Quote:
Originally Posted by thrash
But the Harrier pilot does have to know how to hover to be proficient. A regular fixed wing pilot could manage the straight line flight modes just fine, but would crash and burn attempting to go vertical. It's a different skill set.
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However, you could, as I understand it, drive a Harrier perfectly well without knowing how to hover as long as you didn't try any vertical manoeuvres and treated it as an STOL aircraft ... I get the impression that the same cannot be said of tilt-rotor machines (so far limited to the Osprey AFAIK) and helicopters.
Actually, speaking of helicopters, quadcopters and similar things, is driving a twin rotor (like a Chinook) a different skill from a single rotor? How about Kamov style stack rotors? Based on my (limited) understanding of how these things fly, they should behave very differently...