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Musings of an unknown Helicopter Pilot


Anything that screws its way into the sky flies according to unnatural
principles. 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 smack 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.

You can always tell a helicopter pilot in anything moving, a train, an
aeroplane, a car or a boat. They never smile, they are always listening to the machine and they always hear something they think is not right.

Helicopter pilots fly in a mode of intensity, actually more like
"spring loaded", while waiting for pieces of their machine to fall off.

Flying a helicopter at any altitude over 500 feet is considered reckless and
should be avoided. Flying a helicopter at any altitude or condition
that precludes a landing in less than 20 seconds is considered outright foolhardy.

Remember in a helicopter you have about 1 second to lower the collective in
an engine failure before it becomes unrecoverable. Once you've failed this
manoeuvre 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 autorotations are a violent and aerobatic
manoeuvre 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 e about to do a snap-roll to the right and crash.

For that matter, any remotely aerobatic manoeuvre 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.

Way back while I was flying Huey gunships in Vietnam, Harry Reasoner
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 a deliberately 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 general, 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 will also tell you that flying in a helicopter is one
of the most satisfying and exhilarating experiences I have ever enjoyed.
What I miss most is skimming over the trees at 100 knots in a light
observation helicopter.

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.

Basic Helicopter Flying Rules:

1. Try to stay in the middle of the air.

2. Do not go near the edges of it.

3. The edges of the air can be recognized by the appearance of ground,
buildings, sea, trees and interstellar space. It is much more
difficult to fly there.

By: Unknown

__________________
Semper in excretum. Solum profunda variat.

Injecteer

a nice opinion