While you guys were dreaming about being helicopter pilots I was already working on Bell HTL-1s and had accumulated around 150 hours as flight mechanic along with a lot of stick time. A picture of the Bell that I worked on and flew in is on the helicopter history site under either Coast Guard or, Bell. Hopefully some kind soul that reads this post has the skills to lift the picture and put it on this post.
The helicopter in the picture crashed and killed the flight mechanic. The story I got was that the pilot had a heart attack and slumped over the controls. The mechanic could have landed the helicopter if the flight controls were free. It was on floats and when it hit it bounced and landed upside-down. My age? I turned 70 last December and I still work on helicopters but in an engineering capacity.
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The Cat
[This message has been edited by Heliport (edited 08 April 2001).]