The most difficult maneuver for an aircraft pilot to master is a steady hover.  Many aspire, but few can — flight schools wash out over 50%.  A rotorcraft is capable of flight in any direction – it can take off straight up or even backwards.  But, no less than 8-16 hours of dual instruction is needed before one acquires the “hover bug.”  “The instructor will step out of the left seat and tell his scared to death student to “go solo.”  No atheist survives as God is fervently petitioned to “be my co-pilot and help me hover.”
     Mastering a rotorcraft alone exhilarates even fair weather pilots.  The machine wants to fly apart, and will for the want of a single cotter pin or safety tie.  “Cheating death with every turn of the rotor blade” is just the beginning.  Add foul weather, mountain flying,  Nap Of the Earth navigation (180 mph at 3 feet above the deck), weapons and combat conditions – and multiply all these by systems failures.  Every moment you are (still) alive is exhilarating.
     Harry Reasoner wrote:  “a helicopter does not want to fly.  It is maintained in the air by a variety of forces and controls working in opposition to each other, and if there is any disturbance in this delicate balance the helicopter stops flying, immediately and disastrously.”

     Such is much of what day-to-day living is all about.  It matters not what direction or intensity the winds, we have to learn to keep straight, level, and controlled, doing the best with what we have.  Good instruction has to come from somewhere before you will ever learn to hover.  There is a commandment somewhere in all this:   “. . .be still (hover) and know that I am God.” (D&C 101:16).  Read the entire verse, and fly safe.
     For more information contact (your emergency preparedness specialist).
CATCH THE VISION, GET FACTS, DEVELOP SKILLS, AND BE PREPARED.