Although flying a helicopter
may seem very difficult, the truth is that if you can
drive a car, you can, with just a few minutes of
instruction, take the controls of one of these
amazing machines.
Of course, you would
immediately crash and die. This is why you need to
remember :
RULE ONE OF HELICOPTER
PILOTING :
Always have somebody sitting right next to you who
actually knows how to fly the helicopter and can
snatch the controls away from you because the truth
is that helicopters are nothing at all like cars.
Cars work because of basic scientific principles that
everybody understands, such as internal combustion,
and parallel parking. Whereas scientists still have
no idea what holds helicopters up.
"Whatever it is, it could stop at any
moment," is their current feeling. This leads us
to :
RULE TWO OF HELICOPTER
PILOTING :
Maybe you should forget the intire thing.
This is what I was thinking
recently as I stood outside a small airport in South
Florida where I was about to take my first helicopter
lesson. This was not my idea. This was the idea of
Pam Gallina-Raissiguer, a pilot who flies radio
reporters over Miami during rush hour so they can
alert drivers to traffic problems.
I began having severe doubts when I saw Pam's
helicopter. This was a small helicopter. It looked
like it should have a little slot where you insert
quarters to make it go up and down. I knew that if we
got airborne in a helicopter this size in South
Florida, some of our larger tropical flying insects
could very well attempt to mate with us.
Also, this helicopter had no
doors. As a Frequent Flyer, I know for a fact that
all your leading United States airlines, despite
being bankrupt, maintain a strict safety policy of
having doors on their aircraft.
"Don't we need a larger
helicopter?" I asked Pam, "with
doors?"
"Get in," said Pam.
Now we're in the helicopter and
Pam is explaining the controls to me over the
headset. But there's static and the engine is making
a lot of noise.
"........your throttle
[something]," she is saying. "This is your
cyclic and [something] your collective".
"What?" I say.
"[something] give you the controls when we reach
130 metres," Pam says.
"WHAT?", I say.
But Pam is not listening. She
is moving a control thing and WHOOAA we are off the
ground, hovering, and now, WHOOOOOAAAA, we are
shooting up in the air, and there are still no doors
on this particular helicopter.
Now Pam is giving me the main
control thing.
RULE THREE OF HELICOPTER
PILOTING :
If anyone tries to give you the main control thing,
refuse to take it!
Pam says : "You don't need
hardly any pressure to ........"
AIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
"Now that was too much
pressure," Pam says.
Now I am flying the helicopter.
I AM FLYING THE HELICOPTER. I am flying it by not
moving a single body part for fear of jiggling the
control thing. I look like the Lincoln Memorial
Statue of Abraham Lincoln, only more rigid.
"Make a right turn,"
Pam is saying.
I gingerly move the control
thing one zillionth of an inch to the right and the
helicopter LEANS OVER TOWARDS MY SIDE AND THERE IS
STILL NO DOOR HERE. I instantly move the thing one
zillionth of an inch back.
"I'm not turning
right," I inform Pam.
"What?" she says.
"Only left turns," I tell her. When you've
been flying helicopters as long as I have, you know
your limits.
After a while it becomes clear
to Pam that if she continues to allow the Lincoln
Statue to pilot the helicopter, we are going to wind
up flying in a straight line until we run out of
fuel, possibly over Antartica, so she takes the
control thing back. That is the good news. The bad
news is she is now saying something about
demonstrating an "emergency proceedure".
"It's for when your engine
dies," says Pam
"It's called auto-rotation. Do you like
amusement park rides?"
I say, "No, I
DOOOOOOO............."
RULE FOUR OF HELICOPTER
PILOTING :
Auto-rotation means "coming down out of the sky
at about the same speed and aerodynamic stability as
that of a forklift dropped from a bomber."
Now we're close to the ground (although my stomach is
still at 130 meters) and Pam is completing my
training by having me hover the helicopter.
RULE FIVE OF HELICOPTER
PILOTING :
You can't hover the helicopter.
The idea is to hang over one
spot on the ground. I am hovering over an area about
the size of Australia. I am swooping around like a
crazed bumblebee. If I were trying to rescue a person
from the roof of a 100 storey burning building, the
person would realise that it would be safer to simply
jump. At times I think I am hovering upside down.
Even Pam looks nervous.
So I am very happy when we
finally get back on the ground. Pam tells me I did
great and she'd be glad to take me up again. I tell
her that sounds like a fun idea.
RULE SIX OF HELICOPTER
PILOTING :
Sometimes you have to lie.
Northern Helicopter Modellers Club N.Z