Originally Posted by
ShyTorque
I saw similar to this in NZ. We were on holiday and had just parked on a corner of the public car park at an airfield (my young sons wanted to look at the aircraft; it was a wet and windy day so we stayed in the car). As we stopped, a single Squirrel landed ten metres from us on the airport grass, adjacent to an unlocked gate in the one metre high fence. The pilot put the rotors to idle then to my increasing surprise got out...
(SNIP)
...Because it was a gusty day I soon became concerned that the rotors might flap and strike the tail boom, or worse. I reversed my car away to put a bit more space between us..
Ah, the old "gust of wind."
Whenever I read stuff like this I always laugh and think, "Don't people understand how a rotor works...how the cyclic works? Do they actually think that an immobilized cyclic will allow the rotor to flap all over the place with no control? Have they ever been sitting in an idling helicopter and had that happen?"
Helicopter pilots...
especially helicopter pilots...should understand that the whole cyclic/swash plate thingee is specifically designed to control the tip-path plane. If the tip-path plane is displaced, it is the position of the cyclic (and the flapping/feathering design of our rotor systems) that brings it back to its original setting. It's pretty simple: if the cyclic doesn't move, the tip-path plane won't move. Or won't move much. In 11,000+ hours, I've never once...
not once been sitting in an idling helicopter and had the rotor do something strange in response to "a gust of wind." Yeah, sometimes a "big ship" would land next to me and the rotor would momentarily get a little goofy, but it always sorted itself out in a revolution or two...certainly by the time I grabbed the controls.
Never have I had to make any inputs to correct my wildly diverging tip-path plane. Because it doesn't happen...if the cyclic doesn't move.
It is a paranoid myth to think that in an idling helicopter with the cyclic secured, the rotor will react inappropriately to a rogue "gust of wind." It just does not happen.
Set it down on solid ground, put it in IDLE, lock the controls, and then do what you gotta do. If it's never spontaneously exploded, rolled over, or beaten itself to death with you inside of it, it's not going to do any of those things with you absent.
I have a friend who tells a hilarious story about coming back to base after a day of (unspecified) utility flying. His passenger happened to be a chick from the government...let's say "agency" he was contracted to that day. According to him, she was hot and he was trying to impress her. But on the way back to base, he started to feel this...you know...urge. Normally, he would've just set it down in a remote area, of which there were plenty in that part of the U.S., and then gotten out to do his business. But according to the rules they were operating under, the chick *had* to be back at base by sundown, and they were already pushing it. So my friend held it. They get back to base. He lands, frictions everything down, leaves it running and tells her to just stay put. Then he hops out and runs...and I mean RUNS inside the hangar...and *almost* makes it to the men's room. Luckily, he's wearing a flight suit over his clothes, so it was merely a matter of disposing of the soiled items (to be retrieved later). But there was still some still-urgent business to take care of. All of this took time. And while it's happening, he knows that his helicopter is still out on the ramp, idling away, with a non-pilot chick in the passenger seat, wondering where the hell (NAME REDACTED) went? Ahh, first impressions! Eventually...
finally!...he came back, shut the thing down and sent her on her way. Normally, he would've asked her out for drinks/dinner, but by then he just wasn't "in the mood." And I don't blame him.
His helicopter did not explode. They don't do that.