The Humble Helicopter
The Humble Helicopter Consider the helicopter; a piece of insanity waiting for a place to happen if there ever was one. The helicopters of today appear to be high tech, refined machines, but the truth is lurking just below the surface. These things should not fly.
Helicopters are the bumblebees of flying machines. They generate a lot of noise and activity, but the net result is just not quite believable. Flying should be like birds, graceful swoops and glides with power used when needed, but not overstated.
OK, enough fantasy. The comparison with fixed wing craft is just apples and oranges. Fixed wings can be graceful, etc., but mostly, they're just freight trucks with wings. Helicopters, now, they're a whole different breed. They're freight trucks with the abilities of a ballet dancer.
The concept of the helicopter has been around since at least the time of Leonardo Da Vinci. In about 1486, he designed a ‘Helical Screw' with the idea of using it for vertical flight. Even earlier, circa 320 A.D., Ko Hung in China designed the Chinese Flying Top, a toy that would fly short distances when spun rapidly. Neither of these designs were practical for actual flying machines, but they did solidify the idea of vertical flight, if not the helicopter as we know it.
Many people think of Igor Sikorsky as being the inventor of the modern helicopter but this isn't quite true. He may be responsible for pulling all the current general design features together into one but he really didn't invent anything new. Most of the technology he used in his successful machines was developed by others. Between the time of the first successful helicopter flight in 1907 and Sikorsky's first successful flight about 1940, at least ten companies world wide worked on the problem of helicopter and/or autogyro flight. Most of their models were failures or such marginal performers that they had no practical use. Autogyros were the first truly successful rotary winged aircraft but they didn't really achieve true vertical abilities. They needed a run to take off and restricted area landings were pretty hairy, because the rotor had no power to add in if you needed it. It was strictly wind driven and auto rotations can be really exciting. http://www.aeroplaneart.com.au/Images/JS... The development of some promising helicopter models (German) were stymied by World War II, while others forged ahead. Sikorsky's VS-300 was the first successful American ‘copter, and his R-4 effected the first recorded rescue when it retrieved a downed airman in Burma in 1944. From that operational beginning, most of today's helicopters have descended.
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