On Wednesday 20 April 2005 05:18, Jerry Feldman wrote:
On Tuesday 19 April 2005 9:38 am, Colin Carter wrote:
It must have been great fun to fly Hueys, but the object behind flying such machines must have dampened your spirit at times. I write software which reads flight data recorders so I know a little about a/c, but not so much about helicopters. Too difficult to predict!
It was great fun. Didn't like getting shot at, but that came with the job.
When Leonardo DaVincie invented the helicopter, he then decided there was no way it can fly. Take gyroscopic precession. If you exert a downward force on the front of the rotor disk, the aircraft will tilt toward the left (90 degrees in the plane of rotation). So, all the controls are set up to exert their force 90 degrees ahead of the plane of rotation.
This is interesting. I know about gyroscopes, but hadn't thought about it in the sense of controlling helicopters. To move forward I imagine that the rotor plane would have to lower itself at the front (true?), in which case the force (as you mentioned at 9o deg) would have to cause a little roll of the fuselage, albeit very slight. Is this true?
In a fixed wing aircraft, if you go too slow the airfoil will stall causing you to lose lift. In a helicopter, if you go too fast, the rearward rotor blade will stall, and you will crash and burn.
I hadn't thought about that; I guess it would be much like one racing yacht "stealing" the breeze from another. I don't think I'd be very good in a helicopter: I get sea sick; not at all if the vessel is ploughing through very rough water at speed - rather when the boat has a very gentle sway/roll in almost calm waters.
Jerry Feldman
Boston Linux and Unix user group http://www.blu.org PGP key id:C5061EA9 PGP Key fingerprint:053C 73EC 3AC1 5C44 3E14 9245 FB00 3ED5 C506 1EA9
Regards, Colin