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How does a helicopter rotate?
Unlike airplanes, helicopters feature spinning wings called blades or rotors on top. As a helicopter’s blades spin, they create a force called lift that allows the helicopter to rise into the air. The rear rotor can face different directions, allowing the helicopter to move forward, backward, and sideways.
How do helicopters climb?
In forward flight, a helicopter’s flight controls behave more like those in a fixed-wing aircraft. Moving the cyclic forward makes the nose pitch down, thus losing altitude and increasing airspeed. Moving the cyclic back makes the nose pitch up, slowing the helicopter and making it climb.
How do helicopters navigate?
Helicopters operate under ‘Visual Flight Rules’ (VFR). This means that they have to be able to visually determine their position by reference to the ground or water at regular intervals. Helicopters used by the AAD in Antarctica use ‘dead reckoning’ as the primary form of navigation.
How do they put helicopters in hangars?
The most common method is an actual platform dolly, a sort of mobil helipad which is basically a flatbed trailer with manual brakes that the helicopter lands on, is stored on, and takes off from. The entire unit is then towed back into the hangar.
How do helicopters roll?
Helicopters turn in a manner analogous to that of an airplane. In forward flight, the cyclic stick (between the pilot’s legs) is pushed slightly in the direction of the desired turn, causing the rotor disc to tilt, just as the wings of an airplane are tilted in a banked turn.
How do Heli rotors work?
Through a series of control rods or actuators, the cyclic causes the swash plate to change the pitch of the blades of the rotor, depending on the position of the blade in its cycle. To turn the heli, more lift is needed on the outside of the turn than on the inside.
How do you adjust the blades on a helicopter?
When the pilot moves the collective one way, both swash plates move upward, pushing up on the pitch links that tilt the rotor blades to a steeper angle. Moving the collective the other way moves the swash plates back down, pulling on the pitch links and tilting the blades to a shallower angle.
How do helicopters turn?
In hovering flight, the helicopter pilot turns the helicopter by use of the anti-torque pedals, which control the yaw axis of the aircraft. And indeed, one can “turn” a helicopter during a flight without initiating it with horizontal movement of the cyclic.
How does the collective work on a helicopter?
When the pilot moves the collective one way, both swash plates move upward, pushing up on the pitch links that tilt the rotor blades to a steeper angle. Moving the collective the other way moves the swash plates back down, which pulls on the pitch links and tilts the blades to a shallower angle.