Jonasraf
9th Nov 2002, 12:45
Does anyone know anything about the helicopters that are used in the WRC (world rally championship). Are they owned by the teams or do the teams hire them in each country they go to?
And how much do they use them?
This is only for my curiousity, I fly helicopters and I watch rally.
ppheli
10th Nov 2002, 17:56
About 50/50. Some teams have helicopters eg. Prodrive currently leasing an AS350B2 having sold their B3 and not yet taken delivery of their EC135T2. They often lease a second one in too for this event. Malcolm Wilson has the Koala too (reg rather appropriately I-RALY....). Then there are drivers who have their own, like Marcus Dodd with his MD600, Colin McRae with his EC120 and his brother an R44. Some of them have jets too - McRae and Prodrove both have CitationJets, Dodd has a Piper Meridian.
There were approx 25 different helicopters used last year, from what I could work out, plus at least three fixed wings for radio relay work between the cars and their team bases.
When the events are outside Europe, then it's a matter of leasing in, but certainly the ones outlined above seem to go all over Europe
discobeast
10th Nov 2002, 18:33
like ppheli said, when overseas they lease the local heli's to do work for them. for the kenya-leg, they get most of their machines from south-africa. and the whole mission flying up to nairobi is an amazing trip. i was at the rally over here in NZ and the amount of machines in the sky was just awesome. there was about 20 in the air on day one of the rally. kennith erikson just got his ppl (h) over here. nice guy. a friend of mine did his ground-school instruction.