Originally Posted by
megan
To put the gyroscope notion to bed I'll offer up one example. A helicopter running on the deck of a wildly pitching and rolling ship, providing there is no SAS engaged, the rotor will maintain the same path relative to the helicopter and ship.
No, this would only be the case if the flapping hinge offset was zero. The real flapping hinge offset is 2-6% for articulated rotors and 6-18% for "rigid" rotors (hingeless or flexbeam rotors)
This leads to a small tilt roughly 90 degrees relative to the ships tilt