HELICOPTERS 
Fascinating
“If a man is in need of rescue, an airplane
can come in and throw flowers on him, and that's just about all."
"But a direct
lift aircraft could come in and save his life." Igor I Sikorsky
I have always been
fascinated by helicopters. Their simple composition identifying it with an insect externally makes
it look easy to operate. They zigzag in
the air, hover over land and water, go up and down and turn without a pause. I always stop to watch one pass when I hear
that distinct sound of the propellers.
As much as I admire them, I had not
gone in one for a ride up until last year.
While we were on holidays at the
History
It all started with the
ancient Chinese Flying Top toy that used four feathers for each rotor at
either end of a short stick. The device was rotated by means of a bow string rose upward when
revolved rapidly. And off course Leonardo Da Vinci,
the great Italian inventor, made drawings of a machine that we now know as the
helicopter as early as the mid 1500’s. The design, like many others to follow,
would work theoretically but proved impractical in full-sized form. The breakthrough came with the invention of
the internal combustion engine at the end of the 19th century. It made it possible to develop full-sized
models with an adequate power source. This allowed the first of many problems
to be discovered: torque, the effect produced by the rotor to force the
fuselage to rotate in the opposite direction as the engine. Many of the problems that appeared were
slowly resolved. The action that tended
to cause early helicopter to flip over, dissymmetry of lift, baffled the early
pioneers until the invention of the swash plate. The cyclic pitch control of the swash plate
allowed the rotor blade angles to be altered equalling the lift on each side of
the central shaft. Then on November 13,
1907, the French pioneer Paul Cornu lifted a twin- rotored helicopter into the
air entirely without assistance from the ground for a few seconds. Although, several models were produced by
many designs there were no more great advances until another French pioneer,
Etienne Oehmichen, became the first to fly a helicopter a kilometre in a closed
circuit in 1924. The flight was historic, taking 7 minutes and 40 seconds.
Advances began to come fast and furious.
The development of vertical flight called the autogyro was made by the
Spaniard Juan de la Cierva and although it was not a true helicopter his
contribution was very important. Many of
the problems had solutions by 1936, with the introduction of the German
Focke-Wulf FW 61; the first practical helicopter was a reality.
Vertical
flight was not a dream anymore.
“A helicopter is an assembly of 40,000 loose
pieces, flying more or less in formation”
Helicopter
Manufacturers Useful
Information Sites RELATED SITES
Bell – US Defence Early
Helicopter History - Chinese Flying
Top Toy Rescue
Robinson – Specifically designed for high-quality live
television broadcasting How Do Helicopters
Fly? – Step by step description Magazines
Sikorsky –
VS 300 First
Practical Helicopter Igor I Sikorsky –
Single-rotor design Adventures
Schweizer - Detect and monitor activity on land or sea, without
detection from below First Civilian Rescue Schools
This page has been created by Silvana Zubac to learn to publish a Hotlist for web resources. 10368797 3/10/2005