We are in the front seat of a helicopter, knocking over 1500 feet above the waves with flecks of foam Gulf of Mexico, when the pilot Chuck Aaron does something you should never do. He pulled back on the controls and just keeps pulling. When the nose of the helicopter rises, I feel my body sinks into the seat while my heart creeps up the esophagus. We keep going until all I see is blue sky, the line between the blue green Gulf. A little voice in my head he is saying huuuunh? and weight of a real still unlikely realization sweeps over me: The rotors are now below us, above the skids. We're flying upside down.
There is a reason why you should never, ever fly upside down in a helicopter: The rotors are folded skates and cut the tail and you plummet to your death. Helicopter rotors are designed to handle a lot of bending, because each sheet has to bend up and down as it moves in and against Wake. In normal flight, the blades are bent out of the cockpit. But if you fly upside down, that flex in the other direction, giving a new meaning to the word helicopter.
Aaron, 63 years old, with a mane of golden hair and a thick mustache for circus ringmaster adjustment, knows all about this. It was a helicopter pilot and a mechanical life in Camarillo, Calif., when he received a call from Red Bull in 2004. They had heard that he had mounted an attack helicopter US Army scrounged parts on the open market. They asked: Could you build a helicopter capable of looping the loop? "No" he told them. It was impossible. End of story.
But Aaron kept thinking about it and thought that if you take the helicopter type and modified it in the right way, you may end up with a plane that could fly backwards. Red Bull gave him money and a couple of German BO-105 helicopters with one-piece rotor heads rugged titanium composite films and four short and stiff bought. After a year of change-he refuses to reveal details of engineering-he took his helicopter up.
The success was not easy. For three months Aaron came to know the machine, testing its capabilities. But fear prevented him. "I would get chicken vertical and me," he says. "But over time I kept going a little further, and one day I took that sucker and as I got to my point of chicken, I had one of those things instantly I said, 'I'm going for it.' I pulled him back and I did the loop. As soon as I saw the earth, I was like, 'I can get this!' So I took that and I did it again. I do not want to forget how I did it. I did so again and again, 10 times. "From that first loop expanded its repertoire of maneuvers, and today is the only civilian pilot in the US authorized to perform aerobatics in a best rc helicopter.
It is a cold morning in Pensacola, Fla., When I meet Aaron. A big air show begins tomorrow, with winds of 20 miles per hour, Aaron is debating whether to participate in the trial. Once, he says, that almost he killed trying to carry out under similar conditions. This makes me think, but Aaron assures me it'll be okay if we go into the water and try some maneuvers. So until we go.
We launch ramp Naval Air Station and go on the beach. Aaron up until it is above the barrier island to be used as a baseline for orientation. Then he stops in the loop. Within seconds, we are at the top, then arcing down. Aaron has found that this may be the most dangerous part. "If I keep pointing down for long, I build up too much airspeed" he says. "Then I'll have too many G in bed and rip out the transmission."
That does not happen today, I am pleased to report. Aaron takes up again on a rise, then startles me rolling to the left until our bodies are parallel to the horizon. He keeps it rolling until we are upside down, then takes us back to the other side. In an aircraft, the equivalent would be a slight trick maneuver called a roll ailerons; in a helicopter, the procedure causes a disconcerting feeling, as if someone was holding him by the heels over the edge of a tall building.
Then Aaron pulls the lever and wait until its velocity relative to bleed out until we are about to die in the air. the lever is then pushed forward. We are floating in our seats in a low-altitude approach the vomit comet NASA. A second later we toppling forward. As we fall down Aaron rotates 180 degrees about a vertical axis so that our track is like the band on a barber pole, then pulls back so that are leveled.
Aaron continues stringing one after another maneuver: upward, sideways, down-cry! I'm starting to think of a barf bag as Aaron is removed from a promotion and make us the wind. It is about to unleash the latter.
"Relative velocity zero," he says, pointing the instrument panel. "This is the backbend."
It pulls back and back and back. I feel briefly climbing as the windshield is full of blue, and then the uncomfortable feeling of tipping backwards, falling upside down, hanging on my belt, a blur of confusion. The helicopter has pivoted, heels over head, a swimmer standstill like doing a back flip off a trampoline. Then we are in the right direction again and barreling toward the shore below. My ears are filled with a piercing scream. Coming from my own throat. It is a cry of pure, blind and senseless joy.
There is a reason why you should never, ever fly upside down in a helicopter: The rotors are folded skates and cut the tail and you plummet to your death. Helicopter rotors are designed to handle a lot of bending, because each sheet has to bend up and down as it moves in and against Wake. In normal flight, the blades are bent out of the cockpit. But if you fly upside down, that flex in the other direction, giving a new meaning to the word helicopter.
Aaron, 63 years old, with a mane of golden hair and a thick mustache for circus ringmaster adjustment, knows all about this. It was a helicopter pilot and a mechanical life in Camarillo, Calif., when he received a call from Red Bull in 2004. They had heard that he had mounted an attack helicopter US Army scrounged parts on the open market. They asked: Could you build a helicopter capable of looping the loop? "No" he told them. It was impossible. End of story.
But Aaron kept thinking about it and thought that if you take the helicopter type and modified it in the right way, you may end up with a plane that could fly backwards. Red Bull gave him money and a couple of German BO-105 helicopters with one-piece rotor heads rugged titanium composite films and four short and stiff bought. After a year of change-he refuses to reveal details of engineering-he took his helicopter up.
The success was not easy. For three months Aaron came to know the machine, testing its capabilities. But fear prevented him. "I would get chicken vertical and me," he says. "But over time I kept going a little further, and one day I took that sucker and as I got to my point of chicken, I had one of those things instantly I said, 'I'm going for it.' I pulled him back and I did the loop. As soon as I saw the earth, I was like, 'I can get this!' So I took that and I did it again. I do not want to forget how I did it. I did so again and again, 10 times. "From that first loop expanded its repertoire of maneuvers, and today is the only civilian pilot in the US authorized to perform aerobatics in a best rc helicopter.
It is a cold morning in Pensacola, Fla., When I meet Aaron. A big air show begins tomorrow, with winds of 20 miles per hour, Aaron is debating whether to participate in the trial. Once, he says, that almost he killed trying to carry out under similar conditions. This makes me think, but Aaron assures me it'll be okay if we go into the water and try some maneuvers. So until we go.
We launch ramp Naval Air Station and go on the beach. Aaron up until it is above the barrier island to be used as a baseline for orientation. Then he stops in the loop. Within seconds, we are at the top, then arcing down. Aaron has found that this may be the most dangerous part. "If I keep pointing down for long, I build up too much airspeed" he says. "Then I'll have too many G in bed and rip out the transmission."
That does not happen today, I am pleased to report. Aaron takes up again on a rise, then startles me rolling to the left until our bodies are parallel to the horizon. He keeps it rolling until we are upside down, then takes us back to the other side. In an aircraft, the equivalent would be a slight trick maneuver called a roll ailerons; in a helicopter, the procedure causes a disconcerting feeling, as if someone was holding him by the heels over the edge of a tall building.
Then Aaron pulls the lever and wait until its velocity relative to bleed out until we are about to die in the air. the lever is then pushed forward. We are floating in our seats in a low-altitude approach the vomit comet NASA. A second later we toppling forward. As we fall down Aaron rotates 180 degrees about a vertical axis so that our track is like the band on a barber pole, then pulls back so that are leveled.
Aaron continues stringing one after another maneuver: upward, sideways, down-cry! I'm starting to think of a barf bag as Aaron is removed from a promotion and make us the wind. It is about to unleash the latter.
"Relative velocity zero," he says, pointing the instrument panel. "This is the backbend."
It pulls back and back and back. I feel briefly climbing as the windshield is full of blue, and then the uncomfortable feeling of tipping backwards, falling upside down, hanging on my belt, a blur of confusion. The helicopter has pivoted, heels over head, a swimmer standstill like doing a back flip off a trampoline. Then we are in the right direction again and barreling toward the shore below. My ears are filled with a piercing scream. Coming from my own throat. It is a cry of pure, blind and senseless joy.