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.

"JD" wrote in message
news:Fjv_b.109833$jk2.486102@attbi_s53...
Musings of a helo driver...

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.

My brother reached the opposite conclusion. He was putzing along one day in
a Schweizer 300C at low altitude over the tree covered landscape of central
New York when he had an epiphany-- "I am flying along at low altitude in a
recip engine helo, and if I have an engine failure I lack enough altitude to
give me any options as to where I can set it down; I am too old to have to
try and dump one into the trees and try to walk away from it." Up he went.
Former Vietnam Dustoff pilot, served as the maintenance test pilot for his
unit overseas, also qualified in fixed wing with multi-engine and instructor
ratings, even had his glider license. Did a fair amount of test pilot duty
for his employer on new aircraft. He had already experienced his share of
bad-things-that-can-happen-in-the-air, including being shot down once and
having another pilot he was checking out on a 300C blow an autorotation and
lay it on its side.

Brooks

snip other interesting stuff

"JD" wrote in message
news:Fjv_b.109833$jk2.486102@attbi_s53...
Musings of a helo driver...

Hi there JD, I was wondering if you could help me out. I've got to give an
after dinner speech next Wednesday and our new boss is a chopper pilot - any
ideas that'll hit home?

I suppose I could rely on my sharp wit and quick humour - hang on, what am I
thinking?!

Slightly confused an open to any suggestions,

Jim Doyle

Thanks for the post and I would agree to all of it. They are also a bunch of
fun to ride in the back - the view from a doorway booming along over a jungle
canopy or wandering around the skies over Disneyland are some that I consider
priceless.

v/r
Gordon
lifetime fan of Charlie Kaman's Electric Guitar and Naval Helicopter Factory +
Uncle Igor's fine line of hovering products

From an old VN War army aviation parody of Sadler's Ballad of the Green Beret:

Silver wings upon my chest
I fly my chopper above the best
I can make more dough that way
But I can't wear no Green Beret.

"JD" wrote in message
news:ntU_b.386317$I06.4214325@attbi_s01...
Jim, I have to confess I'm a fixed wing (P-3) person. I've always
thought
of helicopters as a figment of my imagination. A figment here and a
figment there....... I got the comments from a rotor-head friend that
actually does fly the damn things. Were I you, I'd just take comments
from
the post.

Best JD


Cheers for that JD,

Jim

In article ntU_b.386317$I06.4214325@attbi_s01, "JD"
wrote:

Jim, I have to confess I'm a fixed wing (P-3) person. I've always
thought
of helicopters as a figment of my imagination. A figment here and a
figment there....... I got the comments from a rotor-head friend that
actually does fly the damn things. Were I you, I'd just take comments
from
the post.

Best JD



In the late sixties, I worked for the Human Resources Research Office
(HumRRO), an Army contract research center. They concentrated on things
like selection criteria for various specialties, training, etc.,
although there were a few bizarre projects like a Viet Nam village
pacification questionnaire. The latter was intended for villagers, but
graduate students in social science that tested it had trouble answering
the questions.

Anyway, one of our studies was a retrospective look at the personality
traits that were associated with respected combat helo drivers. I
remember looking at some of the results and was reminded of the old
saying about people you want to keep in a freezer until a war breaks out.

The questionnaire given to the selected pilots was in the form of
"Did you ever do XXX?" (typically as an adolescent)
"If you did do XXX, did you like it?"

IIRC, 30% had jumped off garages or other roofs at least one story high.
Of the jumpers, 70% liked it. A smaller subset got into knife fights,
but again, an appreciable percentage liked it.

Our impression was that the ideal candidate was somebody that was enough
of an adrenaline junkie to REALLY SCARE fighter pilots if the fighter
types got to know them. :-)

IIRC, 30% had jumped off garages or other roofs at least one story high.

Guilty. Balconies too. '

Of the jumpers, 70% liked it.

Well, i don't know about _liked_ it. Was a bit fun.

A smaller subset got into knife fights,
but again, an appreciable percentage liked it.

knife *fight* was good enough for me - those things hurt!

Our impression was that the ideal candidate was somebody that was enough
of an adrenaline junkie to REALLY SCARE fighter pilots if the fighter
types got to know them.

naaaa. similar personality type but with less of an 'air of superiority'.

I flew with some really fine helo pilots and only a fraction of a percent were
what I would consider introspective - for the most part, these were guys that
were rather normal on the ground except in their choices of entertainment.
mental image of a line of 14 armed men all unloading rather large magazines
into a lake, for no reason other than 1 of them started the process...

v/r
Gordon
PS, one of the things I noticed about helo drivers is that 90% bit their nails.
Odd little factoid, but after a few years on helos, I started looking at
pilots hands and with few exceptions, this was a common trait.
====(A+C====
USN SAR

Donate your memories - write a note on the back and send your old photos to a
reputable museum, don't take them with you when you're gone.

On Wed, 25 Feb 2004 14:03:05 -0500, Howard Berkowitz
wrote:

In the late sixties, I worked for the Human Resources Research Office
(HumRRO), an Army contract research center. They concentrated on things
like selection criteria for various specialties, training, etc.,
although there were a few bizarre projects like a Viet Nam village
pacification questionnaire. The latter was intended for villagers, but
graduate students in social science that tested it had trouble answering
the questions.

Anyway, one of our studies was a retrospective look at the personality
traits that were associated with respected combat helo drivers. I
remember looking at some of the results and was reminded of the old
saying about people you want to keep in a freezer until a war breaks out.

The questionnaire given to the selected pilots was in the form of
"Did you ever do XXX?" (typically as an adolescent)
"If you did do XXX, did you like it?"

IIRC, 30% had jumped off garages or other roofs at least one story high.
Of the jumpers, 70% liked it. A smaller subset got into knife fights,
but again, an appreciable percentage liked it.

Our impression was that the ideal candidate was somebody that was enough
of an adrenaline junkie to REALLY SCARE fighter pilots if the fighter
types got to know them. :-)

And tellingly, the U.S. Army RIFed out warrant officer helicopter
pilots by the score after the war was over, and by 1976 had a pilot
shortage. They then cranked up the WOC flight program again,
simultaneously still RIFfing out Vietnam-era warrants well into 1977.

John Hairell )