Lu Zuckerman

To: All

For the holiday season let's get away from the dialog about precession and contribute some humorous tidbit that happened while flying in a helicopter.


How about this?

I was flight mechanic on a Bell HTL-1 (early model 47) and we were returning to base in Traverse City, Michigan from a stint on an Ice Breaker on Lake Superior. We had a leaky tail rotor gearbox so every fifty miles or so we would land and I would fill up the gearbox with of all things, fish oil. Very smelly stuff. My pilot, Dave Gershowitz, who incidentally was the first helicopter pilot to hit 1000 hours, was easily freaked out.

While flying in the left seat I was holding the oil can between my legs and reading a map. We were about twenty minutes out when Dave saw a bear. He very excitedly told me to look. When I leaned over, my legs spread and the can hit the deck making a loud noise. Dave thought there was something wrong with the tail rotor gearbox and he made a quick turn looking for a spot to land. In the process of making his maneuver he really made a hard over. On that particular helicopter type when there was an excessive side load on the mast it would cause the planetary gears to really growl.

Upon hearing that, he really wanted to get on the ground. He picked out a landing spot in front of what we later found out was a veterinarians office. To get from where we were to that landing spot we had to pass over a turkey farm and in the process we made the turkeys stampede and over 100 birds were killed in the pileup at the fence surrounding the turkey farm.

Oh yes, in the process of landing, we took out the vets' telephone line

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The Cat

helidrvr

This may not be a story, but at the beginning of the month I started a thread on Aircrew Notices entitled "a couple of odd pictures". This thread has become quite popular, with new additions coming in almost daily. Why not take a look and add your own "odd" pictures for this wider audience. If you don't have a URL for your pix, just e-mail them to me and I will provide you with one for your post.

<A HREF="http://www.pprune.org/ubb/NonCGI/Forum41/HTML/001454.html" TARGET="_blank">http://www.pprune.org/ubb/NonCGI/Forum41/HTML/001454.html</A>

sprocket

This one happened about 15yr ago.


While at a seismic survey camp in PNG, I was invited along on a trip to see some of the testing sites in a 500D. It was a great sightseeing flight for me and we stopped at several worksites.
The natives there had a reputation for walking/running to helicopters after landing, from the rear of the machine. This had resulted, in the past, in compensation claims from ‘bereaved’ families/tribes after the inevitable decapitation etc. not to mention expensive repair bills, death threats (if you’re lucky) and shattered nerves. This resulted in Pilots who became a tad touchy when prior directions were ignored/forgotten by the native workers on the worksites.

Nevertheless, as we were approaching a site helipad to land, some of the workers started running toward the pad, which meant if we landed they would be coming in from the rear of the helicopter. The pilot slowed to a hover and started waving to the workers to go to the side of the pad. This caused the chopper to wobble a bit. Getting nervous I started to do the waving for him but they just stared at us and crouched down where they stood.
The pilot started swearing out loud and getting red in the face, he moved the helicopter towards them in an attempt to ‘round them up and out to the side’
So…what did they do? … Well they crouched lower and scuttled for shelter, to a tree stump about 10ft away.
More swearing from the pilot!!…. More sweating from me!! By this time his face was a bright red glow, he then flew to the tree stump and proceeded to try and hit them on their heads with the skids. The helicopter was going up and down in a seesaw motion with the skids just missing the stump, with the workers eyes as big as dinner plates and only a few feet in front of me (I think by then, my face would have mirrored their expressions precisely).
They just crouched closer to the stump and I was starting to picture a 500D with a large tree stump sticking up through its belly, three dead natives and an irate tribe chasing me and the pilot down the valley. I was hanging on tight to the console and handhold. What an experience!
Not soon enough, they finally got up and ran to the side and then we landed without any further incident. It took the driver a little while to settle down. As for me ? Well I stuck to base camp after that episode.


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sprocket: .. No standards? Nooo problems!

UNCTUOUS

Carrying a heavy load into a confined area in triple canopy jungle, I touched down on about a 14-15 deg slope and sat there while the grunts, gunner and crewman off-loaded the cardboard boxes and stacked them on the upslope side, just outside the rotor disc. They were boxes of C4 plastique used by the troops to blow (implode) CS irrit-gas into an enemy base-camp bunker system so that it wouldn't be re-occupied. I handed over to Marty, the other pilot, for the ride back to the fire support base. He and I were both just starting to get a bit interested in why the UH-1H collective was up so far yet the aircraft wasn't lifting, when the downslope skid broke free from under a root and we started rolling rapidly into the hill-side. Marty and I both slammed the collective into the floor and off we went bouncing down the hill. At the same time I heard a torrent of abuse start over the radio but was far too busy to concentrate on what was being said. We eventually ground to a halt in the undergrowth and looked back up the hill. The rotor had taken the top layer of C4 boxes and slammed them off the pile and there were packets of plastique scattered all over the pad. The grunts had fled to the four winds and a grim-looking Major was striding down the hill abusing us on his radio as he came. Marty and I looked at each other and, in unison, pulled pitch and we shot through.

Late that same afternoon we returned, unfortunately with the same callsign, and tried the same 150ft vertical into the same LZ. We had a full load of 5 gal jerry-cans of water on board. However, as luck would have it, we'd spent the rest of the day in and out of a burnt LZ and picked up lots of ash. The best we could get out of it, fully beeped up, was about 38psi torque (&gt;50 being an overtorque). Each night the aircraft were given a bucketful of walnut shells to clean the compressor and recover the power but, at the time, we had to make do with what we had. Things were looking good until we dropped below the canopy and lost the 12kt headwind. After that we were going down fast with bleeding rotor and audio RPM warning flashing. Luckily the back end crew were on the ball and started kicking the jerrycans. Just as the first ones cleared the aircraft the same company Major started up his torrent of abuse over the radio. However strangely, as quickly as he started, he stopped. After getting rid of half the load the problem was resolved but the crewmen were enjoying themselves and ended up kicking the lot. As we pulled out, deciding to leave the backload for the next day's logistic support crew, the gunner piped up with: "Bulls-eye, that shut him up quick didn't it".

We later heard that the Major wasn't a happy chappie at all. About two weeks later the Intello came and grabbed us and told us that there was a Major who'd just come off ops looking for us both by name. Name-tags came off quick and next day we were Smith and Jones. Some people just have no sense of humour.