Someone mentioned Belfast.
Reminded me of “Number 32 of 101 things to do in a helicopter”
…. At 1500ft over the City it was important to keep your morale up when sent up for the umpteenth time that week on surveillance work. There was nothing to do but hover.
In one spot.
For a long time.
After flying to collect an "observer" you would fly over the City and stop where you were told by that person sitting beside you.
The civilian clad but heavily armed, operative sitting beside you would then start eyeballing something through high-powered gyro-stabilised binos. They had their own comms that the pilot could not monitor. You had no idea what they were looking for. All the pilot had to do was maintain position.
If you were lucky the operative was female.
So now the added challenge was to fly the helicopter without using your left hand!
The Gazelle you were flying was quite basic; no stabilisation, no stick trim.
The trick was to gently position the helicopter so that the observer ended up twisted hard to the left in order to observe. That way she was facing completely away from you.
After a bit of practice it became possible to almost “balance” the Gazelle using the tiniest movements on the cyclic to instantly correct for any immediate movement up or down showing on the VSI. A little headwind wind helped and the heading control had to be held nailed.
This meant that your left hand became “available”. The collective friction was set just enough to hold the lever where it was. It was possible then to move your hand away from the collective and towards……..the right thigh of the female observer!
The tension was great. First, the helicopter was at very low speed and at high power; an engine failure meant instantaneous recovery of your left hand to the collective (or die). The engine failure also meant an always very exciting auto entry from the hover and finally it would ultimately result in a sporty landing into somewhere quite tight in the City where people (then) weren’t all friendly.
Secondly though and perhaps even more seriously, what would happen if you didn’t just hover your hand an inch over the female operators thigh but accidentally touched it? What would the reaction be?
She had a Heckler-Koch and 300 rounds.
Just how long could you hold your hand an inch above her leg and hold the machine steady at the same time? Oh, the tension!
Sad days a long time ago.
