10,000 Hours!

[Focha]

Congrats. I am still unborn. I have 144 hours of CPL/IR. I am sure of one thing... 300 hours will be a milestone for me if I ever get the change of doing that. But I guess that when you reach 300, you want 500, and when you reach that you want 1000. 10k! Congratulations Bladestrike. I hope one day to celebrate my 10k and if everything permits it to be accident free like yours 10k. My wish for you, is that you can celebrate your 20k accident free in the future.

Fly safe. Regards.

[Davey Emcee]

What type is that on ??

[Thomas coupling]

Congrats Bladestrike: a good innings.
For my own curiosity how many of those hours would you genuinely say were "quality" hours. That is to say those involving the physical flying of the machine other than autopilot and or route flying?

[lelebebbel]

How about some statistics for your 10,000hrs?

like, number aircraft types flown, or countries flown in... number of helicopter parts fallen off... birdstrikes.... engine failures... famous people carried, etc

[Bladestrike]

Well, wood bladed Bell 47s to start, then metal bladed turbo-charged 3b-2s, in Northern Ontario, Moose Surveys and what-not. Had an engine quit my first year but got it restarted before terra-firma. Then gravitated to Jetrangers, a few thousand hours on A/B/L/L1/L4 etc towing birds, moving drills, bucketing, wildlife surveys, you name it, tent camps for months in the high North, no schedule whatsoever. There's soome Hughes 500 and 205 thrown in there as well. Quite abit of longline, setting communication towers and the like in the mountains of Northern Quebec (the "Out-West" fold scoff at Quebec mountains but there are big rocks!). Then got my IFR and took over a EMS 222A base in Northern Ontario, Base Manager, wrote the manuals and did all the training for the type for the company, some 1600 hours there. Then flew Bandage One, Toronto's EMS S76 for two years (I guess most of that was Kenora actually, but Toronto was the fun stuff, only one bird had the autopilot so the vast majority of that was hand-flown), then got on S61's on Canada's East Coast and Azerbaijan, some 3000 hours on those beasts, no autopilots in those and lots of real in the clag time, mins approaches in 80 knot quartering headwinds,etc., lost a can in an unforecast 1/8 vis snowstorm longlining in Gross Morne national park, that was scary...ran it on an invisible runway bordered by mountains with a 45 knot tailwind, then gravitated to Pumas, some 2000 hours there, all out of Halifax, but I run the Norway sim a half dozen times a year for our crews as well. There's tons of odds and ends like tail-rotor gearbox chips, and two autos to the ground (one in the hover), loss of oil, engines fires, etc but haven't managed to prang one yet despite my best efforts! I'd say most of that is hand flown quality hours.

I'd tell more but I'll be late for my morning flight!

[Thomas coupling]

Yeah...but apart from that..........

[malabo]

Jeez, 10,000 hrs of that without an accident? Kudos and congratulations. Especially like your outlook that an autorotation is not an accident if it ends successfully . Thought maybe you were one of those white-shirt North Sea guys that drives a Class 1 bus from the time they get their license until they retire. Your flying experience is why I like Canada, sounds like you've had a fun run.

[griffothefog]

Sincere congratulations..

I passed that waypoint 2 years ago and it would have come a lot sooner if it had not been for 12 years of ems/police ops.

Although the flying I do now can be a bit scary, I think the first 1000 hours (mainly spraying and bucket) were the most "ball shrinking" of the total

Nowdays if I don't like it I can just say NO..

[TipCap]

Many Congrats on the milestone, Bladestrike and I hope you have many to come.

I wont tell you how many hours I got as I retired after 45 years of flying because hours are only a number.

Its the love of the job that is important and you seems to have that. Keep flying safely

Hey Malabo, I don't know when they last wore white shirts in the North Sea. Oh maybe, I do. We wore them up to 1977 until one of my mates went for a swim off Aberdeen

Best wishes

John

[TorqueOfTheDevil]

Is that 10,000 hrs night?

Seriously though, many congrats both on the hours and in particular on skilfully keeping everything sunny side up when the chips were down...