PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - "Wealthy businessman attacked a helicopter"
Old 8th Aug 2010, 14:42
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mfriskel
 
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: USA
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Jafari was obviously a nutbag. Was the chicken bones some kind of a voodoo curse?
What the folks here who want to remain professional pilots need to get out of this is something quit different. Helicopter pilots are our own worse enemy. If you look at the pictures that were taken, the pilot landed in a quite large "garden" of an English mansion. There was a lot of room, and this guy chose to land close to the parked vehicles when he could have landed just a wee bit further and not peppered the guy's vehicles with debris. This hapens more than it should. More car glass and paint gets damaged by helicopters than you can imagine, and most of it is because the pilot chose poorly. Remember that most folks on the ground don't spend their days thinking about the effects of rotorwash, but helicopter pilots should think about that. I have seen many a pilot, military and civil, who have no regard for their rotorwash at airports or anywhere else. I have seen aircraft damaged or just turned in their parking spots by a pilot who chose to hover at a high hover by them instead of either getting as close to the ground (minumum power) as they could, or air-taxi past to land in a clear area.
We cause our own troubles, from damaging property to creating a nuissance with our noise or just scaring people, and that makes a bad name for all of us. It also gets local legislation made against helicopter operations.
Always respect your rotorwash, be mindful of the noise your machine produces, and if you like screwing around as much as I do, be smart and don't do it were you will piss people off!

Another thing to remember is- we spend a lot of time thinking about the spinning parts of our machinery and all the other aspects of helicopter flight. Most people on the ground don't give any of that a thought, and are therefore oblivious to the hazards. It is part of our responsibility when we bring our machinary somewhere to take due precautions to protect ourselves and the oblivious folks around us. Sometimes this is impossible because there are a lot of people out there who are more stupid than we can imagine- but we still must take due precaution. I flew HEMS in Qatar, and you just can't imagine what people might do- even with police standing by or medical crew marshalling bystanders till the rotors stop or start. The public can find ways to bypass your best plans and defences.

Mark
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