New Gyro Flying

[Gyronaut]

oops, autorotation!

[DieselFan]

Why don't helicopter pilots like hovering? I thought that was the whole idea.

[emil]

Why don't helicopter pilots like hovering? I thought that was the whole idea.

they do..it is just not to easy...imagine balancing one ball ontop of another..

or put a marble on a big squre piece of glass and then pick it up so that it stays in the middle.....

[Gyronaut]

"balancing a golf ball on a piece of string" is one line 'chopper' pilots use in the pub to impress chicks. When you get beyond that you realise that one can be taught to do almost anything and then its not that difficult anymore. Then it becomes an issue of doing it safely. A helicopter has a definite height/velocity curve. Without power (sudden donkey-dead), and without forward speed, you need to be quite high to generate enough speed to fly the disc and then use the rotor inertia in the flare to do a dead stop-hover landing. Flying outside the height/velocity curve's safety range can ruin your whole day. Thats the real reason why helicopter pilots dont like to hover. (all this IMHO of course).