Airplane pilots might not think to look towards rotary wing training documents (goodness knows there’s enough reading material about airplanes to last a lifetime) but recently I have been perusing Transport Canada’s Helicopter Flight Training Manual, TP 9982E.

Some of the content fits into the interesting general knowledge about aviation category, but some is very appropriate to fixed-wing flight too. And some of it I think is even better than the parallel material presented in the Aeroplane Flight Training Manual, the purple book, that all fixed wing student pilots in Canada have to use.

In particular I really like the chapter on cross country navigation (Exercise 20) and the chapter on instrument flight (Excercise 30). The latter does a really good presentation of the ideas of control instruments and performance instruments, and the selective radial scan technique for flying on instruments. These are the words I use when teaching instrument flights to prospective fixed wing pilots too.

Naturally some of the words need translation (for helicopter, read airplane) and a few paragraphs are less relevant (knowing a Robinson R22 requires approximately 20 inches of Manifold Pressure in cruse at 80 knots, goes into the background knowledge folder) but overall I like what it says.

Although I purchased a copy from an aviation bookstore, the good news is that unlike the airplane manual, the helicopter flight training manual is available as a pdf download from Transport Canada. And I’ve put a copy on my website, here.