The DTs!
 

Take a look at the Daily Telegraph's caption to this photo of an EC175.

The 48th Paris Air Show at Le Bourget airport in France - Telegraph

Words fail me!

So you're saying that's not where the throttle is then? :) Where is it by the way?

The reporter is obviously the right person for the job! I think the pilot needs some continuation training. :)

Left hand on the throttle is correct, isn't it?

Throttle? Throttle? Looks more like someone testing a new toy for "Gaylord" Mandelson to me !:)

Jack

So, how many helicopters do you know of with the throttle on the cyclic? :ok:

I can explain the confusion here - the DT aviation correspondent fulfilled the job's qualification requirement by declaring he had once seen an aviation-related film.

The film in question was "The Perfect Storm", which has a few minutes of an SAR helicopter in it. The helicopter is undergoing inflight refuelling, and it has to go just a bit faster in order to keep up with the tanker. So, the pilot rams the "throttle" forward, slamming it into the instrument panel.

Several times.

It was one of those American films "based on a true story". The facts were: a boat set out to sea; there was a storm; the boat was never seen again. Everything else, except the helicopter bit, of course, was pure imagination.

I think he meant that was the trigger for the guns!

Am i correct in saying thats the EC225/725?

No its definitely the 175. I see that Eurocopter have not listened to me and my colleagues' comments about the location of the radalt - seen below the pressure altimeter strip on the lower right part of the FND. In the 225 the pressure alt and radalt are next to each other, this is really good for offshore flying.

Its a pity that EC seem determined to move away from the best laid-out screens in helicopter-land (ie on the 225). The reason/excuse is that the new screens are not wide enough. My point would be TO MAKE THEM WIDER THEN!!!! since there is plenty of blank real-estate on the panel. But maybe they started with the screens (cheap job lot from Walmart?) and built the rest of the helicopter around them? Come on EC, don't screw up the MMI of what I think will otherwise be a great helicopter. Use wider screens and put the radalt where it belongs!

HC

Actually if you knew nothing about rotorcraft and asked a pilot how you make the helicopter go faster ( push fwd on the stick ) and go slower ( pull back) it might equate to a throttle in a journos mind.

reporter
 

I know it's unusual to be fair to reporters on this site, being that they are all generally considered scum who know nothing of aviation, but it would not have been a reporter who wrote the caption. That job falls to the sub-editor who, in years gone by, especially on the Telegraph, would have checked, double checked and tripled checked just exactly where the throttle is on any aircraft they are captioning. Sadly, newspapers have suffered from the same fierce cost-cutting that has hit many other industries and production desks are no longer staffed by a dedicated team of professionals given time to check such things. I believe the Telegraph has suffered some of the most fierce cuts in Fleet Street in the past year or so and replaced most of its highly accurate subs with a bunch of kids paid next to nothing to churn out stuff for both the paper and the website with barely time to come up for air. Mistakes are inevitable. Having said that, the caption does display an alarming lack of initiative in the sub-editor, if he or she had said joystick rather than throttle they could have just about got away with it. But then again, I have to ask myself, in the grand scheme of things, does it really matter that much? After all, there are people dying of starvation in the world and kids being murdered on our streets by knife-wielding gangs. And then there are wrongly captioned photos... Tragedy knows no end.
Best wishes to you all, Sean

Yeah, even their crossword is computer-generated these days from a bank of clues from the last 50 odd years. :*

Cheers

Whirls

The DT is really losing it as witnessed by a recent article on Air France 446 (sic) and how it was downed by faulty pitos (sic).

Pitos
 

Pitos, very nice with refried beans and tortillas

Channel 4 very kindly told me about the PiLot tubes which measure airspeed. I'd like to know more about these pilot tubes :}

Cheers

Whirls

They used to have pilots' pee tubes in the Westland Whirlwind, to a bag in the cabin. Perhaps this is what they meant.

('Ere, soldier, listen into this tube, the Captain is about to make "an announcement" :E ).

Take it back - I don't want to know any more about pilot tubes. :yuk:

Cheers

Whirls

Ok, consider it flushed right down the drain. :E

;)

You must be taking the piss...