I really liked the one that brought me home last night (S92), but suspect I won't be so keen on the one to take me away again in 3 weeks time.
After over 20 years of flying in the things to various offshore installations in various countries I have had some moments where I truly thought things were going to end badly, but in my head the benefits and opportunities the job brings to my family outweigh the potential for disaster.
I actually had a couple of flying lessons in a R22? a few years back, gave me a huge respect for the skills these pilots have, but also made me realise just how quickly things could get very serious in the right (wrong) circumstance.
Helicopter: A thousand parts spinning around at high speed looking for an excuse to fail!
Have a look on YouTube for xmas tree helicopters for examples of proper flying.
Love / Hate relationship with this one. Takes me to work and brings me home again every 4 weeks...
Always loved the lynx. Was doing a job at R31 (or 13, can't remember) above Newry. Bessbrook to job in a Puma. Straight forward. Did the job and were told we were vizzed in and to wait for next available chopper.
A lynx coming back from Armagh said they'd pick us up. Having never been in a lynx I jumped in, rifle pointing down then tried to find seat strap. See the door gunner s**** and speak into head set. Pilot looks over his shoulder and back. Door gunner s****s again.
Next thing I know we've shot upwards and what could only be described as a rotating fall to the side of the hill. We dropped like a stone following the contours and then practically flew below tree top height back up the river to bessbrook. I Never go on rollercoaster now because they'll never match the buzz I got from that.
Also had a Puma land on my shoulder in Norway. Because of the white out the crew need a ground reference when landing. You stand with your arms out until the plexi glass is about to head but you then curl up in a ball. It was at that point the pilot ground my shoulder into the snow.
I forgave him because he was friends with our chief instructor and we blagged a morning of heli skiing north of Voss. Tax payers money well spent.
Can I ask those of you who seem to love helicopters so much, do you actually fly in them with any sort of regularity?
Small, cramped, noisy, dangerous metal boxes that have a fast spinning knife above your head. If I didn't occasionally have to I certainly wouldn't ever want to fly in one.
A few years ago I was riding to avebury via a farm track.
I had stopped off for rest when I heard a helicopter sound,it didn't sound like your average chopper that was for sure.
Was blown away (not literally) when an apache longbow appeared over the horizon and proceeded to practise hiding behind tree cover e.t.c
Was watching them for at least 5 mins hovering e.t.c it was bloody awesome i had to say both apache and the sound it made.
Am glad that I wasn't deemed a target lol
Bloody autocorrect
Ive flown on a few of the military choppers....
Puma, landed at a pretend explosion site as part of my EOD course. Horrible noisy and cramped thing !
Merlin, used to be a Sqn Armourer on 78 Sqn so flew in these quite often for gunning sorties. So smooth when flying and used to send me to sleep.
Chinook, My fave of all time, was out in Basrah in 2004 and managed to get a "Jolly" with the aircrew to go to a gunning range in the desert. Unbeknown to me the Pilot was a SF jockey and took great pleasure in trying to make us all sick by climbing and throwing it over the top quite often. Whilst this was happening one of the loadies had two straps and was doing somersaults on the ramp !!. We also had to divert into Basrah Palace on the way back to collect some high roanking chap which was a bit of an eye opener !
Fast roped out of these things - always felt like the feker was about to shake itself to bits......whirly things of death!
I once sat and watched a Chinook lifting a CH-53... it wasn’t very happy about it but the noise was impressive.....
The chinook is my favourite way to travel. They have legroom, room for luggage and great ventilation. Not so keen on the Blackhawk mind, it's more sporty looking, but no headroom and quite cramped in the back.
Thought you would have like Bell Huey's with a name like that...
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Whilst this was happening one of the loadies had two straps and was doing somersaults on the ramp !!. We also had to divert into Basrah Palace on the way back to collect some high roanking chap which was a bit of an eye opener !
One of my old 7 Para RHA lads got a rollocking for basically surfing out of the back of one, hanging out the back with two load lines clipped to him, OK until he buffeted and slammed into ramp and broke 3 ribs, meaning he couldn't join us for the next jolly at the Iraqi beach.
Mate in the navy also tells a story of a Chinook with an underslung Marines Pinzgauer dropping it on to deck of ship (probably HMS Ocean as he served on there but not sure) only to realise that one of the hook-up team hadn't put handbrake on Pinzgauer, so as it was released, the vehicle rolled down the deck straight into the sea.
Plus my brother in law is an electrician on Chinook's at Odiham, it worries me the amount of gaffa tape he has (MOD stuff is good for going tubeless though)
Oooo! Nice shots, B.A.Nana!
Small, cramped, noisy, dangerous metal boxes that have a fast spinning knife above your head. If I didn’t occasionally have to I certainly wouldn’t ever want to fly in one.
My mate flies passenger jets for the world's favourite airline. His mate from home flies helicopters, demoing mainly for rich people but also some air ambulance / police contract world.
Quite entertaining bantz listening to the two of them, but my fixed wing mate has managed to convince me that being in a box with a big fan on isn't so much a case of if it happens, but when.
I make big fans, they don't fail often but when they do...........
Quite entertaining bantz listening to the two of them, but my fixed wing mate has managed to convince me that being in a box with a big fan on isn’t so much a case of if it happens, but when.
But couldn't the same thing be said about turbo props and other, propeller-driven aircraft?
"But couldn’t the same thing be said about turbo props and other, propeller-driven aircraft?"
Consider the difference between the failure of the engines on an aircraft with wings and one without wings. One of them has significantly better potential outcomes than the other.
Stone vs glider?
I was working around canary wharf on Monday and a Chinook was flying around. My theory was it maybe dropped some guys in for the city airport bomb. Awesome machine.
Always loved the Westland wessex, in a parallel universe where this forum doesnt suck I have put up a picture. Unfortunatley in this one I cant (insert sad face)
Any ways its a cool chopter, perhaps a wizard or mage posseses such skills as to find a suitable image & share it with us.
Consider the difference between the failure of the engines on an aircraft with wings and one without wings. One of them has significantly better potential outcomes than the other.
Why not fit both?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SJqcVVnk3DM
Taken with a compact camera, was fairly close!
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Flying offshore in the early naughties out of Macae in northern Rio de Janeiro state the pilot came in to the end of safety briefing to give his safety talk where he said "we will take off to the north and do a sharp left turn while climbing hard before the end of the runway, due to being shot at from the favela at the end of the runway" To which I asked "how do you know they have been shooting at you?"
"Oh, they hit us a couple of times"
Can we do some oddball Russian choppers?
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Oooo! Nice shots, B.A.Nana!
Birk with little climbing experience took a very pretty Canadian work college up an easy multi-pitch climb (we presumed he was hoping to get his leg over, would like to think he blew it, big time). The crux near the top was easy but exposed, he fell apart. We found him on the phone to Llanberis MRT and we agreed to rescue them. Then got a call that a heli would pick them up, so sorted them out for heli rescue (secured all their gear and instructed them on signals to heli crew). We climbed the crux and then got a shout from below that the heli wanted to be reassigned and would we intervene, we said no (everyone climbing back down the crux seemed to us like it would increase the whole danger). We sat at a safe distance, got the sandwiches out and waited for the photo op.
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(Last of the Russians...)
Spent an amazing 7 years hanging out that back of this old girl, definitely the highlight of my career.
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) :
