A variety of airplanes and ultralights have parachutes in case of catastrophic airframe failure, mid-air collision, engine failure over the ocean, the only capable pilot on board suffering a heart attack (passenger pulls ‘chute), or any other situation in which for some reason the plane can’t glide in to land. The company that makes most of these, including the ones in the Cirrus airplane (“a machine for preventing the world from becoming overpopulated with doctors and lawyers”), is http://brsparachutes.com/
As it happens the situations in which a parachute is helpful to an airplane are extremely uncommon and the common hazardous situations that fixed wing pilots get into are not helped by a parachute (hence the Cirrus having a much higher accident and death rate than the venerable Cessna 172, despite the older plane’s lack of parachute).
What about a helicopter though? If you screw up an autorotation and let the blades get below a critical speed you drop like a rock. If the tail rotor gets damaged the machine becomes uncontrollable. If various other parts come off, the machine becomes uncontrollable. The military sticks various sensors above the rotor blades. Why not put a parachute up there? The BRS site shows some that weigh 30-40 lbs. and would easily float a Robinson R22. Out of the payload of 400 lbs. that’s quite a bite. Would provide some incentive for helo students to lose weight (my instructor is 190 and I’m 200 so we’d have to lose 10-15 lbs. each to fly with a ‘chute, for example).
It probably makes sense to do away with the income tax altogether and instead impose a sales tax.
Different commodities could have different rates of sales tax, designed to bring about some sense of social equilibrium: e.g. produce and dairy would have zero sales tax. Cars below $20,000 would have a certain sales tax. SUVs would have a larger sales tax. High end automobiles would be taxed much higher. Ditto ski tickets in Aspen and Vail. Wachusett mountain in MA would be taxed much less.
I’m interested in the dynamics of having a big parachute deploy on top of a big fan sucking air down. You’d have to have a pretty high rate of descent before you deployed the chute to have any chance of working. Since the attach point is well above the center of gravity, if you deployed while moving forward there would be a violent pitch-up, probably causing a rotor strike. I think to make it work you’d have to have explosive charges to jettison the rotors when you deploy the cute.
I too am a little hazy on the deployment. The only thing I can figure to work would be something that deploys from the tail and lets the helicopter come down nose first, but in a lot of light helicopters this puts the passengers under a few hundred pounds of machinery with no crumple zone. Not to mention the pendulum issues, deployment at low altitudes would be worse than not having it.
Above the rotors has all sorts of balance issues on top of the aerodynamics, and I was just reading in AVflash this morning about a spin recovery chute system which didn’t detach after said spin recovery, leaving the pilot to bail with his own chute (it was a test flight) and the remains of the plane in a smoking crater. If we’re still at that stage of parachute technology, mounting this beast in a place that screams “tangled cords” seems a little wishful.
A helicopter chute would increase the cost of machines without actually adding to the kill rate of lawyers flying them. What’s the point? More exciting would be an eject system that propels the pilot to the side of the chopper (can’t go up because of rotor blades).
How could it be deployed? You would have to slow the rotor before the chute (as hack pointed out) or be decending very rapidly already. The failure modes for helicopters are not going to be very helpful in this. If a tail rotor fails, the craft may be spinning while deployment occurs. I’m fuzzy on what might happen though — if you begin to slow down the rotors, will that torque help prevent spin? If there is a rotor strike, you are close to the ground and the chute does you no good. If you are at altitude and lose power, use the traditional method.
How could it be deployed? You would have to slow the rotor before the chute (as hack pointed out) or be decending very rapidly already. The failure modes for helicopters are not going to be very helpful in this. If a tail rotor fails, the craft may be spinning while deployment occurs. I’m fuzzy on what might happen though — if you begin to slow down the rotors, will that torque help prevent spin? If there is a rotor strike, you are close to the ground and the chute does you no good. If you are at altitude and lose power, use the traditional method.
How could it be deployed? You would have to slow the rotor before the chute (as hack pointed out) or be decending very rapidly already. The failure modes for helicopters are not going to be very helpful in this. If a tail rotor fails, the craft may be spinning while deployment occurs. I’m fuzzy on what might happen though — if you begin to slow down the rotors, will that torque help prevent spin? If there is a rotor strike, you are close to the ground and the chute does you no good. If you are at altitude and lose power, use the traditional method.
Let’s see if I remember this correctly. James Bond sits in a clone of the AH-6 chopper in Russia, explosives blow the rotor and blades off, rockets fire the crew cabin upwards, multiple chutes deploy, everybody is fine, he checks out the babe…
Ok, at $27M and a Defense Dept. budget, that might work, but a civilian chopper having a bunch of ordnance wired to trip, rockets, etc.. fills me with dread.
Chute deployment after a tail rotor failure, the most common point of failure in civilian choppers, is impossible. You would have to build a gimbaled mast, similar to the Army’s Kiowa chopper, which can only function properly in the vertical. Too many limitations, drag, range, complexity, maintenance, etc..
“You may fool all the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all the time; but you can’t fool all of the people all the time.” Abraham Lincoln
Pardon. Right comment. Wrong post.
The international terrorist organization Cobra solved this problem in the early 80’s. Whenever a G.I. Joe’s laser hit a Cobra helicopter, the Cobra pilot would jump out the opposite way the helicopter was falling and manually deploy a small parachute.
BRS parachutes saved about 190 people’s life. I guess that says it all. The old argument that pilot’s with parachutes are willing to risk more is not valid for pilots who don’t do that and still have the chance to walk away after an otherwise deadly midair collison, engine failure at night etc.
alexis
munich
BRS parachutes saved about 190 people’s life. I guess that says it all. The old argument that pilot’s with parachutes are willing to risk more is not valid for pilots who don’t do that and still have the chance to walk away after an otherwise deadly midair collison, engine failure at night etc.
alexis
munich
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what about an accordian like crumple mechanism designed to slow down impact up to 150ft freefall attached underneath landing gear using steps to get up in the r-22,and others… i would expect this to raise the cockpit above the ground and add some weight to the units weight and cost.A small price to pay if it were to save 1 human life.I dont know if this is feasible but I’m hoping someone a lot smarter than me would give this or any other idea that would make a power failure survivable.I lost my brother 4/13/06 his last day on duty protecting and serving the chelsea michigan community as their police chief.
I assume airbags would do better than a crumple mechanism.
“The company that makes these is RAFAEL and the name of their product is REAPS Rotorcraft External Airbag Protection Systems.”
From: http://www.bigbirds.com/showarticle.php?article=51055
Today i talk with some friends about this subject and i search the internet about this thing and i found this site:) . I think as well to an system of parachutes above the propeller.we must make a rotor more thick , the propeller on this rotor and from inside to come out a set of 3-4 parachutes.
On point 2 , under the helicopter a big airbag and on point 3 a substance which one its pushed in the fuell tank.This substance make the fuell incombustible .This thinks connected on separated emergency system running on batterys.
I have often pondered the idea many times. We all know were the danger is in helicopters its roughly 300 ft above ground and below thats were all the sneaky little single strands of wire live or little piece of plywood or tin that gets blown up into your rotor blades maybe even a fence post to the tail.Taking off to heavy and on and on. Having said that there are things that will kill you were a chute would work like someting breaking, flying into a 0 visability enviroment, rotor stall ,etc. In my mind the chute could be placed aft of the tail rotor there it would possibly clear the tail and main rotors.The nose would have to have a counter weight (ballast) because of this unsightly appendage stuck to your butt but it might just work. Money and the Faa approving such is the big limiting factors but it would be nice to have that extra comfort zone.