The Greatest & Deadliest Helicopters of The 2000s [4K] | The Greatest Ever | Spark

one tonight the best of all goes in search of the best helicopter

helicopters

don't really fly they vibrate so hard the ground rejects them it's the magic carpet of heaven the things you can do that no other flying vehicle can do to earn the right to to be the largest helicopter that

ever

existed machines must prove their worth have greater potential than other aircraft to change the world on a battlefield supporting troops or if it means being in the bush putting out fires there really is nothing That it can match the performance of a helicopter is the maximum extension of the human body that allows you complete freedom over the entire planet flying in a helicopter is great because you feel free it is an exhilarating experience flying in a helicopter flying is heavenly hovering is divine let's go push these choppers to the limit flipping the fastest in the world we'll give a glass of champagne the hard way in a force eight gale and we'll find out just how deadly ten m Achines can be, but only one can hold the title.

The largest helicopter in history. Starting our countdown. It is the largest overhead crane

ever

built. At number 10. It's the ericsson overhead crane. The erickson overhead crane is the most powerful and versatile helicopter in the western world. This particular helicopter is the sports car. of heavy lift

helicopters

except none maybe there are a few that lift more but none that move faster it is a fun machine to fly it is very agile very fast and has plenty of horsepower to lift heavy equipment in really tough situations it is absolutely without a dock the aircrane can lift an incredible 12 and a half tons, but its real strength lies in its ability to place these colossal loads with absolute precision in 1976, an aircrane topped off the toronto cn tower at 553 meters it is the tallest free-standing structure in the world the aircrank really is a swiss army knife from the heavens the capabilities of an overhead crane if we are talking about uh ski towers if we are talking about hi logging or if we are talking from a firefighting perspective there really is nothing else to match with the capabilities. tank and only 18 inches of water so if we're looking at areas like California when they have the Santa Ana fires these planes really went in and they can basically go after water sources anywhere this could mean your pool in his backyard and there have been cases where the helicopter tanker came in and sucked up someone's swimming pool originally designed to recover downed planes and move heavy military equipment the overhead crane now excels in its civilian clothes in the remote forests of canada its ability to precision lifting has given it a new role in a place where no other vehicle can go it has become the best recorder it is a strange thing to see when you look at it you are thinking it is like prehistoric yet futuristic there really is nothing pretty about the crane aerial, it's actually the nickname, dragonfly helicopters aren't designed for style points, they're designed to do a job, I mean, a truck with trailer is not as nice as a ferrari but a ferrari can't haul 40 tons of cargo and there are times in life when you need to get 40 tons of bricks or fertilizer or whatever from point a to point b your lack of styling is really about giving as much functionality as possible wanting to get rid of most of the clap trap of the airframe and weight so you have the biggest payload you can pick up its basically nothing but engines.

I am absolutely minimal airframe and rotor system. There is nothing there. for aesthetics or appearance it is only there to lift things vertically and lifting is what the overhead crane is good at while the co-pilot controls the dials the pilot leans out and manipulates the hydraulic grapple a difficult task as the grapple is on the d tip of a 200 foot cable, the jaws can exert more than 32,000 pounds of pressure to hold the logs, which can weigh up to 10,000 pounds each, but there is a prize to this muscle strength, the cost to operate the overhead crane you are looking at nine grand per hour that's before you start adding the fuel costs for the plane i would say on an average log cycle the plane burns about 500 gallons of fuel per hour so that's a bird thirsty overall that's a whopping $10,000 an hour the real key to your success is to keep you flying as often as possible and as regularly as possible because it costs a lot of money to operate with that much money and n game speed is definitely the name of the game as one skilled aircraft pilot can lift 45 clumps of trees from the mountain to the landing zone in one hour.

I guess the point of the game is to be as fast and smooth as possible. At this rate, the overhead crane clears up to a thousand trees a day with each log worth up to five thousand dollars tha That's a turnover of five million dollars a day. Compare that to the daily cost of the overhead crane, just a hundred and forty thousand dollars and suddenly it's an incredibly inexpensive tool like everything else. It's a compromise. It is very thirsty for fuel, but it is not designed. to go long distances it is designed to lift loads and it does it well there really is nothing that can match the performance of the air crane and i think you will see it in the sky probably for another 20 or 30 years i think the crane could be called the muscle man of heavy lift helicopters i think its one of the best helicopters i have ever flown um definitely my mom the favorite machine i have ever flown and i dont know if i would really like to fly anything else the air crane is An amazing lifting machine, but without a cargo area, its carrying capacity is limited to external loads, so it gets 10th place and comes with nine fantastic helicopters, including the Ulti. fellow transport machine if we can sling it we can take it plus we toast to the bravest chopper in the sky when you see it coming on the horizon you know the cavalry has arrived as we search for the biggest chopper ever seen and on our search to find the chopper

greatest

of all time the ericsson overhead crane claimed segment number 10 and at number nine is a machine that scaled new heights in helicopter design it's the flame the flame of course it's the highest flying helicopter ever in 1972 the plane actually flew at an altitude of 41,000 feet, Frenchman Jean-Boulez's incredible record of 12,442 meters still stands to this day, more than 30 years later, if you put that perspective today, that's where you're looking at where would the planes fly if you were looking at a 747 or anything in that range which is typically the altitudes those planes will fly at the llama was originally designed te for the indian air force to defend their high altitude borders in mount himalayas The llama is amazing because it does many things that ordinary helicopter cannot do.

Most helicopters operate efficiently down to around eight to ten thousand feet, in other words, pretty close to the ground. However, the flame can operate very efficiently at altitudes of twenty thousand feet. operating at such a high altitude that the flame had to overcome the laws of physics the problem with flying at high altitudes is the lack of oxygen molecules in any given square foot of air space the higher you go basically the thinner the air gets air and there really is less and less for the rotor blades to bite into less air for the engine to breathe at 20,000 feet the air is less dense and cuts engine performance in half the flame uses a very powerful engine its 870 horsepower force provide more than twice the amount of vertical thrust of all other helicopters in its weight class, the engine itself is capable of blowing up the transmission at lower altitudes up to 13,000 feet, it cannot use all t The power provided by the engine and from 13,000 feet above you must use all of this power.

The flame has the lightest airframe possible. It really is nothing more than a bubble for the pilot to feel connected to an open tail arm. Its only additional equipment is to allow the pilot to operate at altitude, this is probably the only civilian aircraft in the country that is configured with an oxygen system without the oxygen it would be impossible for the pilot to breathe above 12,000 feet if I had a problem of any kind uh you know 14,000 feet or more that's an environment I can't live in that's a pretty dangerous situation I'll probably have a half hour and 45 minutes of useful awareness once my oxygen ran out and probably take a big nap after that point why?

I like the llama when I see it because it's like a little wasp, it's light and it buzzes, but you know it has a great capacity? it was meant to do one thing and that was to fly at high altitude but a helicopter designed with a purpose in mind limits what it can be used for so the llama gets ninth if you have a lot of cargo and you want it to move in a place. hurry up then a chopper at number eight is the beast for you its the biggest transport chopper ever its the chinook the ugly chinook beast its kinda funny its a fun chopper the kids love it unlike most helicopters the chinook has two interlocking main rotors this gives it incredible amounts of power there is added efficiency in having two lift rotors it doesn't waste energy on one tail rotor so the chanuk becomes a very powerful lift helicopter with a great capacity to transport many people and a lot of cargo. it can lift a massive 12 tons inside or out and not only that with a flight control system based on that of a 747 this chinook is one of the smoothest rides in the sky this system maintains heading altitude airspeed and whatever other con control i feel is necessary to get from point a to point b as well as its flight control systems the chinook has a complex gearbox to prevent the crisscross rotors from hitting each other other than that it's like fly any other helicopter, the flight controls on the chinook are identical to a normal helicopter cycling stick forward makes the aircraft go forward cycling stick eric backward will slow the aircraft down the app to the left will cause the aircraft to turn left and applying the right cyclic will cause the aircraft to turn right thrust control on the chinook uh it's usually referred to as the collective on other aircraft here on the chinook we call it the thrust control i pulling up on the thrust control will cause the aircraft to climb and the reduction in thrust or power will cause the aircraft to descend the tail rotor pedals on conventional aircraft will be they are used to control the tail rotor and allow the aircraft to rotate on its own axes in a hover the same function is fulfilled for the chinook pedals a lightly loaded chinook is like a sports car it has incredible handling and response and is a delight to fly when heavily loaded still a delight to fly but you have to think a bit more ahead of time due to the inertia of the helicopter even carrying its maximum load the chinook can still fly over 160 miles per hour this is the central load of the aircraft gives us the ability to lift up to 12 tons if we consider that the helicopter, for example, is capable of lifting 50,000 pounds and n total and it's only 30,000 pounds, it's got quite a bit of extra pushing power that you can use and it's just amazing to get off the ground and climb vertically at 2,300 feet per minute almost immediately out of the ground, the chinook is always the right tool for the job, just based on its multitude of functions, if we can strap a sling to it, we can take it, but the chinoo k is so much more than just an all-around weight lifter, we've coined the chinook, our lego box, simply based on its a multitude of roles that you can take on one of them when we do joint training with US special forces and we are doing water extractions by that I mean the aircraft will physically land on the water we will go down the ramp the water will come into the cockpit area, which will allow the boat to physically drive towards the aircraft, the green berets are approaching in their zodiac, they will drive the boat directly ha cia the the hull of the plane the plane takes off dumps the water and flies home and i didn't believe it until i was shown a picture of it the chinook is a truly amazing machine and it wouldn't fly anything else the chinook is a workhorse it's one piece of solid reliable machinery that lifts loads it carries heavy weights and does it in all kinds of good conditions it has a great fuselage in which it can carry a lot of troops and equipment it really is a versatile machine for the military my operator the chinook is hands down the best transport helicopter of all time and it ranks eighth at number seven it's a helicopter that everyone knows it's the jet ranger what i like about the jet ranger is that it's stylish it's a bit like a classic car you know it's a kid from the 60's really the jet ranger is probably one of thebest looking machines ever designed and built yes the jet ranger is one of the best helicopters because it was the first civilian helicopter that looked good it was designed by a designer not an aeronautical person and they just created this line of exterior mold and then they went out and flew it and started selling them like hot cakes since it first flew Bell has sold over 4,500 ranges of planes, making it the most prolific civilian helicopter on the planet with energy-absorbing landing gear and seats burst-resistant fuel cells and over 54 million trouble-free flight hours is also the safest helicopter ever seen not bad for something that started out as a failed bell helicopter had designed or developed the 1961 jet ranger as a light observation helicopter for the us army that actually lost the contract that went to hughes with the oh six but bell then they advanced and des they rolled the jet ranger into a commercial variant the jet ranger has been brilliant for executive use as a private helicopter and for civilian applications however what was interesting was that after having built a large number of civilian versions the military came back and ordered the helicopter as the belk iowa it's not all death and destruction rangers have the ability to fly at over 120 miles per hour at a range of almost 430 miles has made it great for scenic drives and construction and law enforcement news gathering really a preview from heaven whats its weakness i would have to say now its its age its a very old design mid 60s design engine is mid 60s concept engine not particularly fast and not the most comfortable helicopter in the back a bit more complex and unnecessarily smart in places where it didn't need to be but evokes the image of a helicopter in on the minds of millions of people, brought a new look to helicopters, made them an attractive proposition to executive operators and commercial helicopter users in a way that had never happened before the advent of the aircraft, although our success of number one sales only makes our number seven because of its old design and crowded conditions at number six it is a long range helicopter that can fly in any kind of weather it is the king of the sea when you see it coming on the horizon you know that the cavalry has arrived well obviously if the The most powerful person in the world can fly on a Sea King, then the plane is good enough for anyone.

The Sea King is a truly versatile helicopter. It combines range, it combines physical lifting ability, and it combines a large airframe that can carry troops. It can carry a lot. of equipment and one operator can quickly switch it from one role to another the sea king was designed for operations aboard the us navy it first flew an incredible 46 years ago the sea king was truly the first helicopter of its kind turbine powered twin engine all weather capable nothing else could match it for its life on ocean waves the Sea King had some innovative design features it was also the first aircraft to have a of folding blades which made them portable on boats, it also had a tail folding capability which was the first helicopter to have that, also the seat is also uniquely shaped because it is shaped like the hull of the boat it sits on The plane can land on water if necessary, but the special features of the sea king were not only on the outside, the plane has an autopilot that allows it to fly in any weather and settle on the flight. or stationary even over the black sea when the plane was originally developed in 1959 it was basically developed for one thing and that was to detect track and destroy submarines the sea king would float and drop his sonar boy in the ocean and then wait and you would hear the subs sometime s for hours trying to hover for that length of time often at night it was impossible to do so a sophisticated autopilot system was developed covering a helicopter is like balancing this pole, I want to make sure it stays upright so I need to keep looking at the top of this post so if we start doing this I can do it pretty easily.

Now I'm floating and making small corrections all the time down here now if we're going to do this in the middle of the night. the ocean we have no references I can't see anything the ocean is dark the sky is dark there is no horizon the only thing I can do to simulate that is close my eyes and that's what the king of the sea has is the stabilization system to maintain this upright if you are flying over the ocean in the middle of the night, the flight control system works by emitting radio waves and Doppler radar to detect the position of the Sea King and automatically makes any adjustments to pitch and heading to keep the aircraft stable.

The Sea King is probably the most stable platform of all helicopters this superb stability has allowed the Sea King to excel in probably its most famous search and rescue role when you fly into the mountains at night in snowy and bad weather you want to feel safe and Pursuit gives you the sense of security you need to be able to go and rescue someone from one of those dangerous situations, precision flying is the forte of the king of the sea, getting into sticky situations in all kinds of weather with no margin for error, but when you compare the handling of this from planes to more modern planes what you tend to find is that it handles a little more like a truck than a sports car and when you're stuck to the cliff what you don't really want is an answer Particularly fast to control input so when I fly this helicopter I know exactly how it's going to respond and actually it's perfect for what I want it to do.

It's critical that you can maintain a stable hover because there's a brave guy at the end. d from that rescue winch who is putting his life in your hands while trying to rescue someone else if you make a mistake the implications of that could be potentially fatal the best of all is going to test the king of the sea his crew is about to deliver a glass of champagne the hard way it smells good to me dixie winchman will be lowered 200 feet below the plane and try to pour the fears into a glass lieutenant martin lanny must place the sea king next to the rock wall and hold a steady hover this is a true precision flight test easy anyone easy easy he's with him now he's got the jumpers well he's the best mercy search chopper because he's a big friendly beast and you know you'd be with this plane if i were a navigator sitting in the middle of the sea and i saw the king of the sea coming towards me i would have a high degree of confidence that it is not the biggest but it is big enough like to put a lot of casualties, troops or shops, it has a pretty long range up to about five hours of flight time, it's fast enough for the role it's going to be used for, so while it's not at the forefront of all those examples, it does everything well enough to make it excellent for its purpose the sea king's incredible sturdiness and flight controls we've made it the best search and rescue helicopter it's the sixth largest helicopter ever we're halfway through from our helicopter countdown so far we have had champion heavy lift machines that took helicopter design to new heights but is yet to come the fastest helicopter on the planet and the

deadliest

helicopter ever built that is a true death machine they say that don't run away you'll die tired while we search for the biggest helicopter ever built we have five other machines to fly before we find out which one it is the the best of all but first a helicopter that can outperform any other is the ferrari of the skies and it is our number five it is the westland lynx it is the fastest production helicopter ever it is a wonderful aircraft astern to fly but for many reasons it is an extremely powerful aircraft it is very agile very maneuverable and very responsive the lynx is truly unique in its field it has completely changed the way telecopter operators can use an aircraft in battle conditions the lynx was designed during the cold war to ambush tanks using their optically tracked turret missiles quite an expensive system we also use to equate a missile to the equivalent of shooting a bmw m3 but the deadly tau missiles are just the beginning it's the linx's incredible maneuverability that sets it apart has become a formidable fighting machine.

The thing about the lynx is that it's an advanced design and a lot of thought has gone into the rot's head. or that allows him to be extremely agile. The one piece titanium rotor head is virtually fused to the main fuselage when control input is made in a conventional helicopter as it starts to move the rotor will tilt and then a second later the body will follow with the links like and you do the control input and you even call a little control input the actual airframe and head will move together as one piece the lynx is one of the most agile helicopters ever made but that's not its only distinction the lynx it is the fastest helicopter ever recorded it holds the world speed record still at a staggering 200 miles per hour.

The lynx has held the world speed record for more than 30 years. Well, the main reason the plane is so fast is because of the Burp Blade technology, but the Blade is the British experimental rotor. profile and as you can see on the blades behind me on the end is a kind of vane that helps the blades move faster the burp tip is basically a sweep tip on the end of the rotor it has very similar benefits to those it has in the The swept wings of conventional commercial aircraft flying at high subsonic speeds reduce drag. If you have less stamina, that same amount of power will allow you to gain more speed due to your speed and agility. and the liaisons can do for military operators things that helicopters have never been able to do before but it's in the hands of the british army blue eagles display team that the lynx really shows what it can do the best it ever persuaded them to explain their best tricky maneuver flip a helicopter upside down loop loop go the loop is the hardest maneuver to do absolutely right because the plane really doesn't want to do it it's a real coordinated maneuver coordinated both with the cyclic stick with the pedals as well as with the collective movement, so the old analogy of rubbing your head and patting your stomach really comes true when trying to fly the loop.

I'll lift the throttle gently back. All I'll do is pull back as fast as I can on the stick and the plane. goes straight on himself jimmy going around six back to the groove to the left a little more pedaling power is just committing to the maneuver and making sure he goes all the way back over the top and doesn't spend too much time on his stomach, otherwise you will be gently sucked down to the ground classic british lynx excellence in its field the lynx is like a lynx it goes fast and hits its prey quickly and it is truly a remarkable fighting machine it does everything you want it to do and more and i have never flown a helicopter that is better the lynx's remarkable speed and agility make it a unique machine and earn it the title of fifth largest helicopter ever at number four it is a true giant of the skies it is the largest and most powerful helicopter ever built is mill 26 mill 26 is the gigantic of helicopters everything is big even the pilots are big it is the biggest is the helicopter most powerful thing out there there is nothing that comes close it is huge it is very very capable very simple it was a russian solution to a russian problem the problem was how to get nuclear missiles to remote siberia during the cold war the answer was to build the largest helicopter in the world with the ability to lift forty thousand pounds there is nothing that will survive the mi-26 it is 40 meters long 6.5 meters wide as tall as two double decker buses if you need to move something that is extremely heavy by On top of what a chinook or an overhead crane can move, there is only one plane you can turn to and that is the mi-26, the mill 26 can lift an incredible 20 tons, the equivalent of lifting two chinooks at the same time, since whether outside or inside. its cargo hold is the same size as a hercules and big enough to fit four family cars or 100 paratroopers, whatever your needs with its massive payload you have to do something extraordinary to lift it off the ground with the mill 26, of course the designers were faced with the problem of getting as much lift as possible because it is a heavy helicopter and it has high lift capacity and the answer to that was to put more blades on the rotor hub, the me 26 is thlone 8 bladed helicopter in the world each blade is about 15 meters long and weighs about 300 kilos and what gives those blades such enormous lift the most powerful engines ever put on a helicopter well here we are the heart of the mi-26 two engines called d-136 of 12,000 horsepower each, the fuel consumption is about two and a half tons per hour, which means about 3,000 liters, that's a lot of fuel, but also there is quite a lot of horsepower in fact that is over 50 times more powerful than a ferrari the size is huge the size of the chopper the size of the engine is used but the size of what the chopper can perform is also huge the mill was used in the chernobyl cleanup and today it operates in some of the world's harshest environments welcome to the world's largest helicopter cockpit it's big for a reason it takes two pilots a navigator engineer and a load master to fly this beast of course the mill 26 comes with s Some issues for a western operator they have all been designed in russian and come with russian instruction manuals so it can be quite a hassle to convert to operate a plane like mill 26 in a non-Russian setting. west probably not we couldn't justify the expense of designing and producing and certifying it either for civilian or military use it's very exciting to fly it because I think the main reason is because it's the biggest in the world well I think it's like a great big russian bear and it really moves the team and gives it a lot of muscle the mill 26 summing up a machine to move mountains the mill 26 is definitely the most powerful helicopter ever but unless you have a big enough job it's too expensive to run to get fourth at number three it's a plane that has changed the face of warfare it's the world's

deadliest

helicopter it's the apache longbow apache it's the best fighting machine it's ready od efficient planes with really nasty efficient weapons, they'll ruin your whole day if they chase you, the apache isn't meant to.

It looks nice but under its ugly outer shell lies the most sophisticated chopper ever designed, as the requirements for helicopters have evolved over the years. helicopter can fly every apache longbow is equipped with over 12 million dollars worth of avionics with the intent to kill you has highly integrated electronics and optics to allow you to fly the plane in the middle of the night as if it were in broad daylight and ready to fire at the tanks and that is truly spectacular, its mast mounted radar and nose mounted day and night vision systems allow the pilot to clearly spot and identify targets up to five miles away and to precisely aim their weapons, the pilot relies on his integrated headset once we have the helmet on, we take what's called the helmet display unit and we plug it into the right side of our helmet.

Once it's plugged in, what it does is it spins around, it sits on my right cheek and then this little catheter ray tube basically a little tv screen slides up and into place so that I can see the information that my night vision sensor is showing so that when I turn my head left and right up and down, I can see where I am looking with my night vision sensor and also it gives me information about a crosshair when my crosshair is in there so when I turn my head I can actually put my crosshair on the target it pulls the trigger and then it zooms in on a target but this sighting system precision is nothing without the weapons it controls the longbow apache has three main weapon systems on board it has the 30mm chain gun which is uh right under the copilot station if something hits me out the right door, i can literally turn my head, look to the right and down, pull the trigger and the rounds will burst on the target, it just follows my line of sight no matter where i'm looking to the left up to below will follow my head movement called 2.75 inch folding fin arrow rockets if we have troops in the open we just want them to buckle up stop shooting these kinds of things we can fire animal rockets it's not necessarily going to go exactly to the point that it's trying to aim it's going to go in that general area of ​​all weapons it's the hellfire missiles the deadliest the hellfire missile system is our primary weapon system aboard the longbow apache with the help from the us army apache squad at fort rucker alabama the best i have ever seen the firepower of these hellfire missiles each missile costs a whopping 85,000 us dollars and the apache carries eight of them they are guided by a laser beam that is programmed to the crosshair in the pilot's combat with the help of its fire control system the aircraft scans the battlefield identifying up to 1,000 separate targets prioritize the most dangerous ones and launch an attack the pilot then marks the target with his laser beam and fires the missile all this can be done in less than 10 seconds, once fired the missile accelerates past mach 1. it takes less than 40 seconds to destroy a target 5 miles away, the incredible firepower of the Apaches has made it one of the most feared weapons I guess, for the soldier on the ground the only thing he fears most is seeing a helicopter approaching over those trees and the apache is the only chopper i wouldn't want to see coming at me that's a real death machine they say don't run just die tired you look at the three different weapons systems we have on board and the different roles we can perform in combat it is undoubtedly the deadliest attack helicopter in the world the apache is undoubtedly the th deadliest helicopter ever but it comes with a hefty price tag of 25 million dollars.

It is the third largest helicopter in history. If you think a flying car is a thing of the future, you need to think again. Revolution has made a simple helicopter that is finally a practical helicopter for the individual. This has been a dream since WWII that you could have a personal flying vehicle that would do exactly the same as your car which has come true with the r22 the two seat r22 and its big brother the four seat r44 with a creation of a man frank robinson a designer of inflight helicopters who in 1973 set out to bring flying to the masses at that time i was already 43 years old and it bothered me that i hadn't really started what i thought would be my life's work, my real life job was to design and build a small type of personal helicopter so i decided to go ahead and bet everything and give it a try it would be easier to accept if i knew i had tried and failed than if i had never tried it all was the right call and robinson's annual sales are now over 200 million dollars the guy is a total genius and a revolutionary he has made a revolution in helicopters the revolution was in l for simplicity of design i envisioned the type of helicopter i would want myself now i would want to use it and i wanted a helicopter that required very very little maintenance and one that was much lower in cost than existing helicopters what frank robinson did was cut out everything that was unnecessary The R22 is so light that it can be powered by an inexpensive piston engine usually used in light aircraft.

It is set to consume only 75% of its full power making it very reliable and durable without compromising performance. It can fly faster, travel farther and carry more than anyone else in its class, giving it a unique place among helicopters. What is robinson gut? that no other helicopter is commercially successful at this end of the market, we compare that just with the large number of aircraft that robinson delivers, we are talking about 17 a week if we compare it with other tournament helicopters, we could be talking about one more to such time three a week frank robinson has now sold 6,000 r22s and r44s helicopters that's an incredible record for this end of the market no one else has come close to that sales volume it's affordable it's reliable it's efficient it's fast it's practical it's the first once a helicopter has been seriously practical as a personal transport the r22 brought the price of a helicopter down to a quarter of what it was before at just 185k its the same price as a top of the range mercedes and that makes flying easier possible for pretty much anyone i didn't design it as a trainer but i designed it as a personal helicopter but it also turned out to be a good trainer it produces a very good pilot quality is not necessarily easy.

You don't learn to fly a helicopter, but as you learn to fly it, you develop better habits. The Robinson R22 is today the most popular training aircraft for new pilots. this is really the marker of what will be the personal helicopter. Practical Reliable Efficient Easy Simple Simply Brilliant Robinson Helicopters are now operating in over 60 countries around the world, making it one of the most ubiquitous helicopters of all time. From the top 10 to find the best we're about to discover in our quest to find the biggest helicopter we've ever seen nine groundbreaking machines, all incredible helicopters, but none as revolutionary as our number one who flew into the world's battles. finished and immortalized in movies like apocalypse it is now almost 50 years old and it is the icon of helicopters it is the bell uh-1 there is no other heli helicopter that is as recognizable as the huey if you believe the helicopter most people will have a vision snapshot of the uh-1 the huey which of course is the uh-1 and that's how it got its name was the archetypal helicopter of vietnam the huey is the the machine we rode into war took us in and brought us back safely the uh -1 first appeared in vietnam in 1963. out of an initial order for 60 helicopters, the us military fielded over 7,000 my name is steve vermillion i am a retired army officer after 26 years.

My role in the uh-1 was initially as a co-pilot in vietnam and then as an aircraft commander. my name is burl dooley and i was a door gunner on the uh-1 in vietnam in 1963. my training as a door gunner consisted of giving me a m2 carbine flying over the mekong river and putting some rounds in the river and then i was a door gunner about trains what impresses me about the huey is that you can do anything with it it's like a flying truck it was built around an open box and so you can take the doors off and you can put whatever you want inside a huey and that made it huge versatile when operating in vietnam and other battle conditions the huey was the first mass produced helicopter with a turbine engine this nearly doubled the speed it could fly and meant it could lift nearly twice the payload the huey was designed very simple but it was a very tough helicopter in vietnam the us army lost only one helicopter for every 8,000 missions flown during the conflict the toughness of the huey is leg endario uh-1 took a lot of damage and we keep flying it can take multiple hits to the rotor system the airframe unless it hits a major structural component it would just keep flying feeling like everyone had something wrong it always happened to other people never Happened to you when you get out of the chopper and start inspecting it and then you start to see where the holes were and the exit points dammit that was an inch from me and head uh that's real close uh but here again uh big sky little bullet concept they have to hit you to kill you probably the most iconic feature of the huey is its sound oh the quick response is like the sound of the uh-1 liberty comes predominantly because of its two bladed rotor and those are really uh almost waves of shock that are coming out nowadays helicopters are built to be a little friendlier make them quieter design the blades so there isn't as much near a lot of noise the helicopter was actually designed and built in the 1950s and back then the evolution of the helicopter was still pretty new so they hadn't actually designed the blade to be quiet they just designed it to flying back in vietnam the troops could hear it coming from miles away and i know some form of help or support was reaching him every time i hear it just say my brother is flying today the best of all is giving steve and burl the chance to fly one more time in a uh-1 lookin ng good this one looks in much better condition than the last two i flew it has no bullet holes all the parts are in it that's good that it's cool you know the last time i flew a huey was 20 years ago to be able to fly it today will be a special thrill it's coming home i mean it's like when i stopped flying huey i lost a family member and now I am meeting with a member of the family now for the first time in 20 years steve has thechance to take the controls ok i got the controls again thank you oh yeah this feels great you know the sights the sounds and the smell and you know i don't bring back negative memories and it brings back positive memories and uh be united once again between man and machine the terrain we fly over is very similar to some of the stuff we fly over in vietnam brings back a lot of memories as a door gunner i would really focus here and the back of the helicopter again See, that's where I'm going to get fire if I get a call even after 42 years it all comes back I think I could still do a good job as a store gun or if I had to the Huey is out of all these choppers the best of all time the huey is a classic and i think it will always be the highlight of the uh-1 its longevity uh it's the simplicity uh and uh probably the people who flew it didn't expect to go back to europe uh until they dumped my ashes somewhere, yes TBD the helicopter is great it can do any job given to it and it is very very exceptional helicopter if I was revived today and sent to Iraq I would like to have a huey with a 50 year lifespan . and counting the huey has prevailed in the conflict it has been immortalized in movies and embraced in the hearts and minds of those who have flown it is the

greatest

helicopter ever seen