• Estiar@sh.itjust.worksM
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    3 months ago

    It’s more about altitude than the ability to glide. Helicopters can do what’s called Auto rotation, which means they actually can glide. If the blade seize up however, they can’t autorotate. Helicopters fly a lot lower than most airplanes though, so they can’t glide as far.

      • Estiar@sh.itjust.worksM
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        3 months ago

        Wow. I’d be nuts to fly one of those things. 6000 VVI sounds like suicide

        With the collective firmly held down on the bottom stop, things happen very fast. The helicopter is descending in a hurry, as in 4,000 – 6,000 feet per minute. Do the math, if you are at 1,000 feet and the descent rate is 4,000 feet, you have one quarter or a minute – 15 seconds – to find a place to land.

        • TranscendentalEmpire@lemm.ee
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          3 months ago

          Yeah, helicopters are the apex predators of soldiers and rich people. Even if you pull off the perfect autorotation, the glide ratio is still only a maximum of like 3:1.

          I think I remember reading a report somewhere that more people have been killed by practicing autorotation than have actually pulled it off in the wild.