Ask a helicopter pilot anything

[Siko]

That’s awesome mate - thanks for posting and glad you enjoyed it! R44 is a bit tasty though - think most people start in a. R22! Let us know if you do anymore btw, be interested to hear how you are getting on - I’m sure you’re aware but helicopter flying is very expensive

PS for some undefinable reason no helicopter pilot calls them ‘choppers’ btw, that’s for noobs

[Siko]

smallpaul said:

I watched a helicopter taxi behind a private jet keeping the nose on the centre line, line up at holding point and “take off” using the runway.

Why?

Good question! Loads of reasons really - going back to my days on the Merlin we could lift another 1000kg of payload if we used a rolling takeoff technique on a runway, using less power/stress than a hover departure. The reason I suspect this pilot did that is because it was a larger commercial passenger carrying helicopter - on mine (apart from offshore helidecks) we fly to performance class 1 (same rules as airlines) which mandates rates of climb etc on a single engine etc, but fundamentally we have to be able to either takeoff and climb single-engined at a defined point or reject and land back on the runway. Also, being able to ground taxi means you can move clear of areas that may be affected by your downwash - light helicopters with skids won’t make a huge amount of downwash but a bigger helicopter can cause very significant downwash and blow objects/people (see an earlier post for my own experience of blowing an aircraft over ).