Originally Posted by
Wide Mouth Frog
I thought very carefully about whether to add to this post, but on balance I think there's an important point to be made.
What I think good teachers are trying to do is to give you enough information to do the job, and although it may not be the whole truth, they make sure that nothing they offer is wrong. That way anyone coming in later isn't trying to correct mistakes, they're trying to extend and enrich what you know already. If you teach that rotors are 'like' gyros, you're picking on a single common feature that can't support any extension, and is easily proved to be wrong from the example of the helicopter on the ship.
Robbiee, you've already said that your interest is purely flying, and that these aerodynamic curiosities are just hurdles you have to cross to get to do that. I'd say that's completely fine and I wish you luck and success in your flying career. If you ever have to teach though, I think there's a responsibility to dig a little deeper, and acknowledge the simplifications you might choose to make, and to make those simplifications act as foundations not detours.
So, are you saying that just because a spinning rotor doesn't act like a gyro on a pitching ship, that the pitch horns aren't offset because (like a gyro) input is experienced later in the direction of rotation?
Like it or not, its an apt simile that does absolutely nothing (just like whatever the "real" reason is) for a pilot than to help him pass a few tests.
If I were a teacher, I'd teach my students what they need to know to pass the tests. Flight training is unbelievably expensive, and there's no need to make it more expensive by wasting the students time (money) on "Cliff Clavinesque" information!
If pilots want to know more than what the FAA wants them to know, well,...that's what the library (Google) is for,...plus its free!