Richard Root hates helicopter noise
 

Stop interrupting his conversations

Richard Root

Anyone fly in that area?

Here we go again.....

Yep as does anyone who attends the Robbo factory course! A have a friend who also lives in the same area and never noticed any excess noise when sat in her hot tub :) And I also live under the approach to 29 and notice loud aircraft but mostly airplanes due to the changing engine noise rather than the volume.

HTC

Wonder if he'll still be complaining when the brush fire flames are licking at the door....

I wouldn't go telling people my name was Richard Root

Richard > Dick
Root > F.....!

i'd change my name by deed poll, poor bugger probably has a complex with a name like that!

Robinson the 3rd largest employer in the area.

Helicopter Noise
 

The only thing is, I fly with a lot of helicopter pilots who fly fairly low. Sometimes it's necessary if there is airspace above you that you can't enter, but a lot of the time I ask them why they don't fly higher, and often they don't have a reason.

There are clearly days with low ceilings, certain airspace configurations, or mission requirements that require you to be down low, but a large percentage of the time it's just because their instructor never had them fly higher. I would say most people fly enroute between 800 feet agl and 1200 feet agl.

One of the things I often do is roll off the throttle right after this conversation. Around here, at 500ft you often have only a couple of seconds to head towards a clear area (there's lots of wooded area here), and you often have no choice at all about where you will be landing.

From 1,000 feet you have several seconds to make decisions and you might have 2 or 3 places to choose from.

From 2,000 feet you have lots of time to select from maybe a dozen landing zones, you have time to make a radio call, really study the wind and pick the best approach, and set up for an approach. It's really a lot less stressful.

Meanwhile, from 2,000 feet you've probably reduced your noise signature by 75% compared to 1,000 feet, and by 93% compared to 500 feet.

Some people begin flying higher after such a demonstration, but some don't. If you've spent a lot of time flying at a particular altitude, you feel comfortable there and it's a difficult habit to change. The thing to ask yourself is whether there is a real operational requirement to fly as low as you do and if not, force yourself to try flying higher for a while until you get used to it.

I'm not saying you should always fly at 2,000 feet, and I wouldn't want to lose the ability to fly low when I need to (say, bad weather) but I wish more people would fly higher when possible - it would be better for them if they lose an engine, and it would be better for the industry to reduce the noise we make.

Helicopter Noise Followup
 

It appears I overstated the decrease in noise by flying higher. I was assuming noise level was reduced by the area rule, but it appears to be less than that. The HAI Fly Neighborly document says:

If you are interested in reading the HAI Fly Neighborly Booklet, here are a couple links:

Fly Neighborly Program

and a direct link to the PDF: http://www.rotor.com/portals/12/Fly%202009.pdf

I still encourage you to fly higher whenever possible :-)

Paul

more
 

There was actually more to this story on my site but I guess the mods don't want me to link to helicopter related news and articles if I'm the one that wrote them. Didn't seem to bother anyone for the puma ditching in Nigeria story. Instead they just modified my post's link to a link from my own article. Would have been nice if they included the original news article as well but nope. Unfortunate since I'm not a competing site by any means, just another place to get your fill of helo porn and my readership is minuscule compared to the big dogs on the block.

oh well - I still don't like Mr Root.

Infosource,

Maybe you haven't read this announcement at the top of the Rotorheads page?

Not that was of any interest

So? PPRuNe isn't here to advertise your site, regardless of how big or small it may be :=

why so angry
 

I hope you enjoy the ditching vid. If I'd have known you were so against linking I wouldn't have sent it.

thanks

Richard Root

Get a Life!!!!!!!

Infosource,

PM me with your website details. (On a side note, I run a helicopter blog and make the odd link to it from within Pprune, the mods have rarely removed the link - I don't know why, but I don't do it often and it might be because it's not a commercial site.)

no big deal
 

I like Senior Pilot even if he doesn't like me :) I just guess quid pro quo is a dying art these days. I'll continue to enjoy and recommend this site to other people like I've always done. Happy holidays to everyone on PRRuNe!

There's no "liking" or "disliking" involved here, we all like each other if we're Rotorheads :ok:

It is just the standard set of rules that you all signed up to when joining PPRuNe: a set of rules for the whole of the site, not just Rotorheads, but I'll quote the point that I tried to draw to infosource's attention

It's the winter solstice, and the night's too long to worry about this sort of stuff :p