I couldn’t believe it… they were going to send up Rangers Jeff Webb, and Dave Pope, on the end of a 100ft line hanging from the bottom of the NPS Fire chopper, and somehow have the climbers pull them into the belay!  I have never seen such a mission on an EC rescue as the chopper would be awfully close to the face and it isn’t that easy to pull people hanging on a rope 30 or so feet into a stance.  The late afternoon light was fading fast so they send the chopper, flown brilliantly by Richard Shatto, up to take a look and judge if the wind conditions were within limits.

After the initial flight the Rangers were attached to the long line and the mission was on.  The chopper lifted up and the men were soon riding the rocket to the face of ElCap!  Impressive to say the least!

Evans took plenty of breathtaking photographs of the rescue operation. Oh yeah, the thumb was surgically reattached. Link -via Metafilter

A marauding tiger was spied sitting on a lawn near a golf course in Hampshire, UK. A passerby saw the beast and called the police. The police, taking no chances with a wild ferocious animal, rang up the local zoo and got a team of keepers in the air with tranquilizer rifles. As the helicopter approached, the tiger suddenly fell over from the force of the rotor wash. The tiger you see was stuffed, as in a kid’s toy. Yes, someone left a stuffed tiger sitting on the lawn and the police in Hampshire mobilized in force. I feel bad for the next person that really does see a tiger on the prowl. Feel free to laugh now. link

The helicopter has really changed the way that many things are done since it was invented. Traditionally, the helicopter has a rotor or two up top and a tail rotor. The upside to the design is that it can take off and land vertically. The downside is that a rotorcraft isn’t as fast as fixed wing aircraft. Eurocopter has announced that its X3 Hybrid combining rotors with propellers has hit a speed much higher than normal helicopters are capable of. The X3 hit speeds of 232 knots or 430 km/h in testing. This will be a fantastic aircraft for rescue mission where speed is critical.

That must be some view, though presumably you can’t have any fear of height to appreciate it. That and other very cool photos are in the running to win $10,000 at the annual National Geographic Photography Contest.

The best part is that you are invited to enter your people, places, and nature photographs online (till Nov 30, entry fee $15): Link – Thanks Ethan!

Previously on Neatorama: National Geographic International Photo Contest 2009

(You Tube link)

We don’t know whether we should be terrified or overjoyed. We’ve just come across a video demo from the University of Pennsylvania’s GRASP Lab that shows an autonomous quadrotor helicopter performing “precise aggressive maneuvers.” And trust us when we say, nothing in the foregoing sentence is an overstatement — the thing moves with the speed and grace of an angry bee, while accompanied by the perfectly menacing whine of its little engine.

This little helicopter would make an excellent cartoon character.

Link – Via Holy Kaw

Swisscopter’s Dragonfly is a small helicopter that has rocket engines on the ends of its rotors blades to propel them:

The copter makes use of tiny hydrogen-peroxide-powered rocket motors on the tips of the blades, which replaces the traditional engine-powered rotor. Large fuel tanks surrounding the pilot allow the Dragonfly to travel at up to 40 mph for 50 minutes.

via Popular Science | Company Website

Further rounds then struck the helicopter’s automatic stabilisation system, shutting it down and making it extremely difficult to fly.

Despite blood streaming into his eyes, Flight Lt Fortune battled with the controls for eight minutes and managed to get the casualties back to Camp Bastion.

TV Presenter Mike Brewer was on the helicopter when the incident happened. He told Sky News:

“It was terrifying. We came under fire just as the ramp was closing. Then just after we’d taken off the Chinook suddenly lurched from side to side and we heard the pilot had been shot.

“The only reason we didn’t plunge straight back into the desert was because of the sheer bravery and skill of Ian and the rest of the crew. They’re all heroes.”

Lt. Fortune is expected to recover from his injuries. Link -via Fark

Barman made a cool helicopter from the movie Avatar out of Lego pieces for the February competition at Brickshelf. Link to pictures. -via Wacky Owl

The aviation company Eurocopter is developing noise-reducing helicopter blades that could minimize the sound that a helicopter makes:

This week Eurocopter unveiled its most recent effort to reduce helicopter noise with the radical-looking Blue Edge rotor blade. The new blade has been tested on one of the company’s EC155 helicopters and was shown to reduce noise 3 to 4 decibels, according to the company.

In addition to the Blue Edge rotor blade, the company also introduced something called Blue Pulse technology. Also designed to reduce helicopter noise, the Blue Pulse system uses three flap modules in the trailing edge of each rotor blade. Piezoelectric motors move actuate the flaps 15 to 40 times per second in reduce the “slap noise” often heard when a helicopter is descending.

Both of these technologies are able to reduce noise by minimizing the blade-vortex interaction of the main rotor on a helicopter. Blade-vortex interaction is the source of the pulsating sound most of us are familiar with when helicopters fly overhead. The noise is created when a rotor blade hits the wake vortex left behind from the blade in front of it.

Video at the link.

Link via Popular Science | Photo: Eurocopter

“I lost sight of him for a second and then I heard a boom and all of a sudden I have a turkey vulture sitting on my lap up against my chest and on my forearm,” Appleton recalled. “I don’t know the exact size or weight of it, but it was a pretty big bird.”

Appleton decided it would not be safe to push the big bird out, so the buzzard rode for twenty miles sitting in the pilot’s lap. When the helicopter landed, the bird flew out, stumbled around for a while, then flew off for good. The incident was captured on video. Link -via Arbroath

Researchers at at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have been working since the 1990s on helicopters that can navigate indoor spaces autonomously. This one won the 2009 AUVSI Aerial Robotics Competition. Laser scanners and cameras allow it to move through a building on its own. Potential applications include industrial inspection and disaster rescue in hazardous locations.

Contest Page via Popular Science

Reporter and former Green Beret Michael Yon took a series of intriguing photos of glowing rotor blades as a helicopter lands in a military base in Afghanistan. The eerie "halo" is caused by static electricity generated as the titanium/nickel blades move through a field of dust (which is kicked up from the ground as the heli lands).

The phenomenon, striking as it is, has no name – and Michael decided to name it the Kopp-Etchells Effect, as a tribute, after Corporal Benjamin Kopp and Corporal Joseph Etchells, who died in battle.

The full story at Michael’s blog: Link via TYWKIWDBI

He made it out of wood and a motorcycle engine:

20 year old Chinese farmer Wu Zhongyuan built himself a helicopter using only — according to the man — what he remembers of middle school physics lessons and “relevant knowledge [found while] surfing the Internet via my mobile phone.”

Well, sure looks like things worked out. His single-seater conveyance has blades made from the wood of an Elm tree, a frame reinforced with steel pipes and uses an engine from a motorcycle — all for around $1,600. Wu claims the ‘copter can get him as high as 2,600 feet, though it seems he’s grounded for the time being as the Chinese government has forbid him to fly because of safety reasons.

Link via Geekologie

Keith Loutit’s work has been presented on Neatorama in the past in “A Lilliputian World” and in “A Little Mardi-Gras” and each time it blew people away. Using his impressive skill with tilt-shift photography and filming he pumps out videos and pictures that present the illusion of miniatures brought to life. In this video Keith got to film a rescue training session with the Westpac Rescue Helicopter Service.

More of Keith’s stuff here – Link

In 1976, Patricia Renick created this awesome sculpture of the dinosaur Triceratop out of real helicopter parts:

Completed in 1976 as the Vietnam war wound down, it serves largely as a plea for the extinction of military technology. 30 feet long, the fearsome sculpture combines life sized helicopter and Triceratops parts, featuring genuine blades and weapons. [...]

Triceracopter could be placed in multiple traditions. It is a form of social commentary on killing machines and an expression of hope for the end of warfare. There are many artists who are working with the idea of bio-mechanical forms, juxtapositions and transformations.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by JJA.

Update 1/15/09 by Alex: Let’s do this instead – a thumbnail with a link to the video clip. It’s a fascinating excerpt from the IMAX movie Straight Up: Helicopters in Action

However, staff could not find any trace of either the helicopter or the package which it appeared to be carrying underneath it when they searched the Category C jail.

‘Using a mini-helicopter to get contraband into jails is unprecedented. When officers spotted it they nearly fell off their chairs’, a prison source told the Sun.

‘It could have been drugs or a mobile phone in the package. It is possible it was a dummy run.’

Maybe the helicopter flew out as well. Link -via Unique Daily

This guy has skills. I once tried a RC helicopter once and the results were disastrous. To be able to manipulate all theses servos takes great skills and this dude demonstrates it with the neat clip.
Those moves defy Newton’s Laws of Motion…even at that scale.
Enjoy!

Link: YouTube

This is probably the world’s smallest personal helicopters. Unfortunately I don’t have any information on the designers of these flying toys but it sure would be nice to have one.

Videos: Dailymotion; Youtube