PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Hours building: Questions, Ideas, Advice, Countries etc
Old 15th Sep 2005, 21:17
  #243 (permalink)  
highfinal
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: USA
Age: 47
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Boatpix

Hi Hemac,

No personal experience of them myself, but I do know several people who have hour built R-22 time with them. They are based out of Ft Lauderdale in south central Florida, and they have marketed themselves as the people to go to if you need pictures taken of any kind of boating activity (races, regattas, for sale, etc). The clever bit is getting low time pilots to pay them to do this commercial work for them, in the region of $100 ph.

However, as a caveat, note that these ops include flying up to 10-12 nm offshore in a robbie, your safety gear is just a lifejacket, and lots of the photo angles will place you only a few feet above the water - go look at the front of a yachting mag to get the idea. Have also heard rumours that their maintenance is not quite what it should be, and know for certain that they have used student pilots, under the aegis of instruction, to fly these ops while their instructor takes the photos.

One the positive side, it's supposed to be a lot of fun, and I've heard they often need more hours to be flown than paid for.

Back to the old adage - you pays your money, you takes your choice!

www.boatpix.com
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