Seating arrangements??

Yes, there is a valid reason that I asked a helo pilot about a few years ago.

Basically, most people are right handed and the sensitivity of the cyclic control requires the pilot keep his "smartest hand" on it, leaving the left to operate the collective, switch radios and the other business of flying.

There are no regs regarding where the pilot sits. A Stearman can be flown from the front or rear seats.

But if I had to stab a guess at why the pilot is always in the left seat of an abreast flight deck, I'd guess it's a tradition formed from needing the more intelligent hand to control mixture and throttle on the complicated starts of old radial engines, (which seems to require three hands at times.)

So, you fly from the seat you need to fly from, if you can start it from that seat. And it isn't always the same way, every aircraft, fixed wing and rotor wing is a little different from a pilot's standpoint as well as the mechanic's. The Bell 47 seems to have been traditionally flown from the left, and if you walk into a maintenance shop, you'll see a mechanic swearing as he paws irritably through a Hawker manual to figure out what the *$&#! a maxerat or grubscrew is.

Incidentally, the maxerat is the british equivalent of an anti-skid wheel sensor, and the grub screw is a 20" or so long bolt that resembles an oil plug and is the final thing to remove from the accessory case of a Rolls Royce Viper 522 engine to seperate it from the engine for inspection. (I swore with enough vehemence to drive a Jamaican classmate out of the room with the effort that went into that discovery.)

DGI

Never heard of that--might be the location of the controls. Our Bell is left hand controls--same as fixed wing

Yep. Cyclic in your right hand and not a good thing to let go. Collective in your left and you can let it go all day. For tunning radios on the consol and such.

We as pilots do not say copilot anymore we call them first officer then there is a Captain, like me.