Helicopter Instrumentation

The Helicopter, often called a Whirly bird, and Egg-beater, a Chopper, or as one unenthusiastic fixed-wing pilot put it, an Infuriated Palm Tree — is a wonderfully versatile machine. In spite of its looks, it is fundamentally the same as a fixed-wing aircraft with one major exception – it does not require forward motion in order to fly. Herein lies the secret of its versatility, but here also is its reluctance to being flown on instruments. If the Helicopter required forward motion to fly, it would then be the same as an airplane and the problems of instrumentation would be the same as for fixed-wing aircraft. Helicopter pilots will all agree that the machine can be flown on conventional instruments when in forward flight, but the task becomes almost impossible when approaching zero speed. Our problem of designing helicopter instruments appears to lie in the range of zero speed flight, zero to cruise flight and cruise to zero speed flight. The question then, is how to build instruments for these flight conditions.