Musings of a helo driver

Musings of a helo driver...
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 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
airplane, 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 ship 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 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 autorotations 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.