overpitched:
Something I've always wondered whilst batting ideas back and forward with people on this forum is...... PPF is there just the one of you ar are there in fact 2 of you using the same log on?
Well it must seem so, I guess. As I've stated before, I've been in this business for a long, long time. I have definitely made my share of mistakes. But somehow...miraculously?...I am still around, plugging away, not dead yet.
It's tempting to form mental pictures of people. We read some of the things they write and we think we've got them figured out. We come off pretty two-dimensionally in the printed word. Most of us are not Dickens or Hemingway, and these posts cannot convey a real sense of who we are. But we are all so much more than we present to the world here. At least, one would hope so.
I don't enjoy intentionally pissing people off, but on the other hand I don't care if I do. Whirls (both of you), I apologize if we have crossed swords in the past. But by dint of simply sticking around and not going away you two have shown your mettle and I respect that. Okay, I admit to having a short fuse; it's just that I loathe the foolish. I simply cannot tolerate those without common sense. For instance!
1) Guy comes on here, talking about the hairy, heroic 180 auto he pulled off after a power problem on takeoff in his R-44. Everyone cheers his magnificent demonstration of airmanship and skill. Only...wait. It turns out that he was taking off from an
airport! for cryin' out loud. He departed from the very upwind end, over some trees (or other area with no good forced-landing area) and his only option was that hairy, heroic 180 auto back to the
airport. If he had possessed the common sense that God gave a flea, he simply would have back-taxiied and given himself some extra margin of error/safety. But no.
2) Another guy comes on here, bitching indignantly about a farmer who fired a missile at his helicopter as he was on approach to an airport (
another airport...Jeez!). The fellow as all angry, and expected us to be, that this farmer's cap (okay, so it wasn't a Shrike) could have gotten into his tail rotor and caused mayhem. (Was he
that low??) Turns out that the airport in question is horribly noise-sensitive and is posted as such. And the Bell 47 in question was making a standard approach to the threshhold of the runway, of which there is an adjacent chicken farm (hence the noise-sensitivity of the place). A Bell 47 dragging in on a shallow approach at 50 mph or so and 3100 rpm makes an awful racket for a long time (certainly longer and louder than an airplane whistling in at idle/approach power). Anyone with an ounce of common sense would have made a steeper approach or tried to avoid flying right over the chicken coops altogether. But no.
These are the things that make me go ballistic...pilots doing dumb-**** things and then expecting the rest of us who know better to sympathize or support them. Oh yeah! Not.
Flying helicopters is much more than pushing the little sticks around and following procedures set forth in the Basic Helicopter Handbook or whatever. That guy Hawg/Hog/Hawk found this out the hard way! Flying helicopters involves constant thinking. And thinking ahead. I am constantly amazed and frustrated when I fly with other pilots who have absolutely zero conscious thought of their next landing until it comes time to actually make it. No forethought or planning whatsoever. Not to mention guys who don't plan their takeoffs properly! It just sets me off. And I get...well, "testy" would be a good word.
There is a guy at our base who likes to hover sideways and make banked hover turns. He must think it's fun. And maybe it is, although it's been so long since I've performed such bonehead maneuvres that I literally probably could not even bring myself to do them now. "You're going to crash the ship," I tell him. "Maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow, but some day that **** is going to bite you. And I hope you're good enough to pull a rabbit out of your arse, because you're going to need a trick like that to save it." Not to mention the bad example it sets for other pilots who might see him. No common sense. (Needless to say, he knows better than to do that stuff when I'm aboard.)
Experience can be gained simply by sitting in the helicopter and flying. Judgement and common sense cannot be taught though. And it is my sad observation that a lot of helicopter pilots don't have a lot of either.