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Helicopter pilots


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Many years ago I worked for Digital Equipment Corporation, when I joined it was #7 in the computer industry, after IBM and the BUNCH companies, Burroughs, Univac, NCR, Control Data, and Honeywell. Because IBM always targeted #2, it would be many years before DEC WOULD HAVE TROUBLE.

 

anyway DEC had a helicopter Air Force. The primary purpose was meetings between software and hardware engineers. This was before video conferencing. They also took us (engineers) to airports with luggage to meet flights, and met us to go home. It was great, flying at 120mph over a jammed Storrow Drive.

 

Every location had a helipad.  Dec also had a few fixed wing aircraft but our permit for an airstrip was denied because the aircrafts path would be over a school.

 

requirement for hiring was 5000 hours piloting a chopper. We had Bell Jets, I don’t know any numbers.  All of our pilots were Vietnam veterans.

 

so it came to pass that there was an accident. Lunchtime in Merrimack, NH, the chopper took off, experiences a problem and auto rotated into the pond behind MK1. Most buildings had an artificially created pond in case of fire.  So the Bell Jet lands in maybe 4 feet of water. The passengers jump into the water and walk to shore. The pilot stays on the aircraft.

 

later we learn that the pilot was second in experience in the DEC Air Force and was the pilot who gave the autorotate tests to other pilots, required annually (or maybe every six months). The pilot quit his job because he never had to come down in water before and can’t swim.

 

another story, he was my neighbor and borrowed my tire inflator and broke it...  ((((

 

oohh,cafeteria for 1000,  4000 people swear they saw it.

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You’re lucky it hit the pond. Auto-rotation landings can be....somewhat jarring. Don’t ask.

And what’s MK1?

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If I was autorotating, water would be one of my last choices unless no other decent terrain.  Water adds an entirely new element to an already high pucker  factor situation.  If it was over his head he’s not exiting the aircraft until the blades stop, and then throw in rolling over and trying to unbuckle.

 

I personally loved the high speed low altitude autos, those were fun coming in over the trees and skidding down the runway.  

 

What i I hated was hovering at say 2 or 3 thousand feet in a single engine. That feels so wrong.  Same thing in a twin is fine.

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3 hours ago, Utah Bob #35998 said:

You’re lucky it hit the pond. Auto-rotation landings can be....somewhat jarring. Don’t ask.

And what’s MK1?

Ahhhh, sorry. Each site had a two letter & digit designation, e.g., Merrimack was MK1 & MK2.

 

as he had just taken off and had been in the air only a few seconds, I think he did not have a lot of options. The pond was artificial and less than an acre. I don’t think he knew how shallow it was. The rest of the site had been deep woods before the buildings and roads had been put in.

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Any landing that everybody walks away from is a good landing. Reusing the aircraft is a bonus. Sounds like he made a good landing. 

 

Me not knowing the specific area but having flown some urban environments, I’d say he made the best of a very bad situation. Urban takeoffs tend to be more vertical than when taking off from an open airstrip. High torque with little forward airspeed and not much altitude to play with. Precisely not the conditions to enter autorotation. 

 

As JD said, practice auto rotations are actually a lot of fun. Gratefully I never had to implement that part of my training. 

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A guy in my unit forgot to open the fuel switch shut off prior to takeoff on an OH-58.  It supplied enough fuel yet for him to start up and get a few hundred feet up....then it stopped.  He  executed a perfect landing, no damage except to his pride.

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Whenever the discussion of helicopter pilots comes up, I'm always reminded of this quote:

 

Quote

"The thing is, helicopters are different from planes. An airplane by its very 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 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."

Harry Reasoner

February 16, 1971

 

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5 minutes ago, DocWard said:

Whenever the discussion of helicopter pilots comes up, I'm always reminded of this quote:

 

 

Non-rotor-heads will never know how true that statement is. My undergrad degree was aero engineering, specializing in helo design. Sometimes it brought me little comfort knowing the full forces and vibrations being projected on the Huey’s “Jesus nut” while I was at the controls. 

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14 minutes ago, Charlie Harley, #14153 said:

Non-rotor-heads will never know how true that statement is. My undergrad degree was aero engineering, specializing in helo design. Sometimes it brought me little comfort knowing the full forces and vibrations being projected on the Huey’s “Jesus nut” while I was at the controls. 

 

I have no doubt! I won't pretend to understand all the physics, but I first got a rather complete explanation of the workings of a Huey by a guy that flew them in the latter stage of the Vietnam War, and was still working on them in the Texas Army National Guard in the late 80s. This was minutes before going up in one. Still, the excitement of flying in one for the first time overshadowed all of that. I also have a friend that recently retired as a Warrant Officer flying Blackhawks who would occasionally elaborate on such things.

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As a young boy my thought upon seeing my first helicopter was, “this flies?”

That thought has stayed with me.

Our patrol chopper pilot, upon setting down each time, would get on the intercom and say, “Cheated death once again”. :lol:

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Take offs are optional...landings are mandatory.

 

02-14 for myself at wonderfully hot and humid Rucker.  OH58s for a while then Ah64A.  I was in the middle of a ton of transition...even started medevac training and BH simulators when we were gonna get those....only constant was change.

 

 

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I have the utmost admiration and respect for helo pilots, but I never had the desire to be one. An airplane flies by formulas and scientific and mathematical reasoning. You can prove that an airplane can fly. There is no proof that a helo will fly. It does so by accident, black magic and mirrors. A lot of airplane designs came from birds, especially raptors. I know of no bird on the earth that flies by flopping its wing over its head. An old cliche; helos don't fly; they screw themselves through the air.

 

PF

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I got through all the pre tests for flight school and then after the physical they said my eyes were sub standard. “You got the myopia, dude”, they told me. Meh.

:angry:

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Some of you may be familiar with the poem High Flight , by John Magee, an American flying with the RAF in WW2. This is a satire adapted for helicopters

 

Low flight

by Anonymous

 

Oh, I've slipped the surly bonds of earth
And hovered out of ground effect on semi-rigid blades;
Earthward I've auto'ed and met the rising brush of
Non-paved terrain;
And done a thousand things you would never care to
Skidded and dropped and flared
Low in the heat-soaked roar.
Confined there, I've chased the earthbound traffic
And lost the race to insignificant headwinds;
Forward and up a little in ground effect
I've topped the General's hedge with drooping turns
Where never Skyhawk or even Phantom flew.
Shaking and pulling collective, I've lumbered
The low untrespassed halls of victor airways,
Put out my hand and touched a tree.

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