Added: 07/01/2005 |
Helicopters - Flying by the rotating bladesThere are different types of aircrafts. Planes are the most common - they are used for the greatest deal of air transporting and passenger carrying. Helicopters are much smaller in general, but there is one feature, that is unique to this kind of air vehicles, which have played the major part in the process of development and using of helicopters.
Just think. These flying machines don't need an airport to land. This fact makes people think about helicopter as about a universal purpose aircraft, which is used in any circumstances. That's why helicopters are used much more by emergency services like hospitals, firefighters and others, than airplanes. Most of planes require a runway to fly - and even if you land in the heart of a large city, where will you find the wide and long road leg to lift your plane up if you are not Schwarzenegger in 'True lies'?
The idea of such vehicle is known to exist in ancient China, as a toy scheme. First person, who thought about flying by helicopter, is considered to be Leonardo da Vinci. But only in the 20th century first units of functional helicopters were created by Jan Bahyl, Louis Breguet, Paul Cornu, Juan de la Cierva, Emile Berliner, Ogneslav Kostovic Stepanovic and Igor Sikorsky.
Helicopter appeared to be an aircraft which can land almost to every place with enough space. Of course the main users of helicopters are the military and the emergency crews. Modern war helicopters are similar with their weapon to tanks. For rescuers it also became one of the most popular ways to reach destination without care of land possibility.
But not only rescue crew finds helicopter useful. This aircraft is also great in organizing local journeys to some beautiful locations. For example, if you desire to observe middle-sized archipelago, helicopter can be the best solution to choose. One important thing is to find the proper place to land (this can be just a near-to-be-flat glade) - and you can look at the whole island from the height of bird's flight, or land and examine interesting views in detail.
Large city can be also seen and even experienced from the seat of helicopter. There are no glades in the city, but today many heliports exist in big cities. However, most of them are owned by corporate users and closed for common passenger service. Nevertheless, the convenience of heliports put a new sense in helicopter usage as an improved variant of local transport, like bus, tram or taxi.
Many travel service providers also organize helicopter city tours. This is rather an expensive pleasure, but it is worth the money paid. Just imagine, what a sight of Empire State Building will be like, if you see it from above.
Today helicopters are used by many companies and tour organizers as a fast and reliable aircraft, which is possible to use in plenty of ways. But for air travelers helicopter tours, which could add a lot of new journey experience of examining new locations, enjoying of nature beauty and human mind creativity, are more common.
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