Resurrecting the thread, but hopefully the collective feels it's worth it.
Originally Posted by
Two's in
3 Regt AAC were on a major FTX on Germany around 1987-88 and had been selected for a visit by about 200 Warsaw Pact bods from the Arms Proliferation Team...
A similar sort of incident, one which I wasn't at but two friends were:
Hughes 500 at a New Zealand airshow giving a spirited display of live deer capture, deer portrayed none-too-convincingly by a 44gal drum towed by a quad bike. Very sharp manouevring by the 500 at very low level (including a quickstop where it almost looks like the tailskid touched the grass every so slightly) chasing the drum up and down the crowdline. After the netguns - one skid-mounted, one held by the shooter - had blatted onto the vicious drum the chopper pulled up close and the shooter stepped off the skid to "restrain" the target. Pilot obligingly backs off to give shooter more room, perhaps forgetting he's not on a hillside and has less clearance than he was expecting...tail feathers and tail rotor fly away, a couple of pirouettes and the world is one 500 poorer. Shooter stands back up wondering what just happened!
As seen in the first video below (uploaded by yours truly, watched endlessly as a child) there were no injuries worse than a couple of scratches on the PIC.
https://youtu.be/U8U6qUEoscc
Another angle:
https://youtu.be/ATkwlYN-aIo