“U.S. taxpayers stuck with the tab as helicopter flight schools exploit GI Bill loophole” is a Los Angeles Times story (thanks Mike Aracic!) about the way the Veterans Administration funds flight schools. The journalist misses the corporate welfare angle that I’ve written about here for a few years. Flight schools affiliated with a standard college can collect 100% funding plus living stipends while independent flight schools can only tap into the VA for about 50 percent of the total cost. The veteran is therefore much better off training at a school affiliated with a university, thus resulting in the taxpayers paying 5-10X as much (add in the living stipend, tuition for the college on top of the flight hours, and much higher costs per flight hour). The story is about the waste of taxpayer dollars but it is missing the fact that it isn’t a waste from the perspective of the capitalists (some at “non-profit” universities) who have successfully lobbied to operate under rules that aren’t available to non-cronies.
Note that the college-affiliated/VA-funded Upper Limit school discussed in the article charges $600/hour for the Robinson R44. At East Coast Aero Club, operating at a much higher cost airport in a state with a much higher cost of living, we charge $329/hour, including fuel, for the same aircraft. Some of the veterans also fly around in circles in a Bell 205, the civilian Huey, with nine empty seats in the back. The companies that employ low-time helicopter graduates operate Robinson R22s and R44s, not Hueys, so there is no practical value to this training. It will be many years before the graduate gets into a helicopter like the Huey and that will be after a thorough operator-run training program (probably for a European-designed-and-built Airbus helicopter, whose rotor system spins in the opposite direction and therefore requires opposite pedal inputs; Bell got so fat from its own government contracts that they didn’t bother investing in new designs and has been steadily losing civilian market share to the Europeans).
[It is only fair to note that the total dollars involved in this program are negligible compared to the money spent by the federal and state governments on things such as health care, employee pensions, etc. Whether the VA flight school program continues in its present form or not won’t make any difference to U.S. prosperity.]
Related:
- February 2014 report from Heli-Expo explaining that a flight school could bill the Feds $10,000/year for instrument training in a Gulfstream if they wanted to
- April 2014 report from Sun n Fun talking about how “Startup flight schools are overtaking 50-year-old schools”
Coriolis effect?
Why wouldn’t helicopter companies world wide standardize on which direction the rotor turns?
“…whose rotor system spins in the opposite direction…”
Whoa, whoa, whoa. I had NEVER considered that someone would change the direction for the main rotor. Is that common? What’s the split? Why in the world would they do that?
Maybe the same reason the side of a car the driver sits on isn’t internationally standardized?
Really it’s only French ( Eurocopter now Airbus French/German) and Russian helicopters that rotate clockwise (seen from above). All the other countries that make copters started off by licensing US designs and have kept the US rotation (Westland, Augusta, etc.). Sikorsky’s copter went counterclockwise so all others descended from his do too, the same way that all light bulbs have the same socket as Edison’s. French OTOH were off in their own world (not quite as much as the Russians, but almost). They were going to make their OWN helicopters. French cars, bikes, etc. were also incompatible with world standards in various small but annoying ways. I think that the French sort of liked it that way, for the same reason that De Gaulle pulled out of NATO and has its own atomic weapons. It was part of their illusion that they were a co-equal great power w/ the US and not just a minor European country. In a way it was nice that when you went to France, everything (the cars, the plumbing fixtures, etc.) looked a little different – you felt as if you weren’t in Kansas anymore. Nowadays everything looks the same everywhere – when I get on an Airbus jet sometimes I almost have to look at the safety card to know it’s not a Boeing.
Of course from the POV of physics, either direction is equally good as long as the leading edge of the airfoil is in the front.
Who cares about the laws of physics?
The question is how much of an demand does this make on the pilot and how likely is it to cause accidents?
As long as you fly the one you are trained on, it makes no difference. Obviously switching is a problem. You have to be retrained for a new type anyway but having the rotor spinning the “wrong” way must require a little more effort.
To be clear, the left pedal still yaws the nose to the left and the right to the right – the pedals aren’t really reversed. But when you increase power the rotor torque yaws the helicopter in the opposite direction from what you are used to, so you have to counter that with a right pedal press instead of a left as in a US copter. Imagine that you had a car that always pulled to the right when you stepped on the gas, so you would have to develop the habit of steering the car to the left to keep it on the road under acceleration. Then imagine you got in another car and that car always pulled to left, so if you steered left as you are used to it would only make things worse. It would take a little while to get used to but it’s not impossible.
Colin: Why would the French spin their rotors in the opposite direction? A one-word complete explanation: Citroën.
philg – Jay Leno explains why the Citroen DS was the most innovative and comfortable car ever: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kzW_ERSgFRY
Completely off-topic, but I have to defend Citroen. I drove a 2CV in my youth and it was the most wonderful car! (Plus something like forty miles per gallon…) Forget about all those silly “plugins,” bring back the 2CV. Cheap, fun, albeit very dangerous in collision (the car itself is safe, light and slow, it is the other cars that are a problem…)
And, unknown to many, Citroen is the only major car maker with a Jewish founder.
Who is attacking Citroën? Their designs have been different from those of car makers in other countries (just as French helicopters spin the rotors in the opposite direction from American helicopters). Nobody said that the designs were worse.
Although not exactly a founder, Emil Jellinek (who was Jewish) was an important early backer of Daimler and its cars were forevermore named in honor of his daughter, Mercedes.
I will be the one to attack Citroën. The DS was very innovative when it came out in 1955 but they were still making them pretty much the same in 1975. It was a great car but was driven by an indifferent little 4 cyl. engine of ancient design which made it severely underpowered – some versions had only 69 hp. The hydraulic suspension is a maintenance nightmare – over time all the seals deteriorate. When it works, it’s great for rutted French countryside roads but confers little advantage on a smooth highway. For most of its run it lacked basic features demanded by the (American) market such as air conditioning and automatic transmission. In the US they were disastrous to own because no mechanics knew how to work on them and even if they did, getting parts was impossible.
All in all, it’s one of those French “acquired taste” type things like blood sausage and tripe – not for everyone.