The Rotor Shop is convenient place on the web for me to store and make available information related to aviation.

• Helicopter Flight Training
  • Patrick Corr, President of Helicopter Adventures, Inc., has graciously allowed me to post his Patrick’s Principles for Passing the Practical Test, which is a compendium of helpful tips and reminders for passing the oral and flight tests required for FAA certification..

  • Some tips on learning to hover are here.

  • The FAA publication Basic Helicopter Handbook is available on-line here. Although still useful, you should know this publication has been superceded by the Rotorcraft Flying Handbook, FAA-H-8083-21.

  • The Robinson R-22 is the most popular light piston training helicopter. It has also seen its share of controversy, and a good deal of scrutiny by the FAA. Some documents related to this helicopter are available here.

• Helicopter Flight
  • A report entitled LOW SPEED FLIGHT CHARACTERISTICS WHICH CAN RESULT IN UNANTICIPATED RIGHT YAW is now available. There are also some comments on the article here.

  • The Usenet Newsgroup rec.aviation.rotorcraft has a number of experienced pilots contributing information and answering questions. They've also retold some stories that make for interesting reading.
    Click here to read some of them.

  • A story about a collective "excursion" can be found here.

  • An explanation of an "ag turn" can be found here.

  • Left-pedal turns will induce a climb. An explanation is here.

  • Some comments regarding looping a helicopter are available here. Kids, don't try this at home.

  • Some helicopter movies are listed here.

• General Flight
  • A description of "off-course navigation" is here.

  • Click here to read a Straight Dope column on how airplanes (and helicopters) really fly.

  • You can check the operating status of the nation's largest airports, including delay information, here.

• Ownership
  • A table of average helicopter costs for several popular models is available here.

• Videos
  • http://youtube.com/results?search=Helicopter

  • www.simradar.com/Feature/Misc_Videos/Accidents/

  • www.dauntless-soft.com/PRODUCTS/Freebies/Amazing/