CAN SOMEONE EXPLAIN THIS?
Posted by Karen on Apr 09 2008
Before I get into today’s post, I want to let you all know….I did exercise yesterday. I know it appears I didn’t, but I was on the elliptical for 45 minutes during American Idol and then I just never went back and crossed it off.
Ok, now on to today’s thoughts.
Let me give you a bit of background first. Mike’s office is next door to the hospital. Their parking lots are separated by a chain link fence. About 3 years ago, the hospital (who i believe actually owns Mike’s building) commandeered part of the parking lot for their own use. See, they lacked a good place for helicopters to land and take off. Now, this is small town medicine, no one was being flighted to this hospital. Instead, they were being taken from this hospital to a better more qualified facility. What happens is a squad takes the person from the hospital, drives about 1000 feet, and then meets the chopper at the helipad.
So they took about 1/4 of the parking lot at Mike’s office and painted a big helicopter landing symbol on it. Then they placed signs all over saying if you parked in that area, you would get towed. Makes sense.
So the other day, Mike was heading home. He called to say it’d be a little longer because MedFlight was getting ready to take off and he (and about 20 other people) were staying to watch. Rubber neckers, I tell you! He said, “I wish you could see this.” Uh, isn’t that why you have an iPhone? He hadn’t thought of that!
So here are a few pictures after they loaded the patient into the back. It’s just taking off here. You can see the squad in the background. See the domed building? That’s the hospital.
Here it’s making the turn towards where Mike is parked.
And here it has crossed the street and is right by Mike. But what in the world is happening here??? Is this some sort of helicopter optical illusion? I mean, I’m not taking pictures of helicopters in flight every day, but I’d never seen this before….
I understand it’s just one split second in time, but I had no idea the blades curved up like that. How does that thing even fly? Any aviation experts out there who can explain this to me?
on 09 Apr 2008 at 4:42 pm 1 Christy said …
Hmm. I’ve never seen that happen.
on 09 Apr 2008 at 4:46 pm 2 Fran said …
My goodness that looks so strange! I can’t explain it but I do hope someone can so I can learn why the rotors look like that. In the picture just before this one they look straight. Maybe it’s some optical illusion that is common knowledge (except for a few of us!). IS THIS ONE OF YOUR KOOKY JOKES OR SOME KIND OF TRICK QUESTION, KAREN?
on 09 Apr 2008 at 6:39 pm 3 Lynn said …
The rotors are quite flexible but I think that picture is an illusion.
on 10 Apr 2008 at 12:14 am 4 Awesome Mom said …
That is freaky!
on 10 Apr 2008 at 9:14 am 5 Karen M said …
I guess this is just trick to the eye, sort of like the “rubber pencil” trick.
But what does I know? I ain’t no rocket scientific genius (read with laid back southern drawl and twang)HEE HEE HEE
on 10 Apr 2008 at 9:59 am 6 Janet said …
weird!!!
on 10 Apr 2008 at 11:27 am 7 Mary T said …
I have heard of that happening. Same reason that when you approach the helicopter when the blades are going you’re supposed to duck. They are so flexible that even though one would think you’d never be tall enough, ducking is advised. Of course, that’s just hearsay - I’m not a helicopter expert so don’t quote me!
on 10 Apr 2008 at 1:14 pm 8 Suzanne said …
I believe what you are seeing may be a combination of “coning” which is the upward deflection (bending) of the blades during takeoff and “flapping” where the blades angle upward from a hinge at the center of the rotor. I’m not a rotorhead (helicopter person), the aircraft I work on have fixed wings so I can’t tell you how much of a deflection is normal, or what the maximum is. But wow, it looks impressive doesn’t it? The visual effect is probably exaggerated by the relative length of the blades….I’m guessing they are longer than they appear in the photo. Perhaps Mike can weasel himself a chat with the pilots? Most pilots love to talk about their aircraft, and it would be an interesting chat if he’s as much of a nerd as I am!
on 10 Apr 2008 at 3:32 pm 9 Dawn @ Coming to a Nursery Near You said …
Ok, that’s just freaky!
on 11 Apr 2008 at 7:29 am 10 Michael - Lover of Amy said …
I’m sure some tech or aero guy can explain it. I simply think it’s an AWESOME picture, makes me jealous just seeing it.
on 13 Apr 2008 at 7:39 pm 11 Mike - the pilot said …
Believe it or not, I’m the pilot flying the aircraft. While the blades to cone as mentioned earlier, I don’t this they cone that much. I believ that it is some kind of visual illusion based on the fact that the EC135 (that is the helicopter model are looking at) only has 4 main rotor blades, not the six shown here. This aircraft’s rotor system is a hingless rotor system therefore flapping is not involve. Sikorsky mounted a camera on the hub to show what the blades acutally do during flight, The story goes that when the actually looked at the film they decided that pilots probably didn’t want to know that the blades acted like a piece of speghetti or so goes the story.
on 21 Apr 2008 at 4:21 pm 12 David Malone said …
I guess it is an optical illusion too, probably caused by the photo not actually being a moment in time, but being scanned in some way from the CCD in the digital camera and at the same time the blades were moving. It would be similar to the sort of weird pictures you used to get if you photographed or filmed a CRT TV, where you get artefacts because of the refresh rate of the TV (which you can’t usually see because the persistence of images on the eye is quite long).
[I believe that one of the first things that radiologists have to learn is spot artefacts that caused by different types of imaging.]