Yea....I am not very experienced....never done the crash thing....or even a chargeable incident.....guess I still have something to learn yet....but alas....I retired before I got to that chapter of the book.
Hand cranked S-55.....oh my...that brings back memories of Iron Machines and Iron Men! I hate to admit it....but they were still in service when I was a nubbin learning my trade at Rucker.
Used to watch them trundle off down the heliport at Hanchey and disappear out of sight at the end to the south.....and finally re-appear way off in the distance still below takeoff elevation....blades looking like they were going to clap hands. That was with one instructor, two students, a bag of gas....and a verbal message for cargo.
A few rides with a Maintenance Test Pilot convinced me there was a reason I had picked Chinooks for my ride of choice. Almost two years later....the Oklahoma National Guard was still flying them operationally.....that would be 1970 as I recall.
Bristow attempted to lure me into doing a Whirlwind Conversion but Jack Trigg ran out of Beer money before he could get me drunk enough to agree to do so.
Good thing probably or I would have found myself off to Nigeria twenty years earlier than i wound up going.
Now FH.....when you start talking about real Sikorsky Iron....the old Moe JV (S-56 or CH-37 Mojave) to the unwashed....now that was a horse sure enough. Two really really big Pratt & Whitney Round Many Pistoned engines....drum of lube oil in the cabin....ladder up into the cockpit....now that was a Man's machine.
Igor builds helicopters!