Originally Posted by
megan
albatross, interesting story, one question, what was the aim of the task, some sort of survey work?
Yes basically you were a very tall stadia rod. Pre GPS.
For example if you were cutting a base line for a power line and the next turning point was miles away you set up the laser on the turning point and climbed until the surveyor could see you. You then hovered there until he “took the shot, later on we mounted reflectors on the cowling front and sides so he could get a laser range too. .
The surveyor now could direct the line cutters on the correct path.
In hilly terrain that could be 3000 feet or more. I think the highest shot I did was 7000+, at that height the laser “dot” filled just about the entire screen.
If the laser was set up in soft ground you had to tell people near it not to walk around as it could cause the tripod to move which caused the stabilization to kick in and the dot would move in the screen causing you to think the helicopter was moving and make a correction.
If you lost the dot you had to descend well away from the beam as you didn’t want to be looking down and accidentally look into a 10 amp laser beam.
You tried not to use pedal much and soon discovered that ( into Wind ) a little collective up moved you forward and down moved you back so you used that a bit. The whole thing was muscle memory and constant practice was required which the client paid for.
It was common to turn slowly as you climbed and discover when you had a chance to look around that you had turned 60 degrees or more.
You could encounter rapid changes in winds aloft as you climbed at +- 1000 fpm and be blown “off the spot”. So you would, on your next attempt, slow your rate of climb to transition more slowly coming through the area of change.
Coming down after the shot we would just lay it on its side and peg the VSI.
It was a fun job. Great crews to work with.