Global Aviator South Africa - May 2018

52 Vol. 10 / No. 5 / May 2018 Global Aviator

Helicopter do's and don'ts

H

owever, the terminology is not

quite the same if the flying

machine about which we are

talking happens to be a helicopter. In

a rotary aircraft, strictly speaking the

take-off occurs when the pilot lifts the

machine off the ground into the hover,

and the landing is when he or she

places the hovering helicopter back on

terra firma. The process of accelerating

from the hover to forward flight, and

slowing down from forward flight

to the hover, has a different name;

it is actually called a ‘transition’. So

if you’ve ever been a little confused

by articles which talk of a helicopter

‘transitioning away’, this is why; it

simply means that it left the airfield

and started flying.

This difference is more than just

one of semantics. In transitioning

from the hover to forward flight

and vice versa there are a number of

important issues which the pilot needs

to consider, possibly rather more than

his fixed-wing counterpart. This is due

to the fact that hovering and forward

flight are two very different ways

of flying a helicopter, and there are

several quite complex aerodynamic

Transition from hover

to forward flight.