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HELICOPTERS & PILOTS Back to Newsletter Home
I received this
from one of my Marine pilots I used to fly with at China Lake in the 70's. I
like this one and there is no way I could sum it any better! Oh to be flying low and fast with guns and rockets firing! Those were the days! Charlie
Cass HELICOPTERS & PILOTS This is an oldie, but worth repeating. Of course the newer pilots that have no experience in maintaining R.P.M. and manifold pressure manually won't have an inkling of an idea of what some of this is about. Their loss! Helicopter flight: A bunch of spare parts flying in close formation. Anything that screws its way into the sky flies according to unnatural principals. You never want to sneak up behind an old, high-time helicopter pilot and clap your hands. He will instantly dive for cover and most likely whimper...then get up and smack the shit out of you.
There are no old
helicopters laying around airports like you see old airplanes. There is a reason
for this. Come to think of it, there are not many old, high-time helicopter
pilots hanging around airports either so the first issue is problematic. Remember in a helicopter you have about 1 second to lower the collective in an engine failure before the craft becomes unrecoverable. Once you've failed this maneuver the machine flies about as well as a 20 case Coke machine. Even a perfectly executed autorotation only gives you a glide ratio slightly better than that of a brick. 180 degree auto rotations are a violent and aerobatic maneuver in my opinion and should be avoided. When your wings are leading, lagging, flapping, precessing and moving faster than your fuselage there's something unnatural going on. Is this the way men were meant to fly? While hovering, if you start to sink a bit, you pull up on the collective while twisting the throttle, push with your left foot (more torque) and move the stick left (more translating tendency) to hold your spot. If you now need to stop rising, you do the opposite in that order. Sometimes in wind you do this many times each second. Don't you think that's a strange way to fly? For Helicopters: You never want to feel a sinking feeling in your gut (low "g" pushover) while flying a two bladed under slung teetering rotor system. You are about to do a snap-roll to the right and crash. For that matter, any remotely aerobatic maneuver should be avoided in a Huey. Don't push your luck. It will run out soon enough anyway. If everything is working fine on your helicopter consider yourself temporarily lucky. Something is about to break. Harry Reasoner once wrote the following about helicopter pilots: "The thing is, helicopters are different from planes. An airplane by its nature wants to fly, and if not interfered with too strongly by unusual events or by an incompetent pilot, it will fly. 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. There is no such thing as a gliding helicopter. This is why being a helicopter pilot is so different from being an airplane pilot, and why in generality, airplane pilots are open, clear-eyed, buoyant extroverts and Helicopter pilots are brooding introspective anticipators of trouble. They know if something bad has not happened, it is about to." Having said all this, I must admit that flying in a helicopter is one of the most satisfying and exhilarating experiences I have ever enjoyed: skimming over the tops of trees at 100 knots is something we should all be able to do at least once. And remember the fighter pilot's prayer: "Lord I pray for the eyes of an eagle, the heart of a lion and the balls of a combat helicopter pilot." Many years later I know that it was sometimes anything but fun, but now it IS something to brag about for those of us who survived the experience. |