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--- Lu Abel  wrote:

> But then we could also ask why the person who drives an aircraft is
> the "pilot" which is the term for someone who navigates a ship in
> coastal waters ;-)

Probably for the same reason that aircraft were referred to as "ships"
in the early days of aviation (there's definitely an incestuous
relationship between the two in a lot of areas).

> Speaking of which, I learned just this weekend why the pilot in a
> helicopter sits in the right-hand seat, even though the pilot's seat
> for a conventional aircraft had been on the left for over three
> decades before the development of the helicopter.   It's because
> Igor Sikorsky figured that the helicopter pilot would want the
> stick in his right hand (as in an aircraft) but he also needed to
> manipulate the collective (the control that regulates the main rotor
> and therefore lift and thrust) which is typically located on the
> centerline of the aircraft.  So rather than make pilots learn how to
> fly "left-handed," he moved them to the right seat.

Maybe true in the early days of helicopters, but these days it's more
related to the rotation direction of the main rotor.

The Eurocopter (French) models are designed to rotate in the opposite
direction of most of the ones from North America, and (without going
into a lot of nitty-gritty detail) the pilot sits on the left side to
balance out the forces from the tail rotor (plus the fact that the main
rotor is tilted slightly to compensate for the sideways thrust of the
tail rotor) - otherwise the 'copter would hover with one skid low on
the side that the main rotor was tilted towards.

--
GregR


(a notable

and the Rotorway models



>
> Greg R. wrote:
> > Which reminded me of something that I've been meaning to ask - I've
> > noticed that in marine navigation textbooks DR lines are usually
> > labeled as being a "course" (i.e. TC 210, MC 150) - either true or
> > magnetic,  depending on personal preference.
> >
> > But isn't what we're really plotting a heading? I think of a
> "course"
> > as being the path that a vessel tracks over the ground (or over the
> > bottom), and heading as the direction a vessel is pointed or
> steered in
> > order to produce that course.
> >
> I suspect it's tradition more than anything else -- "course" is the
> maritime term just as "heading" is the aircraft term.   Maybe the
> latter
> is better - it certainly gives the impression "this is the way the
> airplane is pointing" (eg, on crosswind landings).  COG (course over
> ground) is again the maritime term for what an aircraft pilot would
> call
> "course"
>
> But then we could also ask why the person who drives an aircraft is
> the
> "pilot" which is the term for someone who navigates a ship in coastal
> waters ;-)
>
> Speaking of which, I learned just this weekend why the pilot in a
> helicopter sits in the right-hand seat, even though the pilot's seat
> for
> a conventional aircraft had been on the left for over three decades
> before the development of the helicopter.   It's because Igor
> Sikorsky
> figured that the helicopter pilot would want the stick in his right
> hand
> (as in an aircraft) but he also needed to manipulate the collective
> (the
> control that regulates the main rotor and therefore lift and thrust)
> which is typically located on the centerline of the aircraft.  So
> rather
> than make pilots learn how to fly "left-handed," he moved them to the
> right seat.
>
> Lu Abel
>
>
> >
>


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