Originally Posted by
Uplinker
That's what I wondered: in the fixed-wing airliner world, you have your hands and feet on all the relevant controls during take-off and landing, so you can chop the thrust while keeping other hand and feet on all the flight controls. With engine thrust levers in the roof, how would you chop power without taking your hand off the collective or cyclic - if you didn't have engine controls on the collective ? Genuine curiosity.
Not twin tail-rotor though, sadly.
I've recently started to wonder why helicopters don't have twin independent tail rotors - driven independently - given that loss of same seems to be only marginally survivable ?
I am not trying to be be clever or judgemental here. Genuine curiosity. (Cost and weight are two obvious reasons).
In most helicopters you only have only one rotor and one tail rotor - both you donīt want to loose.
Still, with proper preflight and adherence to the flight manual the loss of a tail rotor is much much less frequent than ie an engine failure. So really no need to have two.