The "Box" attached to the 407's skids is called a Ski Basket. It is used to carry all manner of cargo, including Skiis, as a lot of our winter business is flying skiers. We leave it on all year round to increase the cargo capacity of the aircraft. There is a fair amount of drag with that out in the airflow, but we still can maintain a cruise speed into the high 120 Kt's.
Pictured is our older model basket, the current one is a bit larger !
Here's a Private Group out Skiing with the 407. The have just arrived at the bottom after a 3,000' descent.
And a couple of shots of some Class D fixed line rescue. We use a 2 hook system, a second hook is installed beside the aircraft's cargo hook, and a HYD line is run external to a release on the co-pilot seat. This staging area was located at 9,000'.
This particular rescue (previously shown on Page 11) happened at 9,500' across the Valley from staging.
