Helicopter pilots and helmets

They're afraid of the those spinning, wing-like things on top. :)
 
Because most helicopter pilots who die in crashes die of head injuries?

Helicopter (n.): A state of emergency that has reached temporary equilibrium.

If a helicopter is leaking fluids, this indicates a normal condition. IF the leaking stops, one should immediately declare an emergency and prepare to land.

By the way at work I wear a helmet 100% of the time in fixed wing aircraft too. The only reason I don't in my personal plane is because I am too foolish to do so.
 
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alaskaflyer said:
...By the way at work I wear a helmet 100% of the time in fixed wing aircraft too. The only reason I don't in my personal plane is because I am too foolish to do so.
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:D I've wanted to wear a helmet with the top down in the convertible, when you realize your head is out there about even with the top of the windshield. I don't think I could clear the headliner wearing one in the plane. I've brushed up against it with a Lightspeed headband.
 
same as motorcycles, so they can have an open casket.
 
I tried to do a Google search on the matter but all that came up were either sales sources selling helmets and then a link to this very thread.

So far, Richard's earlier post makes the most sense with regard to head injuries. If I were still at Conroe next to the Air Med base, I'd ask them. Now, the question kind of bugs me.
 
I wasn't aware helicopter pilots wear helmets. In my instructor's Hughes 269A, we certainly didn't for the 8 hours I was in it (nor have I ever seen him with one), and I didn't see anyone at his friend's helicopter place doing so, either.

Maybe it only has to do with the big turbine helicopters that you see coming into and out of KLOM, in which case I really have no idea. I've never seen whether or not the Life Flight guys who fly in and out of KIPT wear helmets when they fly. Certainly if you were going to wear a helmet, it would seem more required in an old Hughes than in one of these newer turbine things.
 
AdamZ said:
ok good chuckles but any serious answers.
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They wear a helmet to keep their brains inside their skull and the rocks out of their brains.

My guess: Because the seat is in a nearly ideal position to smack their head against the ground if it rolls over. There's no nice wing out there to the side keeping the thing from toppling over sideways and busting the side of their heads against the ground. I'm not sure how much protection the bubble canopies give in a forward rollover but it can't be nearly as much as something like a Cherokee or Cessna. Look at a typical helicopter for 5 minutes and think about the rollover possibilities. They appear to be more protected than a motorcycle but not by a lot - especially if they're flying with the door off and it goes over on it's side in a hard down forced landing.


I still want to drive my cage with my motorcycle helmet and preferably all my padded crash gear on but the silly police say it's dangerous to wear a helmet in a cage yet they say it's safe on the motorcycle. "Public Safety" my butt...they're deliberately putting you at greater risk than is necessary and making it illegal to be safer. Pathetic.
 
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Ted I don't see the guys in the R-22 and R-44s flying with them or even the Fancy boeing and corp Helos but so many of them do wear helmets all the Med Evac guys all the military guys, some of the Nes guys. Perhaps its just an " employer " requirment
 
May be, Adam, I have no idea.

By the way, are you coming with me to 6Y9? :)
 
I'm guessing it's a crash survival issue. As you mentioned, the guys usually seen wearing them are Coast Guard, Search & Rescue, Military, etc. pilots whose missions usually require landing off-site in less than ideal scenarios. As someone mentioned, they probably don't have the greatest amount of protection in a rollover situation.

A lot of the cropduster guys I've talked to say they wear helmets more for protection from their head bouncing around the cockpit while flying through turbulence than crash protection.
 
Adam, my guess is that its a function of the types of operations they're involved in. Then news choppers and corporate pilots don't wear them because they operate to/from airports but the medivac and military pilots fly into unprepared landing sites with lots of hazards around so the potential for a mishap is much higher. Hence the helmets (and nomex flight suits).
 
AdamZ said:
Ted I don't see the guys in the R-22 and R-44s flying with them or even the Fancy boeing and corp Helos but so many of them do wear helmets all the Med Evac guys all the military guys, some of the Nes guys. Perhaps its just an " employer " requirment
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I.E. an insurance requirement.

I saw the copter crop duster wore one. I guess crop dusters wear helmets routinely.
 
I'd guess all the thoughts on injury plus minimizing noise since the large rotating fan is right above you and a helmet is more secure than a headset that could slip off.
 
AdamZ said:
ok good chuckles but any serious answers.
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Adam,

I was being half serious.

Most government agencies (including my own) require them as a matter of policy. Not only for government pilots, but for employees, passengers as well as pilots and passengers on ships under contract too.

Some insurance underwriters require them of companies doing high risk work such as air ambulance, long line work, logging etc.

Insurance aside some air ambulance companies have written them into opspecs.

For all of this why? Because of decades of statistics that show that helmets save lives in helicopter accidents, period. We have a video at work that goes into this a bit, sorry I can't post it.

Your melon takes a huge beating in the run of a mill helicopter crash. The engine is often above you in a turbine model and has the propensity to make its way into the passenger cabin in a crash. Plus there is the rotor which tends to beat you about the head while spinning down amid the mangled mess. Then there is the dynamic rollover, usually the first part of your body to hit the ground is...you guessed it, your head.

Dynamics of a fixed wing aircraft accident are different but helmets still make survivable accidents, well, survivable. Semi-recently there was an accident in Idaho involving a member and regular poster at backcountrypilots.org. He stalled it into the trees on a high DA day after flying up the wrong box canyon. His wife walked away. He died because his head met the door post in the 172.

Certainly many helicopter pilots don't wear them, just as some pilots don't wear nomex flight suits, or don't have survival supplies on board, don't carry a PLB....just as in the threads about flying across Lake Michigan, up the outer coast of Alaska etc. it is about how much risk are you willing to assume, or conversely, how much "inconvenience" are you willing to tolerate for safety?
 
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I know some folks don't wear helmets because of a fear of being made fun of by other people on the flightline. I think the reason I would not wear one with pax on board is beacause I can't afford 4 helmets, and it seems a little unsettling when the guy who says "of course GA flying is safe!" is wearing a brain buckett and they don't get one. Otherwise, I'd wear one for everyday flying, just like I always wear a survival vest either for around the patch or on a cross country. You just never know. I know this has little to do with the original question, but that's my view on helmets.
 
I have 125 hours in helicopters and a commercial add-on and I've never worn a helmet. It never even occured to me to ask that question. :dunno:
 
Everskyward said:
I have 125 hours in helicopters and a commercial add-on and I've never worn a helmet. It never even occured to me to ask that question. :dunno:
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And you're still alive?! :goofy:
 
Most military helicopters, have transmissions mounted directly above the crew. In an accident all of that weight crushes the upper cabin causing traumatic and usually deadly head injuries. Helicopter accidents, unlike aiplanes are usually very high vertical G crashes, with relatively low horizontal G's. Crewmembers walk around the back, with large heavy objects, in a Chinook, they can be as big as 20,000 lbs. When we hit turbulance, your going everywhere, and my helmet bares the scars of many contacts with the airframe and internal loads. It has literally saved my live probably 3 or 4 times, and saved me knots in the head way more than 100.














And they look bad A$$ with AVNIS night vision goggles hanging off the front.

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This is my brand new "show" helmet. My flight helmet is at work.
 
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Well first of all, yes, the helmets do protect pilots from the rotors in the case that the rotors go through the cockpit glass for some reason

Also, for Apache pilots, there is a sort of computerized eye thing in their helmets that they use for... I think... targeting... and infra-red and stuff like that
 
The new generation of fighter pilot helmets also have HMS (helmet mounted sights).
 
Dragan said:
normally you'd see the eye piece attached to a helmet, but to prove my point about the thing Apache pilots put over their eye...
,,,
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C'Mon. We know all about that. It was in a really bad movie with Tommy Lee Jones and Nick Cage.
 
mikea said:
C'Mon. We know all about that. It was in a really bad movie with Tommy Lee Jones and Nick Cage.
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I only said it because (1) I don't know what movie you're talking about... and (2) That could have been a slightly fake movie.
 
Don't be knockin' Firebirds! Made me want to fly for the Army (no, not really).
 
mikea said:
C'Mon. We know all about that. It was in a really bad movie with Tommy Lee Jones and Nick Cage.
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Oh...that was one BAD movie. Firebirds wasn't it? Worse movie Cage ever made I think. Sad really, considering it was aviation related. :D
 
Dragan said:
Well first of all, yes, the helmets do protect pilots from the rotors in the case that the rotors go through the cockpit glass for some reason

Also, for Apache pilots, there is a sort of computerized eye thing in their helmets that they use for... I think... targeting... and infra-red and stuff like that
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Transmissions and airframes yes, rotor blades probably not. They will just cut you and the rest of the aircraft with a clean swoop.

The mounted parts on the apache helmet can are are able to be mounted to a normal headset. The ground simulators have headsets with the optical tracker components and the eye retical (IHADS, PNVIS, TADS)on them.

But we do mount the sensors on the helmets, cause helmets have on top of the huge safety factor, they are great for mounting all sorts of doo dads. Night vision goggles, lip lights, oxygen masks, IR trackers, strobes, reflective tape, battery packs for all the fun gear and of course, stickers :).
 
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