Originally Posted by
BigMike
"A surprising number of helicopters destroyed and/or pilots killed attempting to land on a dolly. Why take the risk?"
A fairly basic skill for a commercial utility pilot... You would have no hope landing on an exploration pad if you couldn't land on this dolly
Re: landing on dollies... Many years ago I used to fly an Enstrom which had previously been flown by a local ENG pilot. One day I'm at the airport and bump into a guy who says "hey, I flew in this helicopter with (the ENG pilot)". Yup, this was his ship.
"He showed me one of those autorotations". Um, ok...
"And we landed on that little platform with wheels". Yeah, that's called a dolly. Wait. Hang on a sec. Did the pilot use the engine to land on the dolly?
"No, he just did the autorotation thing onto the dolly". Ah, hmm, ok ( now not feeling quite so good about my autorotation skills )
I never met the ENG pilot in person, so never got to ask him if that was true, but he did have something like 12 engine failures over the years without putting a scratch on a machine, so maybe! In any case a fun story.