I did not like the wind, and I let the chief pilot (not my instructor) know about it. He seemed confused. “The helicopter does not know the wind is blowing,” he would say. What?!? “The next time the wind is howling, I want to take you out.” Great, I thought. Suicide by helicopter.
As soon as I lifted off, the engine started coughing and sputtering! Something was not right… obviously. I set the ship back down (it most likely settled itself back down due to the lack of power and diminishing rotor RPM), and the engine sprang back to life. What?
Autorotations are maneuvers that sound and look really scary to the non-pilot. Before I started my training, I had watched many YouTube videos on the subject. I was pretty nervous about my first one. After all, this is an emergency procedure. And an emergency in an aircraft is never a good thing.