Don't you just love hard and fast simple rules?
Hard and fast rules are really for the "simple" among us.
Perhaps it is the advantage of an education learned flying in the Bush....not some farmers corn field but "Bush" meaning it is you, the aircraft, a few drums of fuel, a hand pump, and bung wrench. (scratch the bung wrench....it always seems to get left behind at the Base Camp), allows one to experience the wonders of thumbing a virtual finger at the "baby sitter" mentality of modern aviation. (particularly in the UK).
No 200 foot longlines, no one skid touching passenger drops, no cruising at naught feet in a hover looking for a way down off a mountain, no cargo carrying by only eye balling the load, heck...I even had some guys that would climb down a tree if need be. I pity the folks that think themselves real helicopter pilots who have never hand pumped fuel, rolled fuel drums, rigged and hooked up their own sling loads, or changed a part without an engineer. You have not lived until you walk up a mountain lugging a new battery to find the helicopter starting on the first try on the old battery.
I would imagine the mustering bunch in Oz have done much of the same as well as the bush pilots working out in the middle of no where.
Have you ever drawn your own maps because there were none to be had as they had not been done by any government?
Ever fly for a solid week and never get within radio range of an ATC unit....over three countries?
All the rules are fine and dandy....but none of them beat plain old common sense. Risks taken haphazardly will kill you.....risks taken with due care and circumpsection may but at least it was despite of using your good sense to minimize the risks.
Blind obedience to the rules will shorten your career quicker than taking a calculated risk every now and then and knowing when to set on the porch and drink beer vice going flying.
Landing on trucks has been a common event for decades and I know not of a single aircraft damaged or a pilot or a crewmember being hurt as a result.
One guy's opinon......