My old man has a helicopter licence! So I’m lucky enough to have been in few helicopter’s but tbh i just dont trust a aircraft were the wings travel faster than the fuselage !!!
I saw a Hind do a display at Helitech 88 or 89, the most impressive display by a helicopter I’ve ever seen. By all accounts it had been emptied and stripped internally but by ‘eck did it get thrown around the sky, also being Russian some of the display regulations got ahem well and truly ignored.
Saw a Lynx doing a barrel roll at an airshow once, absolutely brilliant. UK Army version with skids was my favorite. It helps that I used to work at Westlands of course…….
They have a very flat epi-cyclic gearbox, and the rotor blades are controlled by an ‘upside down joystick’ type affair (called a dangleberry) that pushes/twists through a large central hole in the box. This makes it incredibly maneouvrable, whereas a Sea-King, for instance, uses a swash-plate (which is a plate that runs outside the rather taller gearbox) to control the rotor blades.
Can’t post link from work (will do later) but spent 4 months working at RNAS Yeovilton in 2009 including whist they were practising for the Fly 100 celebrations, some amazing shots of the Black Cats and all the others flying ‘stunts’ and in formation 😆
Plus I can now identify every helicopter and engine variant just from hearing that first engine note several miles off!
Ah blue thunder Im much too young to remember this properly. Although I think I have seen the film was it a police helecopter or something. A bit like Airwolfs dad.