How Helicopters Fly | Science of Stupid: Ridiculous Fails
Renaissance artist and all-around smart cookie Leonardo da Vinci famously painted the Mona Lisa and the Last Supper. But he also may have been the first person to design one of these—nope, not the wakeboard, that thing in the sky also known as a helicopter.
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And it's not only wakeboarders; the helicopter pilots are helping out.
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The best can use their skills to save calves from frozen lakes. Da Vinci was ahead of his time, although there were less cow rescues in his pictures from memory. But before a pilot can head off for a little cow skimming, they need to know their heli science.
A helicopter generates lift from its rotating blades. Adjusting the collective pitch changes the angle of all blades simultaneously, allowing the helicopter to increase or decrease in altitude. Adjusting the cyclic pitch will change the angle of each blade at specific parts of its rotation, creating more lift on one side, leading to forwards, backwards, and side-to-side motion. Changing the pitch of the tail rotor blades rotates the helicopter left or right, like a rudder. Thus, you need to master a combination of cyclic pitch, collective pitch, and tail rotor pitch for successful flight.
Okay, let's take it one step at a time. First, we need to take off, which is easier said than done in a homemade car copter. Well, this doesn't look dangerous. Please fasten your seat belts, as we may be experiencing some turbulence and a touch of impact force. The faster he's pulled, the quicker the blades auto-rotate, which eventually creates enough lift to race him.
But as the car copter rotates to the side, that lift force makes it travel sideways faster than his rudder can correct. Luckily, the pilot was fine, which is more than can be said for the Reliant Robin. Maybe best stick to a proper helicopter with an actual tail rotor.
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This research pilot is using a combination of collective pitch to descend and cyclic pitch to move forwards. Now for the perfect landing. Ah, that wasn't important, was it? A sudden dip in collective pitch causes blades to intersect with the power line, so it's shorted. But I don't think anyone noticed. Yeah, that might be a bit of a giveaway.
Yes, like take-off, coming in for a landing can be the trickiest skill. Nailed that one though! The pilot adjusts the cyclic pitch to create more lift on the right-hand side, drifting the helicopter to the left. But the building has possibly affected the airflow and his aerodynamics, so the pilot decides to teach it a lesson. I mean, I could see it coming, but then again, I am cyclic.
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