Why is piloting a helicopter considered more challenging, despite not requiring much space to take off and land and being able to stabilize in the air and stand still?
In: Engineering
the controls are necessarily a nightmare and there are a million little things that can catch you off-guard.
take the simplest thing possible, flying straight forward. on an airplane this is easy. depending on the plane, it may even be built to naturally enter and stay in level flight without being controlled. (if you’ve ever noticed airplanes with a slight V shape to their wings, it helps them not roll)
with a helicopter, if the rotor is moving anticlockwise, flying forward means the rotor blades on the right side of your aircraft are generating more lift than the blades on the left side, because the blades are rotating “into the wind” on the right side.
a gust of wind can change the lift of an airplane. a gust of wind will change the lift on every part of every blade of a helicopter by a different amount.
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