Not quite the war-story of the longer toothed members, but still makes me chuckle and there may be ppruners who were lucky enough to witness.
Passed my CPL(H) the day before and was invited by the Chief Pilot to fly the H300 demo aircraft to a safety seminar that I was attending with him - great effort the fellas at Air Work, Caboolture.
Feeling a little green but enormously eager to impress I jumped at the chance (free hours !!) even though I'd spent the final 30 odd hours of CPL(H) in a Bell47 and was a little out of practice on the 300.
Clean startup, one of my best departures (correct direction !), good radio calls, nice approach to centre of dest. airfield and smooth steady hover taxi to the hangar at the far end.
In front of a crowd of approx. 50 attendees I came to a nice 5' hover ready for landing ... nerves starting to build with the audience but never mind I'm a CPL(H) now !! I CAN do this.
Words of FI(H) in my head .... "keep your eyes outside the aircraft!!" ... lowered the lever, down we came then ... BOING ... straight back up to the 5' hover ... damn the H300 being slightly further off the ground than the B47 !!!
<click> ... "Nice landing [name removed to protect the guilty]" ... <click> came the immediate repsonse with only the slightest hint of sarcasm.
Needless to say my second landing in as many minutes had a little more polish, but I learnt a valuable lesson from it !! Never fly with your CP if you're planning to co*k it up and can avoid taking them, and we only ever make mistakes when there's an audience !!
FO