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
Let’s put it like this: if you want to turn left in a car you turn the wheel left until you’ve turned how much you want to turn, and then straighten the wheel.
In an airplane you turn the yoke left for a brief moment and then pull the yoke back until you’ve turned how much you want to turn and then rotate the yoke right for a brief moment to level your wings.
In a helicopter you have to apply left pedal to start turning but now you’re also moving sideways so you have to move the cyclic a little to the left to counteract it, but now you’ve got to increase collective to balance that.
The simple answer is a helicopter has three main inputs and you have to balance all three at the same time and changing any one requires an adjustment to the other two.
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