Bellerophon symbol, variation 7 jonath.co.uk
Saturday 9th Apr 2005
These thumbnails today are brought to you by the aspect ratio 1.61803399, also known as the Golden Ratio. Width of all these thumbnails is 89 whilst the height is 55. If you've no idea what I'm on about here, where have you been?
So today was the day I used up the other part of M****'s birthday present to me - a half hour of helicopter flying. We got a bit confused trying to find the place. It was somewhere near Leeds Bradford airport, but our directions weren't brilliant, and directed us erroneously to some kind of similar operation but for planes. They were good enough to ring up the helicopter people, Heli-jet something or another, and tell us we were on our way. This is me at 12:00, having arrived, feeling a bit apprehensive, a bit freaked, but excited nonetheless.
So, eventually, my pilot, Mike (I wondered if their names were always taken from the phonetic alphabet . . . which would make me Juliet, I guess . . . hmmmm, anyway), arrived, shook my hand, and led my upstairs. Actually, I led him upstairs, with him behind me telling me where to go. Upstairs they had (as I was shortly to find out) an exact replica of the helicopter I was going to fly (well, the cockpit anyway) with all the extraneous bits removed. We sat in there for a while, Mike telling me what's what. The bit that stuck most in mind was, "and don't worry if you forget anything I've just told you, because it will all be repeated again when in the air," which was just as well. It's the bit about the pedals I didn't really get, but that was cleared up later on. Besides, the helicopter was dual control, so I didn't really have to worry about anything. That, up there, to the right, is me in the helicopter (12:29), as Mike went over a few final bits and piece. Erm . . . that other picture is some gravel that M**** found. Well done, M****. Maybe she was gathering gardening ideas. I don't know. Pregnant people, eh? Crazy . . .
So, what happened was that Mike radio'ed to traffic control, got clearance, and I just kind of sat there, as the propellor got faster and faster. Once the speed was up, it was kind of eerie, as the ground just kind of gradually disappeared and my stomach kind of lurched a bit. So, we got to about 1500 feet above sea level (bearing in mind that ground level is about 600 feet above sea level), 80 mph, and headed for Otley . . . or somewhere like that. I was allowed to steer a bit, but Mike was always there, his hand not too far from his joystick thingy. All in all, I probably got about 10-15 minutes of flying, but at this stage I was just allowed to control . . . damnit, what's it called? See, basically, there's the pedals, which control the speed of the little side propellor at the back (and, hence, counter the rotational effect of the main propellor, thereby allowing you to turn left/right), then there's this thing like a hand-brake, which control the speed of the main propellor (and, hence, rate of ascent/descent) and then there's the main joystick thingy, which control the angle of the propellor. It was this joystick thing that I was allowed to fiddle with during this stage. Mike took over at half way stage and, once back at the landing site, he allowed me to have a go at rotating the thing, descending and also hovering. M**** took all these pictures during this stage, from something like 12:56 through to 13:00. Any hyperlinks in this text will link to a few mpegs that M**** took. The picture to the right, is me back on solid ground once more. Damnit, I want a helicopter.

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