Birth of the Bell Helicopter

[anonymous-user]

Our rotary fetishists might be interested in this short (27 min) video chronicling the development of Bells first helicopter:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k562IriqnlA

It's fascinating and a pretty hairy in places (at 11:30 the test pilot, not wearing a seat belt or with any kind of canopy above them is actually thrown THROUGH the main rotor, incredibly without being chopped into small pieces! )

[Ayahuasca]

I like the safety Homburgs.

[Equus]

I'm not into helicopters, but that was indeed fascinating - a great insight into the early engineering/control problems that were overcome, yet which we take for granted these days.

[Gandahar]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixDn8Ak4kz8

[DuraAce]

Nice one, I will watch those later on...

[AER]

Thanks for posting this one Max. I enjoyed watching a grown man play with models and wind up with something useful and world-changing in the end.

[Krikkit]

That was a great video to watch, such interesting engineering in getting the swash plates to work properly for control mixing.

The executive being thrown out of the prototype was a real eye-opener!

[anonymous-user]

AER said:

Thanks for posting this one Max. I enjoyed watching a grown man play with models and wind up with something useful and world-changing in the end.

I hope you're going to have some sort of roof or seat belts in yours my friend when you get to "full sized" tests ;-)

[AER]

Max_Torque said:

AER said:

Thanks for posting this one Max. I enjoyed watching a grown man play with models and wind up with something useful and world-changing in the end.

I hope you're going to have some sort of roof or seat belts in yours my friend when you get to "full sized" tests ;-)

I trust you did actually read the fine print in that test pilot contract you signed earlier, didn't you...?