That's too funny!!:}:}

Griffo, Re post #14

Funny how we end up laughing like lunatics when the sh*t hits the fan. Quite a few years ago ended up, upside down in the Artic in a 500E, one blade half way through the door, the rest f*cked off like a frag grenade into the wild white yonder, and a winter storm brewing and this is in april -40c and its getting dark. Well after getting outta there in olympic sprinter pace, and sitting on the survival kit and winter parka that I managed to extract, lit a smoke and started laughing, like I never have before.....:ok:

But wait theres more......:O....trying to get outta dodge, (remote drill camp) this Xmas, weather bad all week leading to holidays, drillers bailed, cook bailed ya di ya......me and maybe 4 guys left. Eventually released on 23 dec.....Mmmm thinks I, this gonna be interesting, home for xmas?. To cut a long story short, w/x marginal, but doable....until I get 44NM from destination....f#ck me a wall of freezing rain. What can ya do, only place to go.... a swamp, this is at 1300local. Spent the next 18hrs sleeping in 3xsleeping bags on back seat of a B2 (least you can lay out,good ole eurocopter). The funny thing if there was one, is I was parked on the Northern route for all the trans atlantic flights, also domestic, so spent the night listening to Joe Public at FL36 munching on peanuts and drinking beers going home for the hols.....how I laughed, all night, what else ya gonna do?....:{ Oh and it was me 50th birthday xmas day.....:ugh:Merry Xmas Mr F#ucking Lawrence thinks I and laugh even more.......:D

Climbing to the top of a morning glory roll cloud, sitting on top of it (about 3500) and doing pedal turns right down the face of it to the base about 100 ft agl and then turning and heading straight back under the dead flat base with the rotor brushing through the cloud mist at cruise speed.
The most beautiful sight I 've seen.

Flying in an R22 three-ship as safety pilot with Japanese pilots from Long Beach to Oakland routing up the Pacific Coast Highway. And then convincing them that it was OK to fly under the Golden Gate Bridge as it was too foggy to get over it.

Got a great picture of Katsu framed against the underside of the bridge giggling like a schoolgirl. It was some while later that I learned that "inappropriate laughing" is a classic sign of stress...

Slightly odd one, but the first time I was bored flying a helicopter back from a job because I knew I was really was a paid professional then.

Favourite Moment

Every time I lift it up to the hover and it stays exactly where it's supposed to!!

Heliski,

That would be phase 5 auto hover then??? :ok:

One of many!
 

AAAH Griff me old. I remember it well. Top marks to you M8 for getting her down. :ok: Strange how it takes you though! I remember bursting out laughing when I looked back at what was left of '04'! :O

ANYWAY! I digress............

Best moment, only because we could, and did, was having a competition to see who could do the longest run-on in a Scout AH1 on the ice field in King Edward bay Sth Georgia with thousands of penguins looking on thinking 'WTF are those two up to?' :D

If memory serves - we beat you Stefanovitch! :ok:

Griffo...funny man!!

Still prefer doing it by hand........needs must, you know!! :)

Yaaaahooo!
 

Flyin' over London down the Thames in an R44-sitting in the co-pilot's seat-spectacular view of our Capital, beautiful cloudscape and smooth flight! Huge thanks to ebg heli. & pilot Matt:)

3 years ago, flying a missing persons search in a jetranger. The guy was found barely conscious, being "hungry" he ate a lot of sleeping pills. I was asked for a 3' transport to the hospital helipad as it was rush hour, there was no way ambulance would get there in time. Requested a body search on it, placed it on the back seat with my technician and off we went. After disembarking the "passenger" we both knew we did something good and prepared our behinds for some serious arse kicking by our superiors.

A big thanks came the next day when we learned actually saved the mans life in time-critical situation. The message was hung on the bulletin board for about 2 hours before it got "lost" but we knew we did the right thing.

Heli Trip
 

flying my dad and brother from connecticut to the virgin islands and back. 5,000 miles, 500 ft, 50 hrs, 5 countries, pictures can be seen on my gallery. photos on the second row. MobileMe Gallery

Top of a Torque Turn BO105
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/_6...0/Chimneys.jpg

Landing at Sharrow Bay hotel in the lake district after a short trip from London, looking across Windermere, a nice chap there with a Range Rover to take me to the front door and thinking "this is the life...."

Lafite

Tooling across the Torres Strait in a Huey on the way from Australia to PNG with a broken deck of stratus not low enough to be a problem, but just there to scrape the mast through now and then; nice cool jazz coming through on the HF courtesy of Radio Australia, going pretty much in a straight line but sometimes lapsing into a kind of meandering waffle to scrape the underside of the clouds (trading a little bit of kinetic energy for potential and back again as the mood struck) - maybe 25 years ago now...

Favorite moment
 

1982 brand new 412, still had the new car smell- just dropped off a load of tourists at a climbing hut at 7000 feet in the Selkirk mountain range (central British Columbia). Returning to the ski lodge for the night, dialed in to some tunes from a Calgary radio station and descending at VNE- smooth as silk and like so many say-WOW!:ok: and getting paid to boot.......

Whoateallthepies


ANO, on which all UK PAOC ops are based, says

"Aerobatic manoeuvres...
15 An aircraft shall not carry out any aerobatic manoeuvre:
(a) over the congested area of any city, town or settlement;..."


So does a torque turn at low level over a housing estate not count as an aerobatic manouevre?

Favourite moment
 

Realising that we had made a safe EOL, (for real), with no injuries and minimum damage after an engine failure at 700' over primary jungle, we found a small clearing!

Seeing really HUGE grins on the grimy faces of some infantrymen who were quite happy to be somewhere else than where they were a very few moments before! (Probably mirrored by my own as I was very...very..very glad to be anywhere but where we picked them up!)

Spot-on, SAS. Nothing like an appreciative load.

I get to know something approaching that feeling every three weeks when I get back in to Aberdeen

fkelly
Lighten up son!
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/_6...LMHHG8/pie.jpg

Why should I lighten up? We've just had a long and heated debate about individuals performing questionable manouevres; here we have a public service aircraft being handled in a way and over an area that many would consider questionable. If a traffic patrol turned up at the same housing estate and started performing donuts would you have the same response?

Lighten up? Nah....just shut up!

.
Fr Kelly: Helicopter crews are a fraternity who look out for each other. They are also permitted certain expressions of freedom - seen as a necessary part of maintaining balance in what, at times, can be a most stressful occupation ;) or were you never taught these things!

I imagine the residents would find it highly amusing - it could even endear the police to some who might otherwise have viewed them as unapproachable!

Sav

Torque turn, yeah SOP for getting going back where you've just come from, real quick like.

Back on thread, a couple of standouts.

Coming to a stop with a couple of feet of skids sticking over the edge of a ten foot drop with father in law on board on a 3B1 after a freewheel slip at fifty feet just starting to approach translation downwind. Tried twice to re-engage the blessed thing on the way down and what happens on the ground, you guessed it, re-engaged like nothing was wrong.

Coming to a stop in amongst a big heap of large rocks without a scratch after the damper clamps on a G5 completey and suddenly departed company with the mast. Talk about twitchy, I could only just steer it straight and held the breath for quite some time after coming to a sliding stop, sitting at 3200 locked on the controls and repeating to myself, good boy ----, good boy ----. Almost went upside down 2 or 3 times.

Getting my old man to take off and hover a G5, after an hour and his abscense from a flying machine of any sort for 30 years, the last of which had been P51's in Japan. Following on the family theme signing out my son on mustering and then doing double musters with him. Not too many have done that.

At dusk, in a 105, watching the moon's reflection follow me from stretch to stretch of water over the bogs south of Clifden (west of Ireland). The moon appeared to dive underground and resurface and remained in my memory well after all the beautiful sunrises Her Majesty invited me to witness in various parts of the world had faded.
Skill-wise the one perfect landing in 30,000 plus I do remember - I think!

whoateallthepies,

What torque turn? You have been playing with "Photoshop" and "Google Earth" again haven't you. C'mon fess up.:O

fkelly - it depends on whether it was over his girlfriends house or not. If it was then perfectly acceptable.

AAC display team, Earls Court 1982 in the back of the static display Scout with a non-too-bright Essex girl when the crowds had left. I promised her that she was now a member of the mile-high club.

On my own, out over the Irish Sea at 2am, low level, on goggles, gin clear night, watching the Northern Lights perform, heading home to Scotland for sex (yeah ok, the last bit was ambitious but the rest was fantastic). Thank you to Her Majesty for moments like that.

Tam

The take off run with an empty offshore helicopter from our home base, commanded by a real gentleman with a twisted sense of humour and me in the copilot seat, and us both independent of each other starting to hum "ride of the valkyries" the moment we hit Vtoss.

fkelly - Who says it was flown under a PAOC? And you are right - my handling is always questionable. I usually manage to regain control before we hit anything. It's spelled "manouevres", by the way.

Savoia - You are a Gentleman of the first order.

Topend - Damn right! The quickest way to 180!

RVDT - Damn! I've been sussed! The hardest bit was changing the angle on the AHI. You can get the same picture on Google Earth. - Just add cockpit!
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/_6...LMHHG8/pie.jpg

This was my most favourite and least favourite time.
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/_6...LMHHG8/pie.jpg

Having the ability to walk (run) upright from a 'controlled crash landing' caused by a black pajama clad individual in RVN.

favorite times in a helicopter
 

My best time in a helicopter was recieving a cheque from the guy buying it after a test flight :)

Favourite: First time I was cleared to fly a 50' Low Level Navex with just a crewman to keep me in line. Got out drenched in sweat and had to get someone to kick me between the legs to get rid of the smile.......:eek:

Biggest relief: Breaking cloud on absolute minimums with very little fuel and no diversions available. 10 SAS monsters in the back had just survived a firefight and I nearly killed them :=

Scariest: Looking at a CWP full of red lights through the smoke in the cockpit as we hit the ground (or landed as we like to call it) in a jungle clearing in Belize.

But most of all...... Going to work every day knowing I am being paid for this :ok:

Love it :D

--------

Flying down 'Baywatch Beach' in a Jetranger under LAX approach at 100ft waving to the girlys sunbathing - I was only young :O

Favourite Moment!
 

When I took the Parents up for the First Time :ok:

Flying along the space shuttle landing runway at Canaveral in Florida at 500 feet - pre September 11th 2001. Blew my mind as a low hours trainee.
I think the closest you can fly to Canaveral now is Texas.

Since the Shuttle program was retired last year you only have to ask Orlando Approach for permission to fly to the shuttle strip and they usually clear you for a low approach or even GPS approaches and give you vectors. For other "space activity" and launches there's always a TFR in effect. Lot's of people from my flight school have done approaches into KTTS. Quite boring aparently in a S300 or R22 :E cause it takes forever to fly the runway.

My most fun in a helicopters, is a tie. First one of my favorites is a night cross country in a R22, on a full moon night between Oahu, Lani, and Molokai islands in Hawaii. Truly an amazing experience. Other had to be at 10k + over the coastal mountain range just NW of Skagway AK. In my experiences it was the most beautiful view on earth. Hundreds of miles of spectacular mountains and glaciers. Google maps/earth it. Really cool. Only other pictures I have seen that compare are of the Himalayas in Nepal, which are too tall to have a birds eye view of in a heli. I have been very lucky to have been able to see such things!