F Minus by Tony Carrillo for January 17, 2014

When I was a kid, I thought becoming a helicopter pilot.

Seat belts are important. Anyway you slice it.

Common mistake many beginner pilots make, just before they crash and burn.

Also physically impossible?

@pcolli: Sustained level flight in that position would be – but you can see choppers looping the loop at air shows.

Maybe the pilot is a bat?

A common mistake beginning pilots make – once!

When I was a teenager there were a lot of kids learning to be helicopter pilots…Huey pilots for Vietnam. Many of them came come….

BTW Hueys will not fly upside down nor loop. A lot of dead trainee pilots have proved that.

The only thing I have not been up in is the helicopter, even though one of my sons has been in marketing of them for around 30 years (since college, for Boeing and now for Bell). I definitely will sometime (I’d like to do aerial photos of my house and area – better than Google’s)

pcolli: The first radio controlled model helicopter made the FÅI record book with an endurance flight of 30 seconds. FAI doesn’t homulgate inverted records, but I recall one lasting two hours upside-down..Helicopter: 10,000 loose parts flying in close formation. -1960s defination

Probably had it in Reverse — a seldom used gear because you have to go through Neutral, and that makes you fall.

I was a crew chief on a slick in 1969-70 in RVN and don’t ever want to fly on another one. Nosiree, Bob.

Notice how high up they are to see the curvature of the Earth. Gonna need some oxygen above 10,000 ft.