Your light heli is parked facing 200°, the wind comes from 300° at 7 knots. What do you do :

- push by hand the tail for the heli to face the wind before anything else

- have the heli light on her skids and turn the nose to the wind before hovering  

- just do a crosswind hover  ?

Same question when the heli is facing 120° (tailwind hover) ?

 

You do a crosswind hover (or tailwind hover) and you turn into the wind in hover before you take off.

And I would add that if It is a light helicopter like the Cabri and you have the wheels to move it on the ground I would face it to the wind before start It.

 

 

Edited December 24, 20223 yr by Soul Rebel

thank you !

You can practice one of the exercises that helicopters pilots do in their training if you want: select one runway and put the wind just in front of the runway (you can play with wind intensity), take off with head wind and in hover you turn 90 degrees and land, then take off again and turn another 90 degrees and land again, repeat it until you do your 360 degrees turn. You can do it first clockwise and then counterclockwise. 

My experience is that it depends on how confined the helicopter is parked on the ground.
One of my hobbies is photographing helicopters off-airports.
Many times Chinooks land in a very confined space and at take-off, I see them hover just a few feed off the ground and turn the nose in the wind and go.

20 minutes ago, Soul Rebel said:

You can practice one of the exercises that helicopters pilots do in their training if you want: select one runway and put the wind just in front of the runway (you can play with wind intensity), take off with head wind and in hover you turn 90 degrees and land, then take off again and turn another 90 degrees and land again, repeat it until you do your 360 degrees turn. You can do it first clockwise and then counterclockwise. 

Good ! What would you do on Xmas day anyway. Sounds fun 😀.

Soul Rebel is spot on. And a B407 might no even start with a brisk tail wind!