A Night Out Nearly three hundred years ago, when booze was cheap and some of our club members hadn't even been born, two drunks slouched over several empty bottles, eying up the local talent. One of them, (let's call him... Ooh, I dunno, Isaac) had a bit of a reputation for falling into alcohol induced stupors under the village apple tree and the other (Daniel or Danny) was well known for blowing on bits of paper and muttering "Duh!"

"You know, Danny, I was reading about the helicopter whatsit thingy that Len The Nutter was scribbling about in the local rag. Any chance of us making a working model of one?"

"Yeah! Good idea! What if we get one of those computerised box things and make it do anything we want? Your cat could power it!"

"Wozzat... what did you say?"

A week later...

Sobered up due to working many late nights, Isaac and Danny had finished their device, threw it into the back of their two horse-power estate cart with only the cat and eight mice for company. On the outskirts of the village, they unloaded their contraption to the delight of several locals.

"Range check?" Danny asked.

"Ten feet. What about fuel?"

"Give's a break! Radio on?" muttered Danny, idly throwing a mouse to the cat.

"Don't listen to the radio."
Amidst great suspense, the cat ran, the treadmill treaded, the gears geared and the rotor, which looked suspiciously like a rimless cartwheel, rotated. Liftoff! After a couple of circuits, the cat got hungry and Isaac had to autorotate in.
"No bother! Got another couple of mice?"
Second flight and after a couple of loops, three snap rolls and two inverted passes, Isaac got bored.
"I'm off! This is too easy! See you down the pub."

"Me too" , agreed Danny.

That Night...

Several buckets of ale later, the despondent Isaac decide to try to think of ways to make the helicopter more fun.
"What about if I could invent something which made it trickier, like, say, the bit with the cat turned the opposite way the cartwheel, I mean, rotor does? We could formalise it into the pub rules, for example, ahem, 'Every action has an equal and opposite reaction!'"
Danny looked up from blowing on his piece of paper.
"Nice one! Isaac. I've got one too. How about 'Blowing across bits of paper makes them go up!'"

"No good. It lacks punch and it's not nearly formal enough. Here's another! 'A body tends to continue in its state of rest or uniform motion unless subject to outside forces!'"

"What's that mean?"

"Simple. If somethings not going, it doesn't want to go and even better, if it is going, it doesn't want to stop!"

"Bit deep for me. I still prefer my one about the paper. Please can we include that?"

"I'll think about it but only if you re-word it. I'm on a roll now! You know if we enforce that second rule I made up that means if you make the cat run faster and the helicopter rises, the tail bitty which has now also been made compulsory will swing wildly!"

"That's neat! Won't the cat fall out? And if we also include my bit about the paper, then wouldn't that mean it would also go up?"

"Yeah! But you've got to make it snappier!"

"You know, the second rule is even better than I thought. If you tilt the helicopter forward, it's going to want to go down at the side!"

"That's rididulous! If you're getting away with that I insist that 'The total energy in a steadily flowing fluid system is a constant along the flow path!'"

"That's brilliant! What's it mean?"

"Blowing across bits of paper makes them go up!"

"Great! Let's try it out tomorrow."
The Next Day...

Hangovers gone and the modifications added, the helicopter spectacularly failed to fly. The cat kept falling out the side of the treadmill every time the helicopter lifted, until finally the resulting power loss ended in a violent smash. One of the spokes rotors knocked the cat unconscious, much to the relief of the two remaining mice.
"Too difficult." , mused Isaac, "Think I'll just put it in the cupboard until I get it fixed."
This expression was to echo down the years.

Sadly, Isaac was discovered later that day suffering from amnesia caused by a blow to the head. Danny went on to discover that if you put a spoon in running water, you'll get wet. Their deeds went unrecorded until....

Jump To Twenty-First Century Scotland....

The helicopter 'new guy' pushes collective forward and it lifts off. Isaac's ghost smiles and the tail swings.
"%&*£$" , yelps 'new guy' as he yanks the collective back.

"Gotcha!!!" screams Isaac as the tail violently jerks the opposite way.
Later, 'new guy' has heard rumours about Isaac's ancient rule and knows all about tail swing. He again pushes collective forward and the helicopter rises. A microsecond passes and nothing happens. Quite soon, another one passes as well. The helicopter starts to move off. Strangely, the heli fuselage is not pointing the way it's going!
"Me! Me! Me! My turn now!" , yells Danny's ghost.
The helicopter starts to rise. 'New guy' knows what to do. He's been practicing on a simulator! There are only eighty one possible stick combinations on his transmitter which is a 1.235% chance of getting the next bit right. 1.235% is very, very close to none! He pulls back collective to stop the rise, adjusts the cyclic to slow the movement and adds tail rotor to fix the heading.

Real neat! Wait a minute. Didn't Isaac have something to say about....
"%&*£$!"
He can hear both Newton and Bernoulli laugh as the helicopter drops like a brick and the tail swings like mad!

"Let's go and find another mug! Danny"