Re: Got lucky at the drive thru

On Sun, 13 Apr 2025 15:04:07 +0000, Dave Smith wrote:

On 2025-04-13 10:44 a.m., Mike Duffy wrote:

On 2025-04-13, Cindy Hamilton wrote:
>

Helicopter accidents are notoriously difficult
to walk away from. They don't glide very well.

>
Very true. Moreover, even if the guy reads the book
and resolves to keep it to running speed & jump-down
height until he has overcome the well-known universal
tendency of beginners to overcompensate stick movements,
without practical guidance or simulation, self-learning
has never been accomplished.

>
My friend is a retired airline pilot with more than 30,000 hours of
flight time.  He has flown hundreds of different  aircraft from single
engine  to 777s. He had no interest in helicopters. It didn't help that
in his early days as a commercial pilot he  had a friend who was a
helicopter pilot.  He once watched as his friend took off. He went up
about 20-30 feet and then suddenly dropped back down. No serious
injuries but it was a scary thing to see.

>
After initial failures of the first helicopters built
by Sikorsky, the engineers build a sort of 'jig'
instead of landing gear that only allowed a few
feet of movement in all 'degrees of freedom' so that
incipient pilots could just practice hovering.
>
It was also on a sort of pedestal to allow for
maximal blade excursions from horizontal.
>
If it were me, I'd shop around for a military model
with a cabin parachute. Auto-rotation without simulation
or guidance would seem to be more dangerous to practice
than the likelyhood it might prevent a safe landing.
>

>
One of my childhood friends went to the US in the 60s to join the army
and became a helicopter pilot. Apparently he went to Vietnam. He may
have been inspired by another neighbour who started up a helicopter
business in the late 50s when helicopters were pretty much restricted to
the military. We lived in a small subdivison that was surrounded by
farmland. On weekends they guy would land in thee field closest to his
house and take people up for rides. IIRC it was $5 a head which was
about twice as much as I made in a week from my paper route. He went on
to open up the first helicopter tour company in Niagara Falls.

A helicopter is a vehicle with thousand of parts trying to rip itself
apart. I think a drone type of configuration would be much safer. I
guess we'll find out if this is true.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUfxXZdWr3g