ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area Ever been in a Helicopter?

There is absolutely no way at all that a chopper could attain speeds like that.
Helicopters can attain a high speed with Gas Turbine engines, however a super-sonic speed is just Hollywood.
Look at how a chopper achieves lift, it would have to have the rotors spinning at 300,000 rpm to achieve that, if it could be attained.
Nice eh?.

I have been a passenger in a CH-47 Chinook helicopter. We used it in the Army to sling load towed howitzers. Can be dangerous if you are the guy that has to grab the sling on the bottom of the bird, braided steel cable, lots of static charge from the rotors. Glad I was sitting inside .

Yep, got to ride one to Catalina to take care of an emergency call at the Avalon Theatre (See the Electrical Nostalgia threads) with the Xetron Console.

From Long Beach, short hop to San Pedro to pick up one more passenger, then on to Avalon. Total trip was about 22 minutes, cruising fairly low above the water! What a rush!

Too bad it cost 4 times what the boat costs. I'd rather fly over than get seasick.

'Course, it doesn't even come close to the backseat hop I got in an F-4 Phantom whilst in the CAL. ANG. Ever flown 300 feet above the ground at 600+ mph? Dare say better than sex....

I got one of those 5 minute sight seeing rides in a Jet Ranger in '89. I always wanted to get my rotarcraft rating but it was too pricy. While my fixed wing was costing $36/hr for a C152 wet and $18/hr for the instruction, an R-22 was $125/hr in 10 hour blocks and the instruction was $25/hr. I always wanted to jump out of one and a hot air balloon too but haven't gotten the chance. I guess you really feel like you're falling on exit since you don't have initial forward airspeed to work with. One time, I could've gotten a slot on a balloon lift if I had gotten my rig packed 5 minutes sooner.
Joe

While in the service I was around helicopters alot. (Often 20-30' off the runway as airfield lighting support*) But I have been in the CH-53D/E, and CH-46E.
I was told NEVER get on one that was not leaking, that means it is out of hydraulic fluid. And no, I have not been on this particular one...


I have seen these guys in two wrecks where I thought no one could have survived, yet no one was hurt. Knock on wood... Both turning with heavy unweildy loads suspended under them. One caught a fence with a shipping container with 20 guys on board. Hit the ground and rolled like a ball, everyone walked off with minor injurys.

* That said, I have seen 30 or so "Hard landings" while being so close to active airfields. My job for a major portion of my enlistment was airfield support. Runway and taxi lighting, fed by generators in a shed ~20' off the runways in Camp Pen, and Mogasishu. Pilots are often jokers by nature, and would often buzz my shack for fun and games. Cobras and Hueys have knocked over the crapper, one time almost with me in it, until I popped open the door and flipped them off. Ch-53's have torn up lighting, knocked over 60Kw gennies and other equipment. And once nearly killed me, by flying 15' off the deck next to a closed runway I was working on. To escape the rotor wash of loose gravel, I jumped in my van, and got the door ripped off. 2 years after I was out, an insurance agency came after me for the incident.

Anyway I have been on 53's and 46's for short hops, and one time got the oprotunity to spyrig from a 53 around a portion of Okinawa, and that was prohably the coolest thing I have ever done. 6-10 guys hanging from the bottom of the helo, probhably the closest thing to human flight.

[This message has been edited by e57 (edited 01-16-2006).]

Just curious; why can't you fly a helicopter supersonic?

Alan

In order to fly, a typical helicopter turning its blades has whichever blade is spinning 'forward' travelling through the air faster than the aircraft is flying since it needs to keep circling the main shaft. As you get faster and faster, the end of that blade will ALREADY be going supersonic at its end. The shock wave from that blade's tip breaking the sound barrier will damage the aircraft. The speed of sound is about 1100 feet per second, which was a problem with some of the WW2 bombers. If the tips of their propellers went supersonic, the resulting turbulance affected the wing and the rest of the plane. Using a rotor, the theoretical maximum speed for helicopters is just over 250 mph.
The way that Hollywood got around that little detail was explained in the pilot episode. The rotor disengaged and the aircraft was powered by the 'Turbos' in the engine exhaust pushing it. The lift was developed owing to the fuselage being shaped as a 'lifting body', much the same way that some of NASA's research ships were made to fly without anything resembling wings.
BTW, the world record for the fastest helicopter is 249.1 mph.

I flew in a tourist 'copter over Sydney in 2001. Enjoyable, but LOUD. They sure enjoy showing off the bridge and the opera house. We were pretty close (just above) to the rooftops of the tall buildings downtown. That was cool.

Airwolf was cool, but yes too much "hollywood". A favorite show of mine. I liked when they were entering and exiting the 'copter when it hovered a few feet from the ground. The woosh when they opened and closed the door was hokey.

Airwolf useless trivia:
Needed FAA permisson to fly with guns exposed.
Guns "fired" using bursts of propane ignited by sparkplugs. If you look close you can see the plugs when they show the stock footage of guns extending.

I've been in Bell Jet Rangers, a Huey kind of thing etc. and they all feel like wiggling, wobbling rattle-traps compared with what I think they should be. SCARY! The big one I flew in had some kind of fuel leaking all over the place, stinking like you wouldn't believe, and boy did I have a headache before I got fresh air!

I took my Australian Shepherd/Blue Heeler up in a helicopter once, we both enjoyed that, even though I knew we were flying around in a potato, which has all the flight characteristics of a potato if the engine sputters.

Helicopters are cool, I love them, they are so versatile and irreplaceable, but flying in them puts you on edge if you're not the pilot.

I've done stunts with helicopters involved.

A couple of my friends have crashed them hard. One of them shattered his lower legs. The chopper was on top of a cliff when he took off and flew out over the water to beat an approaching fog bank, then the engine sputtered, and he turned around and tried to get back to the top of the cliff. He hit a thick wire that was hanging from the lights on a boom truck and then crashed in a nose down attitude, then the helicopter fell on its side. The passenger went face down in the JP4 jet fuel, breathing in the fumes for some time before he was pulled out. Some first trip in a helicopter, huh? He won a coin toss to get to take that ride. He died a week later because of the jet fuel he inhaled. I believe it was liver failure.

My friend's legs required 57 pieces of titanium to reassemble. He's a tough man, I never heard him complain about the pain. He healed up and flew again, still does to this day.

Don't forget to friction down the collective!

Joe, my ride was a full training mission, dropping bombs and firing the 20mm at the range. (The bombs are 25lb. practice ordinance, they have a spotting charge that lets a big cloud of smoke. They have the "drop" characteristics of a 500lb Mk82 slick bomb.)

We did 6 bomb passes, two each of low-level {300!ft @600mph}; 20 degree pop and 30 degree pop plus three passes at the gun pit. Total flight time was 1.2 hours.

The accelerometer bugs were at +6.5 and -4.5 at the end of the mission. And I can tell you those weren't 'one-time' peaks!!

I discovered several things on that flight:

1: Pilots are all crazy;
2: It is possible to kiss one's own...knees. (I had my head down during a high-g turn.)
3: Your first high-g experience will reveal that you can sweat from areas you thought couldn't;
4: The cockpit air conditioning WILL cut off during combat flight, and will resume full-cold once you get to cruise altitude, turning you into a popsicle;
5: Jenny Craig has nothing on a good combat flight on weight loss, I lost 6(!)lbs, all in sweat;
6: It's true that you don't get into a fighter jet, you wear it!!; and
7: They're a lot of fun to fly and take a surprisingly light touch to control.

Best of all, since I was training for my pilot's license, and the pilot who flew me was a rated instructor in the Phantom, I got to log the 1.2 hours in my logbook as "multi-engine jet,.5 as pilot in command."