Light, medium, heavy, and attack

Helicopters have ICAO designators, published overall size, and public names. They belong in a type lexicon for the same reason a Skyhawk does: so the reader can place the type, not the paint. They do not belong here as a threat picture.

In this encyclopedia a helicopter's rotor diameter stands in for span, so a helicopter's size can be read against any fixed-wing type on the same scale.

The snapshot groups 34 helicopter types by published size and public role: 14 light, 12 medium, 5 heavy, 3 attack. The grouping is a reading aid, not a certification class and not a table of organization.

Light is training, news, EMS, and private flying: the Robinson R22, R44, and R66, Bell's 206 and 407, the Airbus H125 and H135, the Leonardo AW109. Medium is offshore, search and rescue, corporate, and utility: the AW139, S-76, Bell 412, H160, and the UH-60 Black Hawk family. Heavy is lift and long range: the tandem-rotor CH-47 Chinook, the S-92, the H225, and the Mil Mi-8 and Mi-17, the most-produced helicopter family in the world. Attack lists the AH-64 Apache and its peers as public role types, identity only.

You can class a helicopter from a distance by its rotor layout. A single main rotor with a tail rotor is the default. A fenestron, a fan buried in the tail, marks several Airbus types. NOTAR, a fan-driven tail boom with no rotor at all, marks MD helicopters. Tandem rotors, one front and one rear, mean Chinook. Coaxial contra-rotating discs mean Kamov.

Blade count tracks size loosely: two blades on light Robinson and Bell trainers, four or five on medium and heavy types.

Robinson builds the volume light line in California; the R44 is the best-selling helicopter of the modern era. Bell, Airbus Helicopters, and Leonardo cover light through medium. Sikorsky owns the medium-lift utility space with the S-76, the S-92, and the H-60 family. Boeing builds the Apache and the Chinook. Russian Helicopters, through the Mil and Kamov bureaus, builds the Mi and Ka lines that dominate lift work across much of the world.

If a fact is not in ICAO 8643, a type certificate, a manufacturer public sheet, or an attributable public article, it does not go in Aerolex. Attack helicopter is a public role word from open sources. This encyclopedia does not publish weapons, sensors, signatures, or classified performance. Operators are services, never unit-level rosters.