Hlicopter Question

[Coota0]

What are the advantages and disadvantages of skids vs. wheels?
I've seen that older aircraft (UH-1, AH-1) have skids, while newer aircraft (UH-60, AH-64) have wheels, and that cargo types (CH-46, CH-47) have wheels, why?

[Brad]

With a heavy load sometimes it's easier to get a running start - takes a lot of energy to hover with a lot of weight. Also, takeoffs from high altitude locations might require a rolling takeoff. Even with skids you can do it, but easier with wheels. Under some conditions you can't take off with a hover.

The other minor consideration is moving equipment. You can transport a blackhawk or an apache on an airplane - loading and unloading is easier with wheels, as is moving the helicopter around on the ground.

[Rusty24]

Yep like he said, plus a skid is a hell of alot easier to hold onto than a wheel

[Brad]

oops - didn't see the "advantage of skids" part...

There are some techniques where skids come in real handy - for example you can land on a slope (like a hillside) up to 5 degrees or so easier with skids - one technique they teach is a cross slope landing, which is where you hold the cyclic towards the slope and, straight and level, plant one skid on the surface and then slowly lower the other side. If you do this with wheels and you're a little sloppy in your control movements, the wheel will act as a pivot point instead of holding the ground like a skid will. It's nice to be able to do this because if you land facing downhill the tail rotor might strike the ground and if you land facing uphill loading and unloading becomes more dangerous as standard procedure is to have people walk to the helicopter from the front.

So, there's one advantage of skids over wheels - along with what rusty said- you can't hang on wheels or do that cool flying around standing on the skids gunner stuff...

By the way, I have a book called "Learning to fly helicopters" by R. Randall Padfield - I read it completely through before I took the AFAST - don't know if it helped, but I was a lot more confident and understood more about how helicopters work compared to airplanes. I'd definitely recommend it.