Helicopters are the hummingbirds of the aircraft world! This thought came to me unbidden while scrolling through photos of last year's Thunder Over Louisville. I know I posted a photo of this same helicopter yesterday but when I saw the photos from @galenkp's helicopter ride in New Zealand I may have gotten a little jealous.
Helicopters are fascinating pieces of machinery (at least to me, I have way too many photos of them, especially this particular one). Did you know that even without a working engine they can still land safely? It's called autorotation, within a certain envelope the upward movement of air will turn the rotors and generate enough lift to safely land the aircraft. Or that without a tail rotor the helicopter would rotate in the opposite direction as the main rotor?
For a variety of reasons I have a lot of photos of the police department chopper. In the one above it is lifting a diver out of the water with its skid during a demonstration at Thunder. The photo below is from a minute or so later, after the pilot got done playing with the diver and started climbing up from between the bridges.
Anyways, that's enough helicopters out of me. Is that anything that any of you reading this end up taking photos of every time you see one?
(Obligatory mention of @monochromes #monomad contest)
Great snaps mate!
That first one reminds me of that time I was being chased by the police chopper...Lol, kidding of course!
Good action shots though! I love that last one as you can see the bridge a little distorted by the heat of the engine exhaust. Cool. Helicopters are cool all round.
Hey, have you seen those massive scale model RC ones on YouTube? Insane! Worth a look.
Thanks!
Everybody is kidding until the chopper flies off :D I've been spotlighted by it plenty, that's good enough for me.
That airshow is great for action shots, I'm still annoyed that I didn't have my camera the year the Apache attack helicopters were in it.
I'd not heard of those, I will have to look into that.
There's loads of them but here's a start...
Damn, I know what I'm asking for for Christmas this year...
I know right? There's also awesome fixed wing aircraft ones too...Check it out.
Santa better be on his game this year! 🤣
He may be afraid of competition if too many of these are around :D