Originally Posted by
ShyTorque
hovering and shining the landing light on a courting couple's car and causing a "UFO" scare in the local rag, probably because of the Gazelle's unique sound.
Lol, reminds me of the time when I was first instructing in the 80s in an R22. None of our aircraft had attitude indicators, no gyros at all. We were returning to home base in the dark, following a highway when we encountered a very intense rainstorm... Between the rain and the darkness there was very little to see out the windshield. Certainly not enough to land anywhere except on the highway and risk getting hit by another vehicle. The only thing I could think of was to follow a car on the highway. The two taillights made a great little attitude cue.
Between the fear of losing sight of his taillights, and knowing that we would be flying under some approx 300 foot high electrical transmission lines, we left the landing light on and followed him at probably 100 feet above and 100 feet behind the car all the way home ( about 5 miles ). Any further away, we would have risked losing sight of his taillights.
I always wondered what he thought was following him that night...