500: Love them or loathe them .. the Kiwis and their deer hunting escapades of the 70's and 80's have written themselves into (let's be generous and say .. ) a fascinating chapter of Hughes history.
I first saw your video clip in the late 80's in Papua New Guinea as part of a set of VHS tapes which had been brought in by a rabble of Kiwi drivers who I happened to be sharing a crew house with. At one point (and for several months) there were
only Kiwis to be found at the house .. with not a normal human being in sight!
One of the rituals of the non-domestic rotary-flying Kiwi of the 1980's was that it had to watch and re-watch .. for hours on end .. video footage of Hughes 500's engaged in live deer capture. The flock of Kiwis I was temporarily domiciled with had a collecion of about 8-10 videos which were watched almost every evening with ritualistic fervour once everyone had drained away from the local Aero Club. From there it was back to the house and on with the videos .. beer in hand.
Despite the fact that every one of these Kiwis knew every frame of the video, this did not prevent them from cheering the hunting crews as they pursued their spoor and, as the beer flowed, so their encouragements became the more fevered and, after some time one could be 'treated' to immitation deer noises which, so I was told, were impressively authentic!
The chief protagonist in these tribal antics was a dear chap called 'Rusty' - a lovebale character and a pilot of the first water.
Memorable days indeed!
Rotorwork Hughes 500D P2-AHP at Rotorwork's Mount Hagen base in Papua New Guinea in 1988
Here Rusty is telling Mike to level his cyclic by referencing the tip path plane in relation to the T-tail in order to make sure that the 500's disk was level. Rusty has this 'thing' about drivers who didn't keep the disk level while on the ground and would literally run over and talk to a pilot if he saw the disk at an angle!
Some Kiwi nostalgia ..
Hughes 500D ZK-HNR at Foxton beach en-route Inglewood in New Zealand's North Island in 1985
The late Dennis Eggerton (helmeted) with Dave Kershaw while Alfie Speights loads the 500.