Good frosty morning ,
As was yesterday, not exaclty gin clear but nearly, so combining business with pleasure I accompanied my pal in his Gazelle to view a site we are doing work on in the lake district, after a very cold on site meeting with the architect we ajourned to that well known hostlery of the Swan at Newby Bridge( which has a paddock able to support many helicopters plus windsock and fire equipment on standby, we had a nice snack and a couple of warming drinks of coffee, needing fuel it was decided to lift to EGNH to fuel up then back home.
All on board the heli, power on rotors running, nill wind conditions and a few degrees of frost indicated, seconds from lift to the hover, and whoosh! at a height of around 80/100ft we were supprised by a low winged single engine white aircraft, so low was this A/c we in the Gaz(three pilots) actually though the guy was in trouble for he decended even lower after clearing the trees, this jerk was on a beat up of the entrance to Lake windermere, but alarmingly I dont think he knew of the Heli park at the Swan or even saw the rotors running Gazelle, the P1 was going to implement a towering take of, but aborted that idea and used a conventional type so as to expose as much heli to others viz at the crital time, once airborne we were all on the lookout for this rogue A/c and finally picked him up in the Winster Valley still down at about 100/150 ft, despite the best attempts of three pilots on board looking out, because of the low height this A/c was flying at we had no chance to pick him up at the initial take off point,
Just imagine what you could all now be reading!
