T/R crash
Just a short note ref Hollywood and featured helicopters ... in 2001 I flew one of the MD500s (littlebirds) for a short while while making Scott Free's production of Black Hawk Down.
It probably isn't generally known that the number one story ship pilot on that shoot in Morocco was the super American film pilot Bob Zee. (can't pronounce his full name!) While holding a 175 feet hover above Bob's MD500 below with the camera ship filming above us both, a group of local kids brought in a large catapult made up from a strip of car inner tube. They managed to launch a piece of rock at Bob's 500 while I held station above.
The rock removed Bob's T/R assembly but being the pilot he is. Bob stuffed the heli down towards the sand and pulled off a 100% non damaging landing ... if probably a tad on the 'hard' side. With the kids rounded up I landed alongside, where an engineer borrowed my T/R so Bob could fly out and back to the film base at Sale. Then with the T/R switch repeated for me, both machines were recovered safely back to base.
More on request. Dennis Kenyon.