Hi all,

Today was a great day. I have been offered a helicopter flight for my 30th birthday. It was not a classical "1st time" flight, but a true flying initiation flight. I hold the controls during maybe 15 min, the flight was 20 min. The chopper was a Robinson R22 beta, featured here :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJss8jUj5aw

We were moving so fast a few feet above the ground, there was not a lot of room for error ... The pilot simulated an engine failure, and here we went for an autorotation mode descent, from say 300 ft, it was so brutal that my ears hurt ! And before landing on the big H on the floor, the pilot just pull very hard, I was afraid that the tail rotor would strike the ground. Pitch was around 45 degrees... Then a full backwards run for 300 meters, again a few feet above the ground, a spin and a half, and then back to "normal" flight and we landed sideways...

Well, it was really scary. I don't really want to try this again... Do you think it's normal ? It looked fun, the pilot seemed too enjoy it so much. He had "only" 2.000 flight hours... and has been a heli pilot for 6 years and is currently an "instructor".