Hey it's me Destin welcome back to smarter every day
One of the reasons I absolutely love helicopters is that you can get places that you can't with any other device
So today I'm with Bradley Friesen here in where?
Bradley: We're, uh, right now in British Columbia, at Widgeon Lake in beautiful Pinecone Burke park
Alright, so we're going to talk about helicopters in a way that you might not have thought of before
but first, let's do the safe landing
Bradley: So we're coming into what we call mother nature's helipad here on Widgeon Lake
Bradley: Right here we go
I know is that incredible or what?
Today on Smarter Every Day I wanna talk about a particular misconception when it comes to helicopters
A very famous well-respected scientist recently tweeted
"That if an airplane loses an engine it turns into a glider
But if a helicopter loses a engine, it turns into brick."
Today on Smarter Every Day, I want to questions this
by literally putting my life on the line.
I'm going back into the helicopter
and we're gonna power down the engine and we're gonna see what happens
How do we get to earth safely?
But before we do that,
Let just go and enjoy this
in the helicopter,
and let go meet an expert on auto rotation.
let's get Smarter Every Day.
Destin a little birdie told me that you took interest in one of my tweets
where I commented that it
airplane whose engine dies,
lands like a gilder.
Whereas helicopter whose engine dies,
lands like a brick.
Assuming that the propeller blades not rotating.
But now I hear,
that you know of a way to land a helicopter with a busted engine
well, if so I wanna know about it.
You know why?
cause I want to get smarter every day.
so I'll be watching
What a super classy way of responding to somebody whining about one of your tweets on the internet
thank you very much Neil and you're kind of right at
if the rotor blade quits turning you are gonna fall like a brick.
But helicopter pilots have a physics trick to keep that from happening.
When a helicopter engine is running it acts like a big fan blowing down the air.
If you try the fan off, it stops blowing and starts to fall
changing the direction that the air goes through the rotors.
Just like a powered fan can create air movement,
air movement can create fan movement just like pinwheel.
Helicopter pilot have ability precisely change to pitch their blades
by adjusting the control called Collective.
By doing this whenever the engine dies they can quickly adjust from
this powered fan mode to pinwheel modes that they can use that air that's now
coming up to the bottom of the rotor system to keep the blades turning all
the way down to the ground while they fall.
If you pinwheel this too fast
they're gonna over speed them and breaks stuff
and you're gonna fall like that brick.
So here's the trick,
we know that the outside of the blades moves faster than the inside of the blade, right?!
and we also know that drag is a function of velocity
because of this does is magic point along the blade that it no longer acts like a pinwheel
it acts like a fan
the pilot can then adjust the collective and determine how much of the blade he
wants to use a pinwheel and how much he wants to use a fan
he feathers it and rides at all the way down to the ground
keeping the rotor system at just the right speed
not too fast and not too slow he keeps the blade running with
the pinwheel mode and he bleeds off the extra rotational energy in the form of
lift which helps him slowly glide to the ground.
This whole maneuver is called an auto rotation and it's taught by helicopter
training pilots everywhere
Now I'd like to demonstrate an autorotation because you, you need to do some training right? yeah
we're going to talk to who? what's the guys name?
His name is Gerry Friesen
He actually trained me twenty five years ago,
he has around 16,000 flight hours
Destin: Good dream. - and he has a...they say...
It takes 10,000 hours to become master of something
So Gerry is a master...
Destin: and a half - and a half
It's awesome. Alright!
let's go get Smarter Every Day with Gerry Friesen.
Are you Gerry?
Yeah!
I'm Destin. Nice to meet you. How you're doing?
If someone were to say helicopters fall like bricks
What it would be your input to the common man
what would you want the normal person to know about helicopters?
Well, I..I would like...
anyone to know that a helicopter glides
nicely like an airplane.
And the nice thing about the helicopter
It's a...instead of an airplane where...
where you force to touchdown probably at a minimum of...
fifty to sixty knots.
And the helicopter can touchdown at...
Ten knots!
So even safer than an airplane?
I would say you're safer.
and the reason is...
Ok, that makes sense because in order to glide
you have to be moving through the
air very fast or high rate of speed
but in a helicopter you could do it almost zero.
You pick an open spot,
an airplane going into that spot
it's gonna land at sixty and tumble
Right! and maybe hit a few trees that helicopter going into that spot will
descend vertically for the last few feet known for...
momentum whatsoever and worst that'll happen maybe little clips of tree
That's amazing! provided that the pilot
manage the kinetic energy in its rotors system and balance it with its potential energy
in kind of balance that driving region versus the driven region of the rotor system.
Exactly!
That's amazing!
ok so here's what we're gonna do we're up high and they were about to disconnect
the engine for the rotor system. When we do that we're gonna start trading our
vertical potential energy for kinetic energy in the rotor system so what
Jerry's doing now is he's spinning up the rotor system and as we go down we have a
part of the rotor that's driving the rotor because winds coming up to the
bottom and we have another part that's being driven now that part is providing
drags what we're doing is as Gerry is adjusting the collective he is trading
off the distance all the driving in the driven that region of that rotors.
So we coming down he's got it spot up really fast and right here at the bottom
he's gonna flare it
and when it flares it that trades off that kinetic energy in the system
into...
There we go
You hear that?
So...
We just made an autorotation
We skidded to a stop,
But we are alive
Thank you very much, really appreciated it, you're the man!
You're welcome.
How many hours you have?
A little over 16,000
It's that all?
That's all.
maybe you'll figured it out how to do this one day
Yeah...practice practice
You can know the theory behind it
But you don't really understand how...
you do it until you do it yourself, right?
That yea...exactly
and just becomes a feel thing.
I hope you enjoyed this episode of Smarter Every Day
I wanna say thank you to Neil deGrasse Tyson for agreeing to be the 'foil' for this video
also want to say thanks to Bradley freezin for taking up in his helicopter
he's got a really cool helicopter channel you should really check it out
his dog flies with him, it's really fun.
Also wanna say thanks to the sponsor
which is kiwicrate.com
However,
Their gonna support this video in direct response to how
many people get kiwicrates
Therefore, I'm not gonna tell you about it myself,
I'm gonna let my kids do it
Because their cuter, and probably gonna believe them more
You can open your crates, go for it!
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This got like engineering project
What is this one?
A Bio mechanical hand
Over here we had this,
What this one called buddy?
Koala Kate...
A Koala Crates. This for younger kid.
and this one called a Doodle Crate, where you can do what?
Make craft.
Make craft. They're really fun. You guys enjoy them?
Yes so!
Ok. So we do this at our house
all the time and we really enjoy it.
So if you like to go
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Get a free crate sent to your house
It's a subscription service
I think you're gonna keep it because they're awesome
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Do you think other kids would enjoy this?
Yes!
Really? Is daddy making you say this?
No!
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Get to the chopper!
Get into the chopper!
There's no time!
Echo!!
Why'd you have to say the word "Echo" to get an echo?
So at works.
woohooo....
I going to explore somewhere that nobodys else can get to...
That's what helicopters do for ya...
I drink glacier water.
[laugh]
Did you make it?
I almost.
You were very close
And I broke mine!
It'll be okay, give me five, good job!