Vertol vs Helicopter

[The Colonel]

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.

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...