Helicopter

It’s a bird!  It’s a plane!  No… It’s a helicopter!

• Helicopters are aircraft that can fly horizontally, vertically and can hover.
• Helicopters are a type of rotorcraft, which enables them to land almost anywhere, because the rotor blades allows the copter to fly vertically.
• Helicopters are also known as choppers, whirlybirds and helos.
• Helicopters have their origins in children’s flying toys, made from bamboo as early as 400 BC.
• Many vertical flying ideas have been experimented with over the centuries and the term ‘helicopter’ was coined for a machine, that did not lift off the ground, in 1861.

• The first ‘flight’ of a helicopter occurred in 1907, and the first full scale production helicopter was designed by Igo Sikorsky in 1942.
• Helicopters are used for, but not limited to, transportation, military, health and safety, construction and tourism.
• Helicopters move slower than most aircraft since the rotor blades’ speed depends on the speed of the copter.
• If helicopters are unsafely operated, helicopters could go out of control or crash and end in serious consequences.
• Up until 2012, the deadliest helicopter crash was a shoot down of a Mil Mi 26 over Chechnya, which killed 127 people.

Bibliography:
Helicopter 5 February 2013 , Wikipedia, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter>