Originally Posted by
tdracer
Not really an applicable comparison
I see it as perfectly applicable, if you take a bigger scale view of things than all the control transients, different areas of the disk, etc. What's important is that by turning, the rotor puts enough disk area into AOA's that becomes usable to 1. drive the rotor and 2. accelerate air down; in essence doing what I said in my earlier post in "engaging the clutch" between airstream and airframe, transferring energy from the former to the latter, and thus holding it up (ish). Were the rotor still, none of this would be happening and the vehicle would merely pass through the air with no interaction.