Positive spin

Helicopters are bizarre, improbable, and rather wonderful contraptions. The bumblebee of the aviation world, they have nevertheless become an indispensable piece of technology for modern society - from saving stranded beach goers to waging military campaigns.

In 1843, George Cayley, sometime father of the modern helicopter, saw the potential in flying craft capable of ’landing at any place where there is space and of ascending again from that point’.

But it’s the forward flight of helicopters once airborne that has always proved a little more problematic - essentially being a delicate balance of forces and controls working in opposition to each other.

’There is no such thing as a gliding helicopter,’ wrote US journalist Harry Reasoner in 1971, reporting on the Vietnam war: the first real helicopter campaign. ’This is why, in general, aircraft pilots are open, clear-eyed, buoyant extroverts and helicopter pilots are brooding introspective anticipators of trouble. They know that if something bad has not happened, it is about to.’