Worked for a while at as buyer in the back office of a fly fishing store near Reading. Took a phone call from a customer looking for directions. Fairly standard stuff, except he was flying himself in by helicopter. I opened up Google Maps, switched to satellite view, and told him to follow the M4, hang a left at the railway just before before j12, and land on the grass by the first lake he came to after the station. Old school air navigation?! Our customers were quite wealthy…

Once spent a memorable cold evening on the side of a snow-clad Snowdon, after witnessing an accident and helping out, being blown around by the spindrift from a Sea King. They’re rather large when hovering above your head, aren’t they!

Regularly see Chinooks, as with the others in the north Hants, west Surrey area. They are even bigger, and the noise always makes me look, just like the noise of Concorde always made me want to see it.

MrsH was in hospital recently with a ruptured disc, me and the boys were visiting one evening and the hangar doors to the air ambulance were open so I took them to the compound gate to have a nosey.  The air crew guy who was on call, and obviously bored stupid, asked if we wanted to come in and have a look.  My 6-year-old was well chuffed he got to sit in the pilot’s seat.

(It’s a Eurocopter AS350 B2 ‘Squirrel’)

Not a great pic but made three boys very happy!

Also, Apaches are beautiful things.  Not in the conventional sense, obviously, but there’s something a bit so-scary-it’s-mesmerising about them.  Kinda like a shark.

I may be biased by this though  🙂

Once had to cut a pathway through some trees to retrieve a helicopter that went down just outside Wittering a few years ago killing everyone on board 🙁

Remember standing in front of the wreckage and thinking how fragile they are.

I was flown down the hill by the good people of the San Bernardino Sheriff Air Rescue Team

I fell while snowboarding and hit my melon … twenty odd years ago now…. long before people wore skid lids. That was the last run I ever did without one though, went and bought a Pro-Tec skateboarding helmet to use the next day.

It was a weird feeling “coming round” to basically see the below, hearing THUD THUD THUD THUD …. and thinking …. I must be in a helicopter ….. Coool ….. That helmet visor is the nuts ….but why is she bending over me?

And then worrying whether I had insurance.

My BIL is second in command at Yeovil. Let’s just say when he took the two Sea Kings to his kid’s school to take the kids for rides, he was the best Father. Nobody else need apply!

Was a spark at RAF Leconfield and played “survivor” many a Sunday morning for 202 Air Sea Rescue Sqn (Whirlwinds)… excellent fun being dumped then winched out of a cold Bridlington Bay. Also got strapped into a torched Hunter (I think) out the back of the airfield so they could practice hover/extraction manoeuvres. Craziest thing I ever witnessed was a maintenance method of determining the angle of the disc by chaining the Whirlwind to the ground whilst ground crew manually rotated a Heath-Robison style bit of scaffolding/big webbing belt that when whacked by the rotor tips allowed them to measure stuff…. bonkers!

What were the San Bernardino Sheriff Air Rescue Team doing in Switzerland?

I appreciate this.

Because, I got to pilot and land it.  #BucketList

“Hello Mrs Tired. Your husband is going to be ok, but we’re just waiting for the Air Ambulance to land”. Needless to say I never heard it, but the HEMS doctor gave me morphine. Not my finest cycling hour, that one. Never did get a ride in it 🙁

those Robinsons always look so fragile. Love the chopping sound on hard turns, when I watch them flying at Wycombe air park. Surprisingly expensive compared with fixed wing.

There’s been one of these working in Scotland recently (not my picture) :