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Flying backwards causes gyrations?
I recall hearing mention of something like this before. While doing a
simulation, probably moving backwards, the helicopter tale began swaying back and forth uncontrollably. Is that the way it is in real life? How do you get out of that? Avoid moving backwards? Besides trying to tilt the chopper forwards, is there anything to do when the gyrations first began? When gyrations become extreme, is there any way out? I suppose structural damage is possible? Thank you. |
#2
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When flying backwards you have horizonal and vertical tail surfaces
flying backwards. As long as they are aligned perfectly into the relative wind every thing is ok, however this is not a stable condition. They want to fly BEHIND the aircraft. When a slight offset occurs it will get larger fast as the tail tries to turn around so that it is again behind the helicopter which is stable. If you do the pedal dance correctly you can keep the error small and you will have enough tail rotor power to keep the tail pointing into the wind. If you screw up and let the error get too large the tail will come all the way around because there is not enough tail rotor power to stop the turn. The worse problem occurs when the tail tries to go up or down to realign. This will force the tail into the dirt or the sky, both are bad. If the tail goes up it may lead to a tail boom strike by the main rotor. If down the tail rotor eats dirt. John On Sat, 15 Jan 2005 04:33:16 GMT, John Doe wrote: I recall hearing mention of something like this before. While doing a simulation, probably moving backwards, the helicopter tale began swaying back and forth uncontrollably. Is that the way it is in real life? How do you get out of that? Avoid moving backwards? Besides trying to tilt the chopper forwards, is there anything to do when the gyrations first began? When gyrations become extreme, is there any way out? I suppose structural damage is possible? Thank you. |
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#4
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"John Doe" wrote in message ... Thanks. For what it's worth, I am using Microsoft's Flight Simulator 2004 stock helicopters. It's broken. Real helicopters don't oscilate from a point ten yards behind the tail as soon as you slow up (you don't even have to be going backwards for it to start doing that). MSFS doesn't model helicopters. Try X-Plane which is a thousand times closer to the real thing (but still some way to go). Regards Andrew |
#5
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Not a computer guy, but I would think Microsoft is basing the helicopter
program on their fixed-wing with minor differences. Of course the programmers never have to worry about airplanes flying backwards so they don't model the program for that. For what it's worth, in real life there is very little need to fly a helicopter backwards at any speed. Would you drive your car in reverse at 40 mph? I would'nt do that with my helicopter either. Military ops excluded of course. Just for the heck of it, I have taken an S-76 sim at FlightSafety backwards at high speed. Made me nauseous! |
#7
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"John Doe" wrote in message
... Thanks. For what it's worth, I am using Microsoft's Flight Simulator 2004 stock helicopters. Download the AS350 from AvSim.com. It's a lot more convincing than either of the stock helicopters, and can be flown backwards a little easier. Certainly more forgiving than the B206 and it has nice turbine start-up and shutdown operation. There's a good AS365 on there too but I find it a bit too flighty. I had a weird experience "flying" the AS350 the other day. I figured since it's got a nice composite rotor head I'd try and loop it. First attemp I dived down, maintaining a +ve G and pulled back, rolling off the collective as it went inverted and I made it. Second attempt I lost airspeed and it fell... upwards!! In about a 5 minutes I was at 100k feet and zero G. Isn't it about time the real world built helicopters like Microsoft can model them? Imagine the fun to be had! (Oh, and if you tire of drilling holes in the floor with your tail rotor, for kicks take a look at the "Firefox" model at either AvSim or www.thinkinrussian.org. ) Si |
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