I have a friend who wants to abseil from a helicopter. It’s one of the items on her life list and doesn’t on the face of it appear impossible to organise.

Anyone done this or know how to arrange it ?

Fall off a mountain, get to do it free courtesy of the RAF?

Join the marines they love that sort of thing.

I expect the closest youd be able to get is to abseil from a tower on a windy day.

It’s something the forces do quite often. Google ‘Fast Roping’.

Go for a weekend away with Bear Grylls. I think that’s how he gets to the local pub.

not sure if “fast roping” is the same as abseiling. Dont think the marines etc are actually clipped on, i think its all thick gloves and technique.

Can she climb/abseil already? its not like your going to be able to have someone belay you or be able to use a grigri, so it has potential to be blaady dangerous.

After that i would have thought its pretty straight forward to organise.

Youll be needing a few things, write these down in case they are not obvious:
[list]
[*]A helicopter[/*]
[*]A pilot (one prepared to let her do it)[/*]
[*]abseiling stuff[/*]
[*]somewhere to do it.[/*]
[/list]

start by asking someone at a local small airfield?

My aunt (mid sixties) wants to drive a dumper truck. Not an excavator or jcb or anything fun like that, a dumper truck :s
most odd

Tricky- to abseil out she’ll need a helicopter with an attachment point above the door, and a willing pilot. That’s likely to be a military helicopter (Sea King, for example) which generally lower/winch people, rather than abseiling. Pretty specialist area of military practice, if it’s done at all.

I would guess her chances are slim to zero.

Don’t necessarily need an anchor above the door but it makes it easier.
The biggest issue is that outside of the military/police you are only really looking at certain specialists with VERY certain skill sets.
Unless you can find a company willing to carry the liability insurance and risk then it’s more or less impossible as you will STILL need access to those certain Specialists and very deep pockets….

Go for a weekend away with Bear Grylls. I think that’s how he gets to the local pub.

I think Bear Grylls gets his mum to drive him, but tells everyone he abseiled out of a helicopter 😉

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSnfO15cAHE[/video]

Who does the cheapest helicopter uplift?

It’s easy enough to ab mindlessly if you use a fancy device like a Petzl Stop (providing you thread it the right way round). It’s also fairly trivial to arrange a top rope for security.

But, given that abseiling is best reserved for when you are truly in extremis and having to retreat by lashing your bootlaces round a wobbly twig, doing it securely seems cheating somehow.

As for “from a helicopter”. Why?

Why?

Why not? 😀

A mate of mine informed me once that fast roping from a helicopter onto the back of a moving ship with a full Bergan on is one of the scariest things he’s ever done. And that’s saying something.

Fast roping is pretty risky business. They don’t typically like you abseiling out as that means you’re attached to the chopper and it it all goes wrong and he needs to bug out you can’t just let go and jump the last bit.

I thought eveyone has sex by descending by helicopter?

Is it me, or does this thread look a bit ‘odd’?

The posts are alternately white and grey, they’re just grey.

My aunt (mid sixties) wants to drive a dumper truck. Not an excavator or jcb or anything fun like that, a dumper truck :s
most odd

I think there is a theme park outside Las Vegas where you can do that. Or she could just get her dump truck ticket 😀

Back in my RAF Cadet days, some of the RAF Regiment chaps took me and a couple of the other senior cadets up in a Wessex and threw us out the back on a fast rope/asbeil (we were clipped in – they weren’t!) No chance they’d let cadets do that nowadays.

I’ve always wanted to do a parachute jump from a helicopter. Never have though, only from light aircraft – usually an Islander. Apparently helicopters are totally different, no wind noise or rush.

You werent senior enough- we were given a joy ride in a Gazelle 8)

You werent senior enough- we were given a joy ride in a Gazelle

Flown them a couple of times but I much preferred Chinooks. We did a 90 minute low level thrash round the woodland outside RAF Odiham once – one of the poor cadets filled 2 sickbags and was thereafter known as the Chinook Chunderer. 😆

Back to the OP though – I can’t see anyone in the UK offering that kind of thing, it’s a pretty specific military drill. Unless you can find some kind of “XTreme Adventure!” style place with access to a hekelopter and a hefty insurance premium…

Edit: why isn’t the quote function working? And why does this thread look so weird, all formatted wrong… ❓

I spent a day showing off/demonstrating it in holyrood park, Edinburgh back in 1992 – the lynx didn’t have any outboard hard points like a Seaking’s winch – we were just roped to a hard point in the center of the deck and had to lunge backwards off the skids and rope out to make sure we dint headbutt the skids as we swung under.

health and safety Nazis aside, i wouldn’t have thought there was much stopping a willing pilot from facilitating it – but then again, a quick Google says no unless you want to do it in Czechoslovakia!

I would try a film stunt company but be prepared to pay a lot

There’s a great website called ‘google’. Put some suitable words such as ‘fast rope experience’ and press the search button. It will then give you details of places that offer the experience, such as http://www.cqcsa.co.za/abseiling-course-training.htm

Bonkers isn’t it 8)

Have seen the Marines “fast rope” into Twickenham, madness ! I suspect doing it in the UK will be pretty difficult to organise, too dangerous.

A few years ago, actually many years ago, I was at a Scout Camp at Kielder Water. We were ‘practising’ abseiling using the reservoir overflow pipe. It is just a very deep concrete channel close to the dam. Good place to ‘practise’, since easy to set up the attachments and there was steel rung ladder to climb out off.

Anyway a few goes, we got bored, so we abseiled from the bridge over the overflow pipe. In those days we may have been less bothered about H&S and it was seen as a great wheeze! Probably the closet you can get to leaving a helicopter.

Just to finish off we walked down the overflow pipe to the end and were very close to where the water comes out at the bottom of the dam. I don’t even want to think what paperwork I would need to do today to get that all approved!