Cyclic Blade Control
Cyclic controls are used to change a helicopter's roll and pitch. Push rods or hydraulic actuators tilt the outer swashplate in response to the pilot's commands. The swashplate moves in the intuitively expected direction, tilting forwards to respond to a forward input, for instance. However "pitch links" on the blades transmit the pitch information way ahead of the blade's actual position, giving the blades time to "fly up" or "fly down" to reach the desired position, in addition to a 90 degrees advance to account for the gyroscopic precession. That is, to tilt the helicopter forward, the difference of lift around the blades should be maximum along the left-right plane, creating a torque that, due to the gyroscopic effect, will tilt the rotor disc forward and not sideways.
Read more about this topic: Swashplate (helicopter)
Famous quotes containing the words blade and/or control:
“It required some rudeness to disturb with our boat the mirror-like surface of the water, in which every twig and blade of grass was so faithfully reflected; too faithfully indeed for art to imitate, for only Nature may exaggerate herself.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“All industries are brought under the control of such people [film producers] by Capitalism. If the capitalists let themselves be seduced from their pursuit of profits to the enchantments of art, they would be bankrupt before they knew where they were. You cannot combine the pursuit of money with the pursuit of art.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)