Just reading the title of this thread cracked me up!! I spent 8 years logging/fighting fire underneath helicopters in BC Canada in everything from 206, A-Star, 500, K-Max,61, KA 32, 107's etc. Especially in the rain or with thunderheads nearby it got really bad. Sometimes under the bigger machines, a perfectly delivered hook would arc at you from 6 or more feet! would put you on your knees sometimes. Turned out in that kind of crazy work it was a right of passage...when the machine costs so much, you better hook up asap!
With experience you would find that sometimes the 5-6 foot chain dangling from the bottom of the hook would fall/rip off throught the timber...you would learn to set yourself up in or nearby a bush and let it hit that first and then quick as a bunny lunge toward the hook. Sadly not even that worked all the time. It got really funny with the rookies when they got their first arc...they would arc out and then pull back, only to let the hook charge up again and BAM. repeat as necessary LOL.
You knew it was really bad if you were in blowing snow and you could sometimes not see the helicopter 1/2 a klick away but you knew where he was cause of the blue arc nailing the guy on the ground!!! Show's up really well in the snow.
Last but not least try this...often when breaking in a new hooktender and finally letting him at the hook we would wait untill a good wet rainstorm. We would set him up high and in the open on a big stump with a handfull of steel chokers in his hand.
Being the keener he usually was (including yours truly) he would slam those chokers towards the hook only to get blown off his feet by the charge. It was funny back then. The saying always went "Real Men Take the Arc!"
Those times have since past and I being a responsible pilot towards my customers, always remind them of the tricks I learned then cause boy o boy do they get pissed when they get a kick! I'll put it on the ground too sometimes, especially when it's really dry, or really snowy.
Customer relations and all that
BWB