• Estiar@sh.itjust.works
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    1 month ago

    Wow. I’d be nuts to fly one of those things. 6000 VVI sounds like suicide

    With the collective firmly held down on the bottom stop, things happen very fast. The helicopter is descending in a hurry, as in 4,000 – 6,000 feet per minute. Do the math, if you are at 1,000 feet and the descent rate is 4,000 feet, you have one quarter or a minute – 15 seconds – to find a place to land.

    • TranscendentalEmpire@lemm.ee
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      1 month ago

      Yeah, helicopters are the apex predators of soldiers and rich people. Even if you pull off the perfect autorotation, the glide ratio is still only a maximum of like 3:1.

      I think I remember reading a report somewhere that more people have been killed by practicing autorotation than have actually pulled it off in the wild.