Chocks away!
The Helicopter Museum
With a collection of over 80 helicopters, The Helicopter Museum at Weston-super-Mare is the largest museum dedicated to helicopters in the world. If you visit, you can see many of these amazing flying machines and learn about the science that lies behind them.
Hovering for science
One of the helicopters in the collection is a Bell 47H helicopter, which was built in 1956 in Texas, USA. This Bell 47H was originally sold to Sabena Airways in Belgium and it was operated in Antarctica to support a Belgian scientific expedition. It was eventually written-off however, after a forced landing in the UK.
How helicopters fly
As the rotor blades of a helicopter spin around, air flows faster over the top of each blade than beneath it. This causes a net upward pressure force on each blade called lift. The lift supports the helicopter in the air and by altering the speed and angle of the rotor blades, the pilot can make the helicopter rise, fall, or hover. Helicopters can also fly forward, backwards and sideways.
See inside
You can have a look inside the cockpits of selected helicopters and have the controls explained by an experienced guide at one of the Open Cockpit days run by the museum.
Pictures courtesy of The Helicopter Museum
Submitted by: Catherine Thomas, 21 August 2003
