or start dragging some guys from the helo forum in here
I'm here. Well a crowd of one anyway.
Angels - that last post did it for me. The horizontal stabiliser on a helo has got absolutely nothing to do with controlling the pitch up tendency with retreating blade stall. Read up on Prouty if you want to argue the toss, or get Nick Lappos to put his twopenny worth in here.
the advancing blade is on the right...and viola...most helos have the pilot sitting on the right side
What a crock. Direction of rotor rotation has absolutely nothing to do with the side a pilot sits on. Helo convention does have the captain sitting on the right but there are exceptions, as mentioned, the Bell 47, also Enstrom and I think Hughes 500. In the S-76 normally the captain sits on the right, but in the SAR role the captain sits on the left. I qualify the last point by saying with one operator at least. In Vietnam on the Huey the US Army convention was for the captain to sit in the left seat. The reason given to me was that the visibily was much better because that seat had a smaller instrument panel obscuring the view. Personally when I made captain I stayed in the right seat because of the ease of access to radios etc as previously mentioned.
Why helo guys sit on the right has always been a subject of much discussion and there are many thoughts but little concrete. The best theory I have come across and think most likely is that the first helos had the one and only collective lever mounted between the two seats. That meant the left seat guy flew with left hand on the cyclic and right hand on the collective, the right seat guy of course it was the reverse, vis right hand cyclic, left hand collective. It was said that Igor preferred to sit in the left seat when training the new boys, and so the new pilots (in the right seat) grew accustomed and naturally preferred that position when they were let loose to the squadrons. Hey presto, a convention is born.
PS 20,000 hours helo and don't pretend to know everything, but do know a little bit.