Heli-chair.. is it possible??

The concept works well. I had a radio controlled airplane pilot that learned very quickly because he had "the feel of flying".
 
ausrere said:
Ok..you rotor guys tell me.. is this possible? (be sure and watch the video):

http://www.heli-chair.com/
Click to expand...

I think it's mostly hype. A big part of the helicopter experience is the relating the view out the front to your control inputs. I think any significant R/C heli experience would help with learning the real thing, and the heli-chair would probably be better for that than a conventional R/C transmitter but not by much. The website claims that a student RW pilot would be able to hover a real helicopter after on their first flight instead of the usual "hours and hours required to master that skill". Notice they are comparing a potentially simple and brief hover demo vs mastery. Heck, I was able to do what I though was a decent hover on my only lesson with John Lancaster although he was handling the collective for me so it doesn't seem much of a stretch for someone to do the whole thing with a bunch of RC heli experience. Technically that was actually my second RW lesson but the first was about 20 years ago. I've done a little RC helicopter flying a long time ago as well but never with a heli-chair.
 
I also am somewhat skeptical, Lance. The art of hovering is learned by the brain making connections between visual clues from outside the cockpit, other sensory inputs, and your hand and feet. Since the Heli-chair wouldn't provide the same inputs, I would think that it wouldn't get you all that far.

It does take most students about 10 hours to get a stable hover, but that is not "hours and hours" of practice -- that's 10 hours of all kinds of flying. Typically a lesson wouldn't have more than maybe 15 minutes of hover work (anything more would be torture!), so that equates to 2.5 hours of actual hover practice.

And then there are people who get it right away -- I once met a pilot who works for Forbes (and who taught Harrison Ford to fly in an R22) who trained as a civilian at a British military facility, and soloed in 8 hours. That's right, he not only could hover, but he could take off, land, do turns, and do autorotations, in just 8 hours!
 
I'm thinking the first time you try to self teach and it starts backing into you, you're not going to be able to scramble out of the way.

I'm thinking it would be a more effective trainer if there were video cameras feeding back to monitors at the chair. I bet the same concept would let just about any pilot fly RC planes with little to no damage on flight #1.
 
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ausrere said:
Ok..you rotor guys tell me.. is this possible? (be sure and watch the video):

http://www.heli-chair.com/
Click to expand...


I agree with the skepticism for the same reasons as has been cited. Seat of the pants feel is extremely important in learning to fly anything, helicopters especially when it comes to hovering. I can also tell you that, after becoming an airplane pilot, I tried to learn to fly RC airplanes. Sure, I knew what things did, but doing it from OUTSIDE was WAAY different, especially with the airplane coming at you. I always turned the wrong way, usually into a tree or post or building or anything else that happened to be in the way. I crashed 4 before I finally, sorta, got it. But then I was broke so I didn't do anymore. I would think there would be the same learning curve going from scale to full scale anything.

Anybody else get the heebie jeebies when you read their slogan 'If you can do this, we guarantee you can do this (showing an MD500).' Good thing helicopters are more expensive than the average Joe who's favorite catch phrase is 'watch this' can afford. Y'all have seen the video of the guy that bought a hughes and thought he'd just take her for a spin, literally?


"To fly is human, to hover is divine"
 
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