If you study the history of helicopter design, and the multiple engineering problems that had to be solved, and continue to be solved, most people would never set foot in a helicopter. I don't want to be a hater...but helicopters just shouldn't be able to fly. But fly is a bad word. They don't really fly. They are called rotary-wing aircraft because before the rotary-wing aircraft, there were fixed wing aircraft. And those motherfuckers dominate the air domain. As Malcolm Gladwell would say, “Winner Takes All”. So the fixed-wing world dominated the lexicon. Thus we have rotary-wing aircraft. Perhaps rightfully so. These newcomers, the rotary-wing set, don't respect the air and they shouldn't be allowed to use the word fly. The community calls them choppers. They don't fly. They chop. I'll try to explain that later but first some background.
The history of choppers does indeed date back to the same time frame as the Wright brothers were using the Bernoulli principle to design their Wright Flyer in 1903. This would be an aircraft that actually flys. Over in France, another bicycle builder (just like the Wright Brothers) who was no doubt trying to find a way to win Le Tour de France by cheating, was a Romanian engineer named Paul Cornu. He is credited with the first helicopter that lifted off the ground. Solving all the design problems with this truly unconventional way to slip the surly bonds of earth took another twenty years. In 1923, Thomas Edison, who earlier had built a helicopter design of his own for the US government--but never flew it because he was a smart man--gave credit to George de Bothezat, another Romanian, for the first real helicopter that worked. It would take another twenty years with credit given to Igor Sikorsky and Arthur Young (at Bell), for solving many of the hard problems and integrating their solutions into usable designs that could be mass produced. The Henry Fords of the helicopter age were finally upon us. That was in the 1940's, with the necessity of war upon us, that their two designs, the Sikorsky R-4 for military purposes and the Bell R-47 for commercial, made helicopters a real thing.
Now something philosophical. You know when you are flying in an airplane. This goes without saying. There are so many indicators of flight. You're strapped in your seat. You hear the roar of the engines spinning up. You feel the forward motion of the jet as the pilot pushes up the throttle and you are pushed back in your seat. You sense the acceleration as physics pushes against the inertia of your fat-ass and you begin gaining speed; faster and faster and faster, until the wings of the aircraft begin feeling the effects of Bernoulli--the higher pressure of slower moving air beneath the wings, pushing up into the lower pressure of the faster moving air on the top of the wing. The nose of the aircraft comes up. The wheels leave the ground and retract. And then you are pointed to the sky, moving faster and faster until you begin leveling out and you hear the chime. The pilot turned on the Wifi at about 10,000 feet. At that point you forget that you are hurtling along at 500 mph in an aluminum death tube. Hearing that chime means you can log-on to your Android and check to see if anyone has sent you pictures of puppies on Instagram.
Recently--and the point of our story today--I had a chance to fly in a helicopter. I got to sit in the cockpit to see what it really was like to take off in this machine I swore, since my engineering class, I would neve set foot in. So, there I was, sitting between the two pilots and watching the events unfurl. Lift off in a helicopter is completely different from an airplane. First, engine run-up is very strange. The cockpit looks similar to an aircraft but don’t let it fool you. Yes, a lot of buttons and lighted switches…in modern craft expect to see glass screens, like iPad touch screens made to look like analog gauges with icons made to look like real touch switches. The pilots are coordinating with one another and running their checklist. That doesn’t change. They are checking all the mission systems and consulting their numerous screens, dials, and gauges. To me, it was telling, however, when the aviator in the left seat (the one in charge) had a singular focus on oil pressure. He called out the oil pressure multiple times. Almost as if, the single most crucial element of a safe flight, is the successful maintenance of the oil pressure of the system. That immediately struck me as new but also made complete sense. The system, I thought, is a giant spinning fan. The spinning of the rotor blades has to be maintained if flight is going to be successfully achieved. The rotors themselves are wings, with the Bernoulli principle in play. As the blade spins the higher pressure below the blade pushes up on the lower pressure of the faster moving air over the top…lift is what it’s called when that happens. The spinning of the rotary wing, however, is a very deliberate and a very mechanical thing. Mechanical things require lubrication. An aircraft with fixed wings, on the other hand, can achieve some level of flying success, by just gliding. If wings have motion in the air, they still have lift. No motor required. There is no lift produced in a rotary-wing aircraft if the rotors stop turning. Oil to keep the mechanical system spinning seems critical. For the love of God please maintain the oil pressure, I thought silently. Particularly if I’m on board. I imagine on future flights, my friend, the pilot, may post a sticker on his tail bumper that reads, “Coward on Board”. Nevertheless, maintain the Goddamn oil pressure please!
So the second thing I noticed, as the main rotor began to turn, was that the helicopter began to vibrate. Vibrate is another bad word. The helicopter began to shake violently. The entire craft was being buffeted by the main rotor as the weight of the blades began to turn. Up and down the massive blades shift their weight 360 degrees around the aircraft as they slowly spin up. As they spin faster, the helicopter body strains beneath as that weight of, not just one blade, but four ginormous blades. They slowly lurch around the alien provided central hub as they begin to gain speed shifting their weight around as they go. If you happen to be in a helicopter with two main rotors, as I was (a CH-47 Chinook), this weight shifting is occurring during the front rotor spin up as well as the back rotor spin up. That a total of eight ginormous blades shifting their weight all around the rosy of yet a second alien rotor hub. Every part on the helicopter was shaking and the noise from the engine and rotor blades became deafening despite the fact that I was wearing foam ear plugs along with aviator headphones tightly packed in place beneath the flight helmet I was wearing. I already had a headache, not to mention a neck ache. Since I was connected to the intercom, I was able to hear the pilot's voice above the din and violent shaking, the words he was saying were easy to make out as he was continuously providing the one piece of useful information I wanted to always hear: "The oil pressure looks good". Check. Was he talking to someone? Or was he reassuring himself? I, for one, was glad to hear it.
As the violent shaking continued and increased, I watched the extent of the vibration with what can only be described as a vibrational measuring stick. The Chinook I was in is equipped with an aerial refueling probe. This probe is thick, perhaps 15 inches in diameter and at least 60 feet long (That's what she said). This refueling probe doesn't extend beyond the tip of the main rotor that spins above it. I have questions regarding the ability of these helicopters to refuel, in flight, but those will have to wait. At the moment, as we shook violently, the tip of that probe was moving in the vertical up and down direction by as much as two feet...or maybe more. I was hypnotized by the sight. The violent vibrations were unnerving. Apart from the millions of thoughts flooding my brain as well as the physical sensation of neck pain, caused by the weight of my helmet, equipped with Night Vision Goggles or NVGs--seemingly designed to maximize my torture--came one weird thought. When I saw the long refueling probe slapping up and down like Lexington Steele’s dick on a PornHub video, I was thinking, what the everlasting fuck? Mechanical systems cannot vibrate like this...at least not for very long. It felt like we would shake completely apart and there were only seconds left. As I was preparing for the worst something truly amazing happened. I could feel the rotors above me taking control of the creature I was now sitting in. As they reached a rotational speed close to their operational level, they were now in charge. The two gigantic rotary systems above me transformed into two huge winged gyroscopes. The helicopter was not yet flying but the rotors were. They had taken flight and were now governing the mechanics of everything. The noise I was hearing subsided, the vibration stopped, and I checked the Lexington Steel gauge out in front of me. The probe had become rock steady, pointing the way forward. The mechanical system was now in its true designed state, the beast was alive, it was large and in charge. Two giant counter-rotating masses of kinetic energy stabilizing the entire system. Our frame of reference was now governed by the rotational mass of those two spinning weights and their winged chop into the air. The feeling was similar to when a wave catches the surfer beneath their board, you are surfing. Or when the wind fills the sail of a sailboat, you are sailing. Now, with the rotors in charge, we were not flying yet, but doing something else altogether. This is not a flight. Not even close. It's something else, I have yet to define. The closest thing I have experienced is when racing a motorcycle at high lean angles. With two giant gyroscopes for rims and tires, governing the coordinate frame of a racing bike, particularly on the up and down twisting roads in the mountains of western Virginia, gravity ceases to be a thing. The gyroscopes govern the physics of your motion. It’s why you can take the high vertical wall at Daytona and stay in the seat, even though, in motorcycle riding parlance we always say, “keep the rubber-side down”. Trust me, when you are on a banked surface at a high lean angle, the rubber is not in the down direction according to gravity, it’s at some other weird angle defying gravity. Now, with the rotor system in full life it was clear to me what rotary-wing flying was all about. We were about to go for a ride in a gyroscope. I had no fear. The beast had me in its grip. We were stable and solid as a rock. We were chopping. And then I heard the pilot say, "Oil pressure looks good". Check.
A few more calls on the radio, and we were ready to start moving. This is no airplane. When lift-off occurs, there is no sensation whatsoever of flying. If you are not paying attention, you wouldn't even know you have left the ground. If the ascent is slow enough, you wouldn't even know it even when you are looking out the window. You just start lifting. It's much more akin to being in an elevator. You are just being lifted up. But it would be more like "Charley's Great Glass Elevator'' from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. You don't just go up and down. You get to go sideways and forward and backward. It doesn't matter. A helicopter is free from the surly bonds of earth, but not covered by Bernoulli’s requirement to get lift over an aircraft's wings using constant forward motion--like a shark requires constant motion so water moves across its gills to breathe--a helicopter needs none of that. It’s making its own lift. And since it brings its own lift, it brings its own physics and reference frame. A helicopter gets to do what it wants to do in the air...beholden to nothing. Except oil pressure. Check.
Later while heading home, I deeply considered the many differences between rotary-wing flight, and fix-winged flight. Fixed-wing flight requires the momentary use of the air as the wing passes through it. It’s a very subtle and passing thing, unless the air is angry and you have turbulence. If you look out at the wing of an aircraft on a calm clear day, the wing is motionless as it passes through the invisible ether. It’s almost polite in some way. Perhaps wings are actually Canadians in their nature. The wing is probably apologizing to the air, or at least thanking the air for being there, as it passes by enabling it to slip the surly bonds of Earth and dance the skies on laughter-silvered wings, as well as touch the face of God. To paraphrase John Gillespie's gorgeous poem about High Flight once more. Rotary-wing aircraft do nothing of the sort. There is no slipping the surly bonds of Earth as politely as their fixed-wing Canadian brethren. They are not in the same family whatsoever. The helicopter is the black sheep, the rude Cousin Eddie who shows up for Christmas. Helicopters, with their rotary wings are not polite Canadians, rather they are most clearly, and without apology, rude. Rotary-wing aircraft make the air their bitch. To me, it is clear, that is what chopping is all about and that is what choppers do.
But now, as we lifted off the ground, straight up, without the sensation of flying, I can no longer say it’s flying and that I am fearful of it. I may be fearful of chopping, but I haven’t decided yet. I had no fear of lifting straight up…as I watched the ground recede beneath us. There was no sense of flying, I couldn’t even tell we were going up. It was more like floating…also a bad word. And as we moved forward, there was very little sense of that forward motion either. Had I not been looking out, I might not have sensed we were moving at all. We belonged to the gyro’s spinning above us. We were in their reference frame. Now, I was in a very big helicopter, so perhaps it is a far more stable ride, but my sense is that it has to be similar to other choppers, it’s the same physics at work. It now became clear why helicopters can hover and fly so close to each other in formation, etc. They are not constrained by this requirement to move continuously forward to maintain flight. If you can control the winged gyros that make the air their bitch you get to do what you want to do.
We moved down the runway, and now I’m not sure why there is a runway, yet another artifact from the fixed wing community. Helicopters don’t need such things. We proceeded on our way. We were scheduled to fly about 30 minutes and so far the experience was awesome…not in the Mountain Dew fueled sense of the word when adrenaline is in play, but awesome nonetheless. As we left the runway and headed into the desert, I kept moving my eyes between looking out of the NVGs at the terrain before me and flipping them up to see the avionics in the cockpit. Later I adjusted them to look up and out with my eyes to see through the NVG’s and then simply look down with my eyes to see the screens looking below the NVGs. Without them, it was pitch black, I couldn’t see a thing. Darkness doesn’t bother fixed wing pilots because they are going to quickly climb away from the ground (a source of impact they want to avoid) and use their instruments to fly. They have to do this because they have to know how to fly in the clouds anyway. And when they land they know there is going to be lighting on the runway. Helicopter pilots are going to fly much lower…thus seeing the ground and obstacles in the way becomes very important. I’m happy to report that over the past several decades we have come a long way in the design of NVGs to the point where darkness ceases to be a problem. With the NVGs I could see the entire desert floor, runway, and valley beyond, all the way to the mountains, as clearly as I could during the day. Maybe better. When I looked up at the sky, without the NVGs, I couldn’t see a single star with my naked eye. There was minimal light pollution in the desert--but we had a hazy sky that night. I couldn’t see many stars, they were still almost invisible to my eyes. However, with the NCG’s on, the number of stars in the sky became biblical. Too many stars to count. Impossible. I was transfixed by the brightness of the night sky beneath the NVGS, and couldn’t stop staring at it. Picking out my favorite constellation, Orion’s belt, was impossible amongst the billions and billions of them now within my field of view. Our alien zoo-keepers are safe, we will never find them amongst that many stars. And as God said to Abraham, Genesis 15:5, “Look now toward heaven, and number the stars, if thou be able to number them”. I was not.
So we were chopping….we lifted off to about 500 feet above the desert floor and simply moved forward. Like a giant box in the sky we just moved along. I had more of the sensation of drifting, or floating along. It’s hard to define. It wasn’t drifting or floating, it was like Wonka’s fictional elevator, but it wasn’t fiction, I was inside. We were simply deliberately moving in the direction the pilot desired, albeit, 500 feet off the ground. Or higher, as we went to 1000 feet, or lower, we simply went down. As we tracked across the desert, it was also clear we were affected by the wind, much more than a fixed wing aircraft….in that sense, we were more like a balloon, drifting at the discretion of the wind, but not really, the pilots had full control. The ground trace of our track in a thirty-knot cross-wind had the nose pointing 35 degrees to the right of our direction of flight. The pilots seemed unconcerned about the ground passing beneath us at such an odd angle because their rotors had us in their reference frame and on the right course.
Apart from this odd angle a few more things occurred to me. Like helicopters don’t care about what’s happening in front of them…fixed-wing aircraft have to constantly predict the future…where they will be and what time they are getting there. They have to know their speed and time of flight and they have to know in advance that a runway that they can see will be waiting there to greet them when they land. Helicopters do not have such constraints. If something is in their way, they can simply stop. They can, in a very real sense, go backward in time. A luxury not afforded to the fixed-wing community. Fixed-wing pilots are made or broken simply based on their ability to work issues in advance of the timeframe they are permitted to take action. Fixed-wing jet aircraft pilots who land fast on aircraft carriers have perhaps the most rigorous checklist: they must work fast, in order to land safely and screw up their spinal column. That’s a special skill and physically demanding. Helicopter pilots have the luxury of time. This ability to reset the clock and move backward in time is of extreme value. The capability is so valuable, the fix-wing community has tried for decades to bring some of this magic to their side. Their failures are legion. The Harrier is perhaps the most successful of these efforts. A fixed wing aircraft that can hover and take off vertically. The Osprey V-22 has certainly gained traction over the past 20 years, but it took years to work out the engineering. It’s still not clear that the V-22 is superior to a Chinook. I think most of the community has sided with the Chinook. The maintenance requirements of that tilt-rotor aircraft, not to mention simply the sketchiness of its design has yet to win favor in most of the flight community--fixed-wing or rotary-wing. And of course, last but not least, the F-35B, the version being built for the USMC has the ability to take off and land vertically….somewhat. However, it’s a very precarious operation and not for the faint of heart. That is not to say that chopping doesn’t mean risk. If the rotor’s fail, there is no gliding down on silver wings. It’s a straight drop out of never-land right to the ground. And that’s a jolt that would exceed the tolerance of your spinal column. Hence, the rotors must spin. Check the oil pressure. Protect that oil pressure like the front wheel of your bicycle while riding in the peloton. Without your front wheel, you are no longer a bicycle. Without oil pressure, you are no longer a helicopter.
After a long career in the USAF, where the mantra has always been, flexibility is the key to airpower, I have now been introduced to another form of airpower that, seemingly, does not have to play by the same rules. Even at the very end of my flight, I was introduced to this flexibility. As we came in on our approach for landing, again on the runway…all the terminology was set up to conform to the requirement for fixed-wing aircraft. You must be cleared for landing, you must enter the pattern, and do so with perfect timing, so as not to interfere with others entering the pattern or those in the process of landing and taking off. Each one predicting in advance where they will be in the next few seconds, while their brethren do the same. So as the helicopter enters the pattern, it doesn’t have to set up a decent profile, to stay in their glide slope. White over white, you're high as a kite, etc. The helicopter simply descends. Then as we entered the pattern, this time to fly beside the runway to land from the direction the control tower indicated, I braced for what I knew would be the worst, getting to the break, breaking left, then descending rapidly, into the landing pattern for landing. In a fixed-wing aircraft this maneuver will typically impart negative g forces on my stomach, this is what makes your middle ear tweak and you end up getting nauseous. No such thing in a helicopter, unless you are prone to sickness in an elevator. No negative g’s and were already close to the ground. And do we continue in the pattern to approach the runway from the end directed by the tower? Hell no! Once cleared to land, the runway belongs to us…we stop the journey to the end runway and simply turn to the left, hop across the runway at its midsection, turn our nose in the direction of the required landing, and drop straight down to land. By making the air its bitch, bringing Bernoulli with you, helicopters cheat flight and most of its daunting requirements.
I still have other phobias that might inhibit me from future helicopter rides. I like being in control, I’m still afraid of heights, and I am claustrophobic. But the experience was so different from that of flying, I can’t call it fear of flying, if later I am inhibited. Regardless, it was an awesome ride, and I must rescind any negative thoughts, real or imagined, about the world of rotary-wing aviation. I still think aliens gave us the technology to build helicopters. But I am glad they did, and perhaps, they are no longer laughing at us. But now I have a new phobia...the fear of no oil pressure...
