this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2025
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NonCredibleDefense
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Helicopters are actually really neat. If they suffer a loss of power, they can spin up the rotor while falling, and then reverse the blade pitch and turn all that momentum into lift and make a soft landing. Or something like that. Smarter Every Day can explain better: https://youtu.be/BTqu9iMiPIU
Check out "gyrocopters". They look kinda like helicopters, but their rotors are not connected to the engine. Instead, they use a propeller to drive the aircraft forward, and airflow drives the rotor disk.
They operate on the same basic principle as autorotation, but for normal flight rather than arresting an emergency descent.
Those are so weird! Brilliant.
Interesting topic
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autorotation?wprov=sfla1
What a mad lad, setting two records at once.
Sort of correct. They can feather the blades to induce auto-rotation. Long explanation short, the rate the blades rotate is based on the total airflow though the rotor disk from any angle, so much like a glider, you can trade forward speed for vertical speed/rotor speed.