As a part of my job I ride in a helicopter once or twice a year.
Took a ride as a kid in the standard bubble cockpit copter. A couple of years ago I took a ride in a Vietnam era Huey at an airshow. I actually enjoyed that because of the open side door and the slow ground speed. I don’t trust any of them to safely auto-rotate in the event of an engine failure.
Why not?
Just once. We were staying on Heron Island on the Great Barrier Reef and took a helicopter back to the mainland.
IT WAS GREAT!!!
Just that short distance up, being able to see straight down into the water meant we could see reef, shipwrecks, migrating giant turtles, etc… I’d love to do it again.
I’d imagine that flying a helo is to flying a fixed wing as flying a fixed wing is to driving a car!
I know very little about flying aside from simulators and RC, but I know enough to know that helos are not intuitive at all.
I am trying to remember here. I think i’ve only done it once at some fair. Your typical “Ride a helocopter, because you can” type things. It was neat I guess but we were kind of in the wilderness. I had been in small planes too, and I didn’t find it too much cooler, but I’d bet that nowadays I’d think it would be neat.
The first time I went up in a helicopter I already had a fixed-wing license. This was a half-hour intro lesson. Aloft, the instructor had me take the controls. He told me to make a left turn. Left turn. Left aileron, left rudder, hold back-pressure to maintain altitude. In an airplane! Doesn’t work that way in a heli. The pedals aren’t connected to a rudder. They control the anti-torque rotor. Don’t change the torque (power), you don’t change the pedals. Back-pressure? Just slows you down. Do it hard enough and you’re flying backwards. And the controls are much more sensitive than in a Cessna. That left ‘aileron’ got us into quite the bank. On the drive home the penny dropped. Flying a helicopter is like a video game. Just point the stick where you want to go. My first real lesson I could turn and maintain course with no excursions.
It’s more involved than point-and-go, of course. But when I thought of it as a big video game it became clear enough for a start. (Just remember there’s no Save and no Reset. Game Over means Game Over.) Helicopters aren’t more difficult to fly than a fixed-wing. Just different.
Anyway, I’ve always thought that a helicopter is to a fixed-wing as a motorcycle (especially a sport bike) is to a car (specifically a mid-sized sedan with an automatic transmission).
Another oilfield rat here. I never kept count, but I’m guessing I’ve ridden helos between 30-40 times, on three or four continents. Types flown in were Bell 212, 222 and 412, Hughes 500, Aerospatiale Dauphin and Puma, MBB 105 and Sikorsky S-76. A few memorable rides include:
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Riding the right front seat of the aformentioned Hughes 500 from Iquitos, Peru about an hour and a half up the Amazon to the rig site, at about 2500 feet AGL the whole way. Since pretty much the whole nose of the chopper is plexiglass, it was the closest I’ve ever come to riding a magic carpet.
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Returning from the same rig site, which was on a platform in the middle of a lake, to Iquitos on a Peruvian Air Force B-212. The pilot was a real cowboy and annoyed everyone by taking off, crossing the lake with the skids practically dragging in the water, then pulling up sharply just before reaching the tree line.
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A trip out to the GSF Explorer drill ship in the Gulf of Mexico; about halfway through the trip we encountered a waterspout, requiring the pilot to divert around it but giving us a spectacular view from (I’m guessing here) only about a mile away.
I’ve been up in this beastie to give the pilot directions around our farm so he knew where to spray. In this case he is applying fertiliser on a neighbour’s farm using a hopper slung underneath. The pilot has his own farm, one day there was something heavy in the way. The tractor was somewhere else, so he fired up the bird, hooked up a rope and moved the object a couple of metres out of the way.
I’ve done the tourist thing too a couple of times; the first time was a looky-see flight around Queenstown, the pilot did a couple of minor stunts which was neat (I was up front too), the next time it was just a straight shuttle flight to a river so we could raft back.
I dunno, ignorance and the fact that every news story of an engine failure of a rotary wing craft ends badly.
Losing an engine in a fixed wing plane turns it into a glider. I may get some weeds stuck in the wheel pants but I’m walking away.
I flew from Estonia to Finland in a helicopter - great fun!
During my stint at WJZ in Baltimore I rode backseat in a Bell Jet Ranger then an A-Star shooting news several hundred times over five years.
I do miss it.
Three old pics I found of Chopper 13 before it got painted:
Three pics of the competition’s helicopter
The Pilot’s Area of Chopper 11
The ENG Section of Chopper 11 (With Chopper 13 in the Background)
It wouldn’t be a news story if it didn’t end badly. Also power failures in fixed wing aircraft often end badly as well, normally due to mishandling by the pilot, same thing that will result in a bad ending to an autorotation.
I’ve seen the RNZAF display the Iroquois chopper. One of the tricks in their routine is to sit on the ground, cut the power to the rotor then lift off, do a 360 turn and gently land. All while the rotors are essentially windmilling.
Many larger helicopters have two engines so autorotation is less of a concern in those.
Losing an engine in a helicopter turns it into a glider. Only you need a much shorter runway to bring it down safely. In L.A. there aren’t many places to safely land a fixed-wing. (Up here there are a lot of trees and wetlands, but also many open fields. Good luck in Seattle though.) Touching down in a Cessna you’re moving at 40 knots or more. In a Robinson you’re touching down at about zero to five knots. I hope I never have a power failure, but if I do I’d rather be in a helicopter.
My first instructor, an ex-Flight Engineer on a Huey in Vietnam, told me that this was a common trick. UH-1s have a high-inertia rotor system, so they have a lot of energy stored up to perform that maneuver. Robinsons and Schweizer/Hughes have low-inertia rotor systems. In those machines it’s necessary to lower the collective right now or else you’ll lose rotor RPM.
But no fear, Magiver; in case of an engine failure you just enter autorotation and you glide down like you’re on rails. Flair about 40 feet up, level the skids about 8 feet up, pull collective to cushion the landing. Performed correctly it will feel just like a normal landing, especially if you have a little breeze. Personally, I love practicing autorotations. They’re fun! 
Here are some videos of helicopters autorotating:
Full-down, exterior and interior views
Full-down, interior view
Instructional video, R-22 interior and exterior views
Quick interior clip, Robinson
R-22, with 180º turn to power recovery
I can hear you thinking, 'That’s all very well. But they have altitude. What if you lose your engine close to the ground? :dubious: ’ Before you can solo a helicopter you have to successfully demonstrate emergency procedures. One of these is ‘autorotation from hover’. The scenario is this: You’ve just lifted off for your flight and are still in hover when your engine stops. In this case you add right pedal (to take away torque compensation from the torque that’s no longer there), let the aircraft settle, and pull collective to cushion the landing. Timing is important here. Wait too long to pull collective and you’ll land hard. Pull too early and you’ll run out of RPM before you’re on the ground. But once you get the hang of it, you can touch down as light as a feather.
Another exercise is the ‘quick stop’. In this maneuver you have transitioned from a hover to forward flight for your take-off. You’re zipping along at 40 knots or so and your engine quits. Same thing as an autorotation from altitude, only without the glide portion. Lower the collective, right pedal, aft cyclic, forward cyclic, up-collective, touchdown.
Here is a video showing some quick stops from inside an R22. Unfortunately there’s no audio, and if you’re not familiar with what’s going on it may not be useful. The quick stop is about a minute into the video, with a power recovery to hover.
Hueys and Chinooks. Over mountains and rice paddies.
I was in one back in 2005, I think. I went to Hawaii with my then boyfriend and took a tour around Pearl Harbor and what not. At first I was terrified that the blade was going to take off my head when I was going to get into it and once I got over how small it was, I rather enjoyed it.
Only to go offshore in the North Sea when I worked out of Norway.
The first time was fun after that being crammed in a tin can in a survival suit lost its appeal. I was usually asleep within 5 minutes of being in the air
Cool video’s. That’s what I would expect it to look like. Not sure why every news/rescue bird seems to auger into the ground when things go bad.
I didn’t see any windsocks but I would venture a 15 knot gust would make it interesting. Both a rotary and a fixed wind would benefit from a headwind. like you I enjoy engine-to-idle landings and actually prefer this as an SOP because it guarantees the proper engine management if the engine fails.
I disagree with your assessment about densely populated areas. Malls make great places to land because they usually have a back 40 where no one parks and the lights are wired underground. I would also rather land in dense woods in a fixed wing plane. But your video’s prove they can be landed safely.
I’ve been in a twin engine plane with an engine failure on take off and that got interesting. Probably would have preferred a helicopter in that instance given the problems of asymmetrical thrust and the drag of the other prop.
Been in these a few times.
I am not the world’s greatest flyer…sort of dread going up in the air for lots of reasons.
However, once on a business trip I was conned/forced into taking a helicopter ride over some mountains.
That was enough. To me, hovering in mid-air thousands of feet over a high mountain, covered with snow, was not a lot of fun. I think I described it to a friend later as the equivalent of “thumbing your nose to god”.
The only way you will ever get me in another helicopter is if I am in a coma in a stretcher.