I recently read “Limitless” by Tim Peake, a Brit who went to the International Space Station. He, as a member of the British military, had extensive experience with aircraft of varying types. Basically he said “Planes want to stay in the air, helicopters want to crash”. I’ll accept the judgement of an expert. Great book, BTW.
Would that qualify as a good landing? He did walk away, after a little bit of help getting out.
Airplanes fly by creating lift over the wings. Helicopters fly by beating the air into submission. At least until the Jesus nut falls off.
Nope. My old flight instructor had a different saying: “What goes up, must come down. What comes down damned well better be able to go back up again.”
I can fly pretty much anything in GTAV, mostly because it doesn’t matter if I crash and burn. When I die, I just respawn and all is good.
Same and same. I have a pretty clear memory of running around with a toy heli, swooping and diving, while singing the theme song.
I have not tried a recent version, but I believe the X-Plane demo includes some helicopters, if anyone wants to see how easy/hard they are to control.
And don’t forget intermeshing rotors.
Then there is this freaky thing:
Me too. A high school friend of mine developed Jane’s Longbow simulator (among others). Jane’s was sold to EA and he made a bundle and retired in his 40s.
Saw a pair of those flying over Hatteras Island last fall. Definitely provoke the “How the hell do those things stay in the air?!” reaction.
The validated ‘safe operating area’ for a typical helicopter consists of ‘stationary, so close to the ground that if you fall you can’t hurt yourself’ and ‘moving forward fast enough, so far from the ground that you can’t hit it.’
Connecting the two is the narrow range of take off and landing operating conditions, limited by the range over which a trained pilot can react fast enough to not crash.
In visual form:
As (I think) I said, hovering is the hardest thing to learn; and it’s also the first thing you have to learn. FWIW, you can do a ‘run on’ landing. We only did them when the instructor was demonstrating a ‘full-down autorotation’ (i.e., to landing instead of a hover recovery). If you get sideways you’ll roll the aircraft into a ball, but it will most likely be survivable if you’re not going too fast.
If anyone wants to find out how hard it is to fly a helicopter, read the book ‘Chicken Hawk’ by Robert Mason. Or just read it anyway.
It’s about Robert Mason (the author), a helicopter pilot in Viet Nam. About his training to fly and his experiences. It’s a fascinating read. You’ll probably feel like you could fly a heli after reading it.
The hard copy has a diagram of the cockpit controls of a Huey.
His sci-fi novels are also worth a read