Just another snippet prompted by the G-GINA AS350 parked on the north side of Shoreham Airport. Tommy Sopwith routinely parked his machine there close to the A 27 perhaps, but I'm posting just to note the sad closing of the Sussex Pad .. a pub that had been my home for a year circa 2001 after my March 2000 horror. Wally Pack's lovely old pub and restaurant now so sorely missed by the usual Shoreham brigade. Anyone know if its still possible to use the adjacent helipad? Dennis K.

Memory suggests Rowland Absolum did own Air Gregory and that Gay flew for it. Didn't they have a Lama at one time ?
I wonder where Gay is now??

Yes, Mr Absolom owned Air Gregory: no, not Lama, an Al II (nearly as good)
~ VFR

They had two Allouettes - G-AVEE and its replacement G-BBJE - there are pictures of these in this thread, including movie apparances in the 'Copter Kids'

With thanks to J.Eacott (Page 105-2095) The resident 'Hawkeye' squadron at Sharjah, TOS were not averse to venturing offshore, without water wings & despite being beyond autorotative distance of the shoreline. With the Scout having the autorotation characteristics of a 'brick built privy' this task was approached with some trepidation!





HMS Tartar (since sold to the Indonesian Navy).

Nice photos.
I just love the amount of "overwater gear" one is carrying!

Here is a photo of a Hiller 12E over Yukon, CA circa 1965. It was flown in support of Keno Hill Mine and operated by Klondike Helicopters.

Just reading the biography of the HAI chairman in 2004 Jim Church. When he worked for Bristows post Vietnam War, he got posted after the North Sea to the new Bristow ops in East Hartford flying Bell 212 for corporate customers.

Thee also mention of the likes of the Radio Corporation of America and Mack Trucke having the 212 for corporate use not sure if its implying they used Bristows for their corporate ops

Came across a photo of Mack Trucks Bell 212 below



Helispot : Photos : ID 3334 : Bell 212/UH1N Twin Huey : N12MT : Mack Trucks

Does anyone know of these two companies and thei flight ops department in the 70s and 80s?

Cheers

Here is one for you old Hiller buffs. This was taken on the very North coast of Alaska, near the Canadian border in the early 60's. None of the passengers liked the aircraft because at cruise speed the nose was so low they couldn't see forward. In fact, the pilot occasionally had to strain a little.

Mack Trucks established its flight in 1965 soon after the appointment of a proponent of business aviation, Zenon C.R. Hansen, as company President. The flight department was known as Bulldog Airlines (after the company logo) and each aircraft was named “Mack” with the addition of a number signifying its sequence in the fleet. Most of the Bulldog Airlines fleet was fixed wing (2x Beech 18, HS125, Volpar Turboliner, 2x Learjet, Falcon 20, Chieftan, Merlin).

The Rotary wing fleet in a little harder to identify and that is generally from the registrations utilized by Mack. Initially they used registrations N10~1B with the third digit ~ representing the fleet no, then later N~~MT with ~~ being the fleet number. Mack were known to have a JetRanger in addition to the Bell 212, but the rest of what follows is supposition based on the registrations. So we have: N10MT FH-1100, two Bell 212s both using N12MT, N14MT JetRanger, N14MT Gazelle (later became G-BKLS/G-TURP), N12MT S-76.

There are also N1041B & N16MT Bell 47s, and N16MT Robinson R22, but my suspicion is that they are probably not Mack, but quite a fleet all things considered.

There is also a Hiller YH-32-UH Hornet that was registered as N1041B, however very few of these were made for the US military and I don’t know enough about this type to know if they ended on the civil market, but I doubt it, so its unlikely to be a Mack aircraft.

Reports of its demise a few pages back were exaggerated.

Not quite ready to fly again but will be soon.

How good to see Enstrom G-BDKD looking so good in her new paint job and about to fly again. Just checked my log book to find I carried out her first ever Certificate of Airworthiness test flight as a new import at Shoreham Airport on 10th October 1975. I believe she was the first 28A model to arrive with the new 'vertical console' a la the later 280C 'Shark' models.

Trying to recall her sale but I'm pretty sure it was to that super Mini racer, Nick Cole who traded at Lydd Airport in those days as Business Air Travel. To me the 'Bad Dog' tag was never really appropriate for such a pretty design... I do remember demonstrating here to the Sussex Police later in October 75.

Regards to all Enstrom 28A fanciers! Dennis K.

OO-CWH SE3130 Alouette II for Sabena in Belgian congo many years ago installed blades

Savoia,

I have posted some GP archive in a 'British GP set' on: flickr.com/photos/1helicopterppl

please feel free to brouse & use any photo's here on Rotorheads if you wish

Hi Savoia.
Reg is VH-TXT , a 206B II (1769). Operator is Jayrow Helicopters. It was exported to New Zealand in December 1983 as ZK-HXT. The machine in the background appears to be VH-BLP a 206B III (2441) which crashed after an LTE incident at Lake Eildon in Victoria in March 1983.
Hope Ths Helps

Hi Savoia.
Reg is VH-TXT , a 206B II (1769). Operator is Jayrow Helicopters. It was exported to New Zealand in December 1983 as ZK-HXT. The machine in the background appears to be VH-BLP a 206B III (2441) which crashed after an LTE incident at Lake Eildon in Victoria in March 1983.
Hope This Helps

Hi Savoia,
a few details on the above.
Helicopter Utilities registered the machine (c/n.19) on 27.12.66.
On May 8th 1969 the aircraft was damaged in a botched auto-rotation practice at Towra Point,New South Wales.It was repaired and subsequently exported to Fiji as DQ-FBZ (as you indicated) on 15 February 1973. It was restored to the register on March 17th 1976. On February 10th 1977 it was again damaged in a landing accident at Hoxton Park, New South Wales when an excessive tail down attitude was adopted to wash off airspeed. It was subsequently struck off the Australian Civil Aircraft Register on December 16th 1977. It's current whereabouts are unknown.

Came across this pic in an article yesterday and thought it could be of interest.

Fashion designer Joe Famolare beside his Gazelle in the US c.1970's -



What do you suppose the white phone on the side of the instrument panel is for? Talking to the pilot?

Look up when "car phones" were first used in the USA.

I would say it is a real telephone. Maybe not so successful in flight though!



My first "mobile" looked like this one -

Reminds me of an aircraft at Air Hanson circa 1988. A crew room conversation amongst engineers resulted in one engineer stating that G-1234 looked good with it's new car phone.
Blanks looks from the avionics engineers followed by an exodus to look at this new device.

Turned out that the owner had just called in the local car phone company who had installed it with no mod(obviously) and more importantly had drilled holes in the structure
(and wiring!!!) wherever they felt like it.

Much fun and expense sorting out the mess