in the little window on the right side right now you see it looks like it says 300 that's three zero point zero whatever the little number is that it's selected and you do that with the little knob that's at the bottom there below that is my directional indicator and this is a gyroscopic instrument that pretty much does the same thing as my compass and of course they they get out of kilter now the compass is up here I've got a vertical card compass and you can see it's it's almost exactly 330 degrees and this thing is off which happens occasionally and I usually I need to set this might start flying but I don't use it I use the compass so I really don't pay much attention to it this is required for part 135 operations and again it's something that you would use in instrument flight which this helicopter never does next to that is my manifold pressure setting and that is basically my power setting and in flight that would normally be somewhere between say 18 and 22 inches of manifold pressure right now it's registering me the manifold pressure outside it's not I'm not flying I'm not the interests not running got some more idiot lights under their fuel filter tells me if my fuel filter needs to be changed or if there's a problem with it auxiliary fuel pump that light is on right now because I'm idling here just basically burning battery power which is never a good thing and that will go on normally when I'm priming the engine and it should be going on in flight if it goes on a flight that means it's a the auxiliary fuel pump is probably failing or has failed then that's happened a few times it's not a dire emergency but it's definitely something that you need to get looked at the alternator light is on right now because I don't have the alternator on and the engine is not running engine fire and oil are two red lights here engine fire is pretty pretty obvious what that means because your engine's on fire get on the ground and the oil light means that your oil pressures even shooting high or too low and the pressure gauge is right underneath of it and then governor off the helicopter has an electronic governor that keeps the throttle set exactly right so that you can you don't have to worry about adjusting the throttle in flight that's that's pretty common with modern helicopters and the governor off light when that and that goes on that means the governor has been turned off or it's just or it's broken and that means that you got to do you got a management traveler or see why that light went off okay then I got a clock a regular analog clock which I prefer over digital I like that secondhand it helps you to time things like shut down afternoon time thanks for 30 seconds then I've got a Hobbs meter this helicopter actually is two of them this is collective activated which means that the numbers change when I pull pitch when I pull up the collective and I'm actually flying then I've got my amp meter which is for my power you know in the battery power and I've got my oil pressure gauge registering nothing because my engine is off right now then I've got two fuel gauges one above the other for my two fuel tanks auxilary which is smaller and mean together they hold nearly 50 gallons of fuel right now they're both full because I've got up topped off yesterday and my oil temperature of course not registering anything because I've turned off and the same thing for my cylinder head temperature and those are the temperatures of the oil and the cylinder head the engine temperature over here I've got a bunch of switches and dials panel lights are the lights if my nav lights are on like I'm flying at night and the panel lights go on as well to light up all my instruments and I can change the the brightness of that my nav lights are the two running lights on either side of the helicopter one red one green that you have to have on during after sunset although when I'm doing cherry drying sometimes in the evening I'll turn those on to make me more of his strobe-light is a light on the town that will blink help prevent people from walking into the tail which would be a bad thing they did that that little brake light indicators for my rotor break if that's on that means my rotor brake is engaged you don't want that on in flight and the engine will not start if the rotor brake is engaged and then under that I've got a pretty fancy switch for my clutch the clutch is wetting what attaches the engine to the rotor system it's a series of four belts that are attached to a pair of sheaves and when I turn that on it adjusts them to tighten those belts and that's which needs to be on during flight at all times which is why they put a guard over it so you flick the switch with the garden over it and it prevents you from accidentally switching it off alternating turns on my alternator and master battery is on right now and that's what's making all this noise and then I've got my my key for my mags right left both of course is in flight and then if you look a little to the sides as Prime when I start this helicopter I have to prime the engine and I do it by turning the key to prime okay I'm back you probably didn't even know I was gone I was about halfway through recording this and I got a phone call and I had to go fly just got back and finish this up so at the bottom half of my panel here just a view at the top it looks like gauges are now registering stuff cuz I just got in bottom half the panel so over here I'm thinking far left is my vent knob to turn that pull it out and opens up the vent it gets fresh air in something I do when my carbon monoxide detector likes to go off I'm terrible often and that little red knob on the side that's sticking out that's my mixture right now it is full lean that's how you kill the engine you just pull that thing out and because of that it has a little cover so when it's full rich turn it on put it in right now just to show you it's light it would be like that so you don't accidentally pull it but you'd have to be pretty dumb to accident under that is my intercom stuff which I'm not gonna go into a lot of detail here it's just manages to you to come isolates me from my passengers if it gets busy on the radio and they're chatty turns on different intercom to different audio stuff so I can listen to different things beneath that as my radio and the way that this works is the frequency on the left is the frequency that is active and the frequency on the right is the one that's standby and you can switch from one to the other by pushing that little white button and I also have a button on my cyclic that I could push that does the same thing you dial it in dial in the channel you want with the knob on the right volume blah blah blah it's all it's all there below that is my GPS I have a Garmin 420 in here which is navcom so it's got a moving map which you see it's it's got my location in it and it also has in it a radio so I could tune in a second radio on here I can have a standby two frequencies a regular and a standby and you see those listed on the on the side there normally I keep one we tuned to the local weather service so the the airports automated weather observation system and then the other one is the one that I use for the next radio the next airport I go to and just a whole bunch of button this relates that GPS M really need to go into and then on the very very bottom I've got a transponder and what that transponder does is it sends a signal to air traffic control to radar stations that tells them my altitude and location it also tells them who I am you can see it has my n number in it and this particular one is set up for a DSP out which means that it you can actually pick it up on a DSP and I'll try to remember to include a link to my ship in a DSP so if you want to see where I've been you can go on the web and I think it'll have the most recent flights there below that you've got the outside air temperature gauge which I usually look at it and Celsius but it's in Fahrenheit now you just flick the switch just kind of a cool morning here for the summertime the knob there is for my cyclic friction what I do is I tighten that up when I'm stopped so that the controls don't flop around and then I've got a cabin heat knob and this boot that you're seeing right here is for my come back up here place cyclic which is back here and I'm gonna new a whole different video about the helicopters control so I'll cover that there and then other than that I've got my ELT testing which I can use to test the ELT is emergency locator transmitter so that if I go down it will make it'll make the ELT go off if I have a hard hit and it'll send a signal out so people can find me whatever I'm not sure how much that really works these days but and I don't think I'm required to have it but I have it and then the other thing just to keep in mind or all the fuses the circuit breakers that I've got for various things in the helicopter and they're pretty much label the clutch start one has a collar around it because there's an emergency procedure where you want to be able to find that quickly so by putting a collar around it it's easy to feel when you kind of groping over there and that's basically it that's my panel it's very simple seems like an awful lot but it really isn't a lot of these instruments you would find in an airplane some of them you wouldn't and that's about it if you have any questions or comments just let me know put them put down below and I hope you subscribe to the channel let me know what you want to see bye

Channel: FlyingMAir

Views: 30,425

Keywords: helicopters, helicopter, helicopter panel, instruments, flying, R44, Robinson, information

Id: sPaawRfUsaQ

Length: 15min 53sec (953 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 10 2019