The Helicopter: Aircraft Most Likely to Commit Robbery and Extortion.
Every Helicopter Enthusiast, usually in the beginning stages of this crippling disease, wonders why the skies aren’t buzzing with thousands of helicopters flitting to and fro to every roof top in sight. This confusion decisively retreats the first time a grinning flight school representative points at the part of the brochure showing their “reasonable rates, human organs accepted.” Reality can be devastating: helicopters burn bales of money, and not everyone is Bill Gates’ legitimate heir, so not everyone gets to fly helicopters. Yet helicopters are allowed to fly unsupervised, so they must perform some valuable community service that leaves them free to rob helpless helicopter groupies.
Let’s review the basics.
Helicopters can fly really, really slowly, so slowly that they appear to hover in one spot. This is just an optical illusion. Helicopter Pilots use this trick to convince gullible tourists that they should spend all of their vacation money to sit in them! Most airplanes, on the other hand, can’t do that trick because they’re afraid. Flying slowly is very dangerous for airplanes. What airplanes do well is fly faster and farther than helicopters.
To summarize:
Helicopters – slow
Airplanes – fast.
Now let’s look at the things that are best done slowly.
Because helicopters are able to fly so slowly, they can land in very little space. So the best reason to use a helicopter is if you have to pick things up or drop things off where there’s no room to build a 3,000 ft. runway.
Flying slowly is also helpful when you’re trying to see things that are hidden in tight spots and you have to fly close to the ground. This is the best technique for getting the best view of, say, bathers at the nude beach in La Jolla, California. Just don’t fly so low that the police artist is able to accurately reproduce your face from the “naturists’” testimony. Hint: always wear a disguise when flying.
‘Remote Sensing’ (the politically correct term for Aerial Photography) can also be done from helicopters. Generally, though, helicopters are best when you want to get close-ups of your subject, e.g. the La Jolla nude beach, and not when you’re trying to map out the Australian Outback in 3-D. Airplanes are best used for large area surveys and mapping by making overlapping photo transects at pre-designated altitudes and at pre-determined speeds. Using mounted cameras with a variety of film choices, they can fly straight and level for long distances so that the photographs have minimal distortion. This way precise measurements can be made from the photographs of nude beaches.
The distance that you have to fly is also a consideration. If you’re not going farther than a helicopter tank of gas, or you’re not landing at an airport, you could probably blackmail someone into paying for a helicopter.
If, however, you have to land and refuel a helicopter when an airplane can get there faster on one tank and there’s an airport at the destination, then you’ll have to be satisfied with getting crammed into the baggage compartment of a Piper Cherokee.
Finally, if you enjoy picking things up with long cables, dangling them below you, and dropping them off in strange places, then the helicopter is the only way to go. Airplanes refuse to do this kind of work because it’s not “safe.”
Unfortunately for helicopters, things like trucks, horses, and cable yarders sometimes can get to the same places a lot cheaper; the only advantage helicopters have in this situation is speed. Time to play up the “time is money” aspect of economics.
To summarize:
1 Helicopters demand lots of money. They don’t care how they get it.
2 Find rich parents. If you have to, put yourself up for adoption and review applicant’s tax returns carefully. 3 Always wear a disguise when flying.
4. As a helicopter enthusiast, you first have to admit to yourself that you have a problem; only then you can seek help, which is the first step towards recovery.
Helicopter Enthusiast’s Facts from http://helicopterwise.co
