Wait until you hear about how Cameron filmed the scene with a helicopter going under a highway overpass.
https://filmschoolrejects.com/terminator-2-helicopter-stunt/
https://filmschoolrejects.com/terminator-2-helicopter-stunt/
With regards to Vietnam, a legend that I was told (but cannot confirm) was that Hueys had such bad tail rotor authority that they would take off straight up with the whole airframe spinning. Once high enough, the pilot would start the helicopter moving forward, which would allow the tail rotor to bite more, and the helicopter would stabilize.
Crazy if true. And after seeing a stunt like that by a bona fide insane and top-tier veteran pilot, I believe the legend.
Interview here:
I did not start with fixed wing, though I have flown fixed wing a couple of times, not logged. I wanted to do fixed wing when I was younger, but helicopter seems a better bet now.
The reason is because the fixed wing industry is mostly airlines. And when I say "mostly", I mean 90% or more. That means that the fixed wing industry is subject to the volatility of demand for airline travel. Even before COVID, I knew it was volatile; 9/11 made that clear as well. With COVID being endemic and people not relaxing restrictions, I doubt the fixed wing industry will really recover to what it was. It might, though; my neighbor trains pilots for an airline, and his schedule is full right now because they can barely keep ahead of the demand for new pilots. And there are still other jobs, so the fixed wing demand might remain pretty high.
But rotorcraft was really only affected in one area: tours. The rotorcraft industry is much less volatile, and the demand is just as high. That's why I chose it. Also, it's easier to learn to fly helicopters and then to switch to fixed wing later if necessary.
The downside is that getting your Commercial certificate for rotorcraft is far more expensive, just because even the lightest helicopters cost far more to run per hour.
I can't say which is right for you, but that should at least give you more info.
Good luck with your progress, and hope the medical knot untangles itself.
"Moving forward" means tilting the rotor disk. Even when spinning, this will induce a little thrust, which will help clear the "dirty" (turbulent) air from the tail rotor, and as you said, induce a wind vane effect, which would stabilize the spinning a little, which would then allow more forward airspeed, and it would compound. I could see the helicopter flying a widening spiral as it gained forward airspeed until it fully stabilizes in straight-and-level flight.
Loss of Tail Rotor Effectiveness is a big deal in most helicopters where the tail rotor is not big relative to the size of the helicopter. In Robinson helicopters, the typical trainers, the tail rotors are massive for the size of the helicopter, and you will almost never run into Loss of Tail Rotor Effectiveness.
[1]: https://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/handbooks_manuals/a...
[2]: https://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/handbooks_manuals/a...
That being said, I've talked to a few Vietnam helicopter pilots and all of their stories were ... well, exaggeration is a common theme.
if the pilot tipped the helicopter to the right after leaving the ground, and then continuously held the control stick in the direction of the movement of the helicopter, the body of the helicopter would begin to face the direction of travel unless the pilot actively countered that turn via the tail rotor.
Yes, which is why it would work to just push the stick forward, even if the helicopter was spinning.
It's basically a 1990s version of barnstorming.
"I was curious about how the overpass would affect the ground effect of the helicopter. Tragically, I have no brain for physics. But I do know a helicopter pilot, so I asked him. Apparently, at 60 kts, there wouldn’t be significant ground effect because the down flowing air off of the rotor disk would mostly be tailing off of the helicopter. Had Tamburro taken the stunt slower, the down flowing air would be more directly underneath the helicopter, creating an (obviously undesirable) effect."
I was thinking more of the low pressure zone above the helicopter being disrupted by the overpass. Apparently it wasn't too bad since the pilot managed the stunt twice without injury, but it's a possibility that would have had me crapping diamonds if I were asked to pull it off.
So first of all, GE in a rotorcraft is different from GE on a fixed-wing aircraft. The fundamentals are the same, of course, but in a rotorcraft the relative velocity of the blade/wing isn't connected to the velocity of the airframe the way it is in a fixed-wing aircraft. In a fixed-wing aircraft the velocity of the wing and the velocity of the airframe are the same, of course. But in a rotorcraft things get very complicated. The upshot of all this complication is that the GE effect is reduced as the rotorcraft's airframe starts to move. The faster it goes, the less GE you have. So you might notice some differences while hovering under an overpass, but shooting through at 60 MPH the GE is effectively a no-op.
If you really want to know the gory details you'll have to read up on helicopter theory. It's way too complicated for an HN comment.
I think the pilot is probably correct that the stunt could only be pulled off at a higher speed where you can outrace the low/high pressure zones the blades are creating.
Minute 0:57 to be more precise.
Also, you can enjoy Rio de Janeiro from above in the 60s.
All thanks to stupid US aviation policies - recertification is so expensive nobody does it and everyone flies dangerous shitboxes despite >50 years of innovations.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096754/trivia
> Ed Harris reportedly punched James Cameron in the face after he kept filming while he was nearly drowning.
There's a great documentary on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3k43KHV1fDU
I would not have wanted my suffering and fear to have been wasted.
History is full of “I think this is a bad idea, but I’ll do it” accounts in the after-disaster reports. People can and regularly do dangerous things against their better judgement because they were ordered to do it or otherwise pressured into it. Saying that they volunteered is to drastically over simplify the situation.
No, did someone claim that? Stuntmen regularly decline to perform stunts they perceive to be too dangerous. It's part of their job to do risk evaluation and say yes or no.
> Only people who are willing to do things in unnecessarily dangerous ways should be stunt people?
Eh, yes, that's literally the definition of being a stuntman, you do things that are dangerous in place of someone else because you know how to manage the dangerous situation compared to the other non-educated (in dangerousness) person you're replacing for that scene.
> A perfectly reasonable solution is for the director to take their staff's safety into account and not risk people's lives for a movie.
Yes, agree! That's why there is a whole stunt team on set, not just the director and the stuntmen themselves. As a team they evaluate the stunts and stop them if they are too unsafe.
Unfortunately, every single stunt in the industry carries the risk of death, so if we want to be really safe, we simply cannot have action movies anymore at all.
Who said that it had to be 100% safe? The situations being discussed are those where someone involved felt it was being done in a way that exceeded their risk tolerance but did not feel comfortable refusing.
I guess thinking employees deserve the ability to refuse dangerous work without losing their jobs is just unreasonable coddling of people who should have to risk their lives because the director thinks doing the shot this way would be cooler.
Again, people regularly do things against their best judgement because of social and economic pressure. Stunt people are not magically excluded from this process.
I don’t think they „chose“ to be in a risky business..
> All four parents testified that they were never told that there would be helicopters or explosives on set, and they had been reassured that there would be no danger, only noise.
You make it sound like someone forced the parents and the kids to jump into the helicopter.
Quite honestly the entire story is sickening if you read the reports about it.
More info here: https://www.nfi.edu/stunt-coordinator/
A woman was shot and killed by live ammo on a movie set about a month ago.
It's not really anyone's place to dictate someone else's risk appetite. Stuntmen and Stuntwomen know what they are signing up for. They are the ones choosing to risk their own lives, not anyone else.
Some people really love doing crazy shit and making wild art. I still quote Terminator 2 decades later; it is epic art regardless of whether you personally like it or not.
In the vast majority of stories you hear, the actor/stunt-person dies because the director/coordinator/other staff was negligent.
It's obviously not reasonable to expect for a stunt-person's job to be as safe as office work, but "they are the ones choosing to risk their own lives" is bs.
> Stuntmen and Stuntwomen know what they are signing up for.
_Everyone_ knows what they're signing up for, so the only interpretation I can make here is that you believe there should be no protections for employees.
This is making it sound like they're forced to choose their profession and take risks. If I were to guess, the truth is probably completely the opposite - the only reason they got into it was because of the thrill of stuntman work.
> we could’ve run a CG helicopter under the freeway overpass, but it was so much more fun to do the real thing.
I'm guessing the same applies from pulling a helicopter on a trailer. It's simply not fun.