Learning to fly quietly

Rotorcrafts are very effective at generating sound, much to the delight of the aeroacoustician and the dismay of the public at large. This presentation will describe the lessons learned by one researcher over 20 years of acoustic measurements of rotorcraft out in the field and in the air. These include how to effectively control helicopter noise, experiments that you should and should not conduct with your helicopter, tips on addressing your neighbors’ complaints when taking measurements, a note that possession of a good test site is nine tenths of the law, and how to recover your data after a helicopter has blown it away. Finally, when the weather is foul, rabbits have chewed through your microphone cables, and the batteries have fallen out of your flight data recorder, remember this advice: “don’t panic!”