Days two and three of the show were non-eventful. Someone was asking for pics, but honestly there was nothing noteworthy to take pictures of! Bell did not bring a 525 or the new tilt-rotor thingee they're working on, Agusta did not bring a 609, Sikorsky did not bring the Raider. Not even models! Kaman had a little model of a Kmax but not the real thing. Airbus did have a 145 with the new five-blade rotor. They also had a little model of their X-3 compound helicopter. For a helicopter show, there sure weren't many helicopters! There were Blackhawks aplenty...firefighting ships, obviously (minus one). There was a (the?) Coulson-Unical CH-47. (The thing about taking pictures though...the lighting was terrible and there were always people in the way.)
I was talking casually with a guy at the Van Horn Aviation booth about the blades they make for the 206. I haven't flown a ship with the Van Horn blades yet, but both guys I was with had. The discussion was really interesting! The Van Horn blades really do change the flying qualities of the 206, and some pilots (ag pilots, particularly) sometimes have trouble adapting. Since we weren't customers per se, I didn't want to monopolize the guy's time. So I introduced myself as we departed. And he goes, "Nice to meet you, I'm Jim Van Horn." And I was, like, well it was one of those times that leave me momentarily speechless. The man himself! You never know who you're talking to at these conventions!
I got to spend some time with Chuck Aaron. He's hard to miss or mistake for someone else. Chuck provides an aerobatic course in the Bo105 now. He had his ship there. It has a tiger motif and the interior company that did it was always close by. letting visitors know that they did other aircraft besides Bo105s. Chuck is a cool guy, especially when you get him talking about his past, the days before Red Bull.
Finally, I also got to sit down for a while with Matt Zuccaro, who's been president of the HAI since 2005. I used to know Matty (as everyone called him back in the day) since the 1970s. He preceded me by almost a decade at a charter operator in New York called Island Helicopters. Then he went to the N.Y. Port Authority for a while...and then onward and upward some more, culminating in being president of the HAI in 2005. Most of his peers are long-since retired from flying. I'm a bit younger than he, so I remember the old days, and we got to reminiscing about the times and the people who've made up the industry over the years. Lordy, the things he's done! He's a humble guy, but he's quite an inspiration to pilots who aspire to one day do something more than just wiggle the sticks.
I grew up in NYC but left that market in 1984, so Matt and I haven't really interacted in a long, long time - and although we've met more than a few times, honestly we didn't know each other and weren't "friends." But it was good catching up with someone who was also there in the early 1970s, what was really the beginning of the whole civilian turbine helicopter industry. Kind of made me feel old. Him too, unfortunately.
I told him that I loved his "Land The Damn Helicopter!" program but didn't like the watered-down "Land and Live" version the HAI ultimately settled on. Here's where Matty got really animated - he's still passionate about it because pilots keep pushing weather when they really ought to just take advantage of the fact that we're in HELICOPTERS and can land anywhere (pretty much). We talked about just such an accident with an aircraft that was headed for this very show. He said another ship got caught by the weather and did put it down to wait. Next day they resumed their trip and made it to the show in time for the load-in.
Matt laughed when he said that when he does these "Land and Live" presentations, they always put out a selection of t-shirts and stuff with both the "Land The Damn Helicopter!" and "Land and Live" slogans. He said that he NEVER comes back with any "Land The Damn Helicopter!" stuff. It *all* goes. But they always end up with leftover "Land and Live" stuff. So you see which message makes the better impact. Says I, don't water crap down!
All in all it was an interesting show. I had debated on not going because conventions like these are really not for me. I'm not the target market for any of the stuff on display. In fact, when I went to look at one of these "firehawk" UH-60s, an eager salesman came over. "We're just looking," we said. "Oh, just looking? Never mind then," he said before literally brushing us off and quickly walking away. My friend and I were, like, damn!
Other than that...oh wait! I'll tell you my experience at the Bell exhibit in a later post ;-)