Freebie HeliOps Calendar - That Time Again
 

Well its nearly December and just got the 2018 HeliOps calendars off the printers - probably our best one yet :ok:

So for the first 150 people who post on here a response to the following question you will receive a complimentary copy of our 2018 Calendar.

"Describe your MOST memorable moment in a helicopter and why it was so memorable".

Responses cant just be a one or two word response - please put a little thought into your replies. Once you have made your post then please send me a PM with name and postal address to send them to. You can use a bogus name for delivery if you wish to keep your identifies here secret, just make sure your postman is aware :ok:

Thanks everyone and hope you enjoy them.

Ned

I have had too many memorable times to list. However I vividly remember this last spray season pulling up on the third to last swath of a field and seeing a wire running through the treeline that I had already crossed a bunch of times.......

First SAR mission ...
 

At the beginning of my flying career, I was called once, early in the morning, to rescue the crew of an anchored vessel that hit the bottom in heavy seas and strong winds. That had developed fast during dawn, catching the crew with surprise. I´ll never forget their faces of relief getting inside the aircraft as the vessel started to roll over.

Many thanks for your kind offer again this year, @KiwiNedNZ :)

It's still quite early in my helicopter flying career, and without anything too exciting to report, my memorable moments seem to all be related to more and more challenging landing spots. The most recent, and most challenging to date, was a very small, sloping gravel spot, not much larger than a dolly, that services a remote, off-grid transmitter site on top of a minor mountain. Unlike a dolly, this one is surrounded on all four sides by small pine trees, and on two sides by antenna guy wires, and requires a bit of vertical to get in and out of with no escape once you are below the top of the antennas. It's the sort of place you wish you brought a chainsaw to so that you can open it up a bit more before leaving :} At any rate, it was a nice feeling of accomplishment to get in and out of there safely and smoothly, and without sliding off of the sloping, loose gravel, either!

One of my latest memorable moments was just the other day in my R22. Depart from home with calm winds, climb to 500ft agl, 25 knot tail wind. Climb another 500 ft, 40 knot tail wind. Climbed to 2000 ft agl, 50 knots on the tail and silky smooth cruising at 140 knots. Dreaming I was in a Gazelle, but could of been a B-47 if I were heading the other direction.

I no longer fly, too old now to even get into one! I have several memorable events burnt in, but to restrict it to a magic moment event, I would have to say it was the last day of the Americas Cup event off Fremantle in 1987.

Although Australia lost to that pesky American, the spectacular sight of the huge fleet of boats escorting the competitors back into harbour in picture perfect conditions, and the fleet of helicopters following it all, still appears in my mind like it was just last week!

My most memorable was the very first time I decided to take a trial lesson. Went out to the R22, never been in a helicopter at all before. The instructor, picked us up into the hover, I couldn't believe the sensation, still as vivid in my head today. It was in these seconds and a 5 foot hover I realised my life was about to change dramatically! All those years on I'm still at it.

My most memorable moment in flying occurred at one of my first initial training lessons: While flying from airport A to airport B, we crossed an industrial plant, and out of one of its chimneys, there was leaking out a huge smother, lying exactly on our route (calm wind conditions).
As beeing a complete newbie, I took the worst decision and kept flying the planned route, although being fully aware of the vapor.
Immediately, we went full IMC, my FI took controls without moving them, and a few seconds later, we returned to clear sunshine, not being harmed.

IMC to the max, and since then, I strictly keep myself flying VMC (as long, as I don't have the IFR and a properly equipped machine), no matter what the planned route is telling me.

Thracian

Securely fastened!!!!!!
 

Beautiful and cold morning sitting on the saturated floor of an RN SAR Whirlwind out of Culdrose, canvas 'seatbelt' very wet and loose, gazing out of the open cabin door opposite.
Insufficient sockets for all to plug into intercom so truely fat, dumb and happily unaware of the announced steep turn which sent me thru the 'seat belt' and feet out the door towards the freighter everyone else was watching now directly below.
Said safety belt did however grasp me securely around the chest and taught me so much so quickly.

I would say my most memorable moment in a helicopter would've been in the summer of 2016. I was doing my first ever solo cross country which was about a three hour flight.

It was a beautiful VFR day without a cloud in the sky and the tailwinds in my favour ;) I remember just appreciating the freedom and perfect flying conditions flying over the countryside and near a large lake, it was pure bliss!

Calendar
 

Hi Ned

Thanks again for the offer.

My most memorable moment was just recently, after a 20 year career in helicopters in the UK doing Training, Charter and Pleasure Flying. I was lucky enough to be tasked to help on a filming job, flying two Twin Squirrels in close formation (less than 2d) at 50ft along the River Thames in London, Flying at high speed.

The visibility was crystal clear, blue skies, and it was by far the most exciting two hours I’ve had in a helicopter. We passed Parliament, Buckingham Palace, The Shard, The Gerkin, St Paul’s Cathedral,, but the best bit was the high speed pass over the North Tower of Tower Bridge at 50ft.

Brilliant.

Hi Ned, thank you again for the kind offer.

I can still vividly remember the moment hovering a helicopter finally "clicked"!

I was with my FI waiting to cross Bristols runway to transit to the South side where we were allowed to train. I had been struggling for sometime to hold the helicopter in a stable hover for any length of time. On this day, the airport was quite busy and I was watching a passenger shuttle bus on the other side of the runway, that was ferrying people to the terminal building, and as it was "in the distance" I had my head up, and finally it all clicked together and I found myself relaxing into the hover!

Now I understand why I kept being told, look outside, look up and scan the distance, don't fixate on the 10 feet in front of you!

Fond memories!

JBL

Mid air collision with a Sea Harrier - in cloud at 2000 feet. Seems like yesterday..............:rolleyes:

Flying with Air Zermatt in the Alps, albeit as a pax. Stunning scenery and the helicopter in its element.
Thanks for the generous gesture, love these calendars.

For me one of my most memorable moments in aviation was my first time doing high altitude training with a bell 206.
I’m a part time mountaineer my self and I love mountains so It felt really good flying around high mountains with a helicopter.

Precert 214ST development flight. Attitude / Altitude Retention System flight. Pilot and FTE onboard. We were both watching instrument panel 'eyes inside' when I looked up and saw a red ball from a radio tower guy-line. Stated 'Holy Sh--' and the pilot quickly moved the cyclic to the left. All ended fine. Whew!
Otter.

One night years ago, flying up the coast in the 22, I turned towards the golden gate bridge and noticed a full moon directly above it, shinning a brilliant beam of light over the water cutting the bridge in half,...it was pretty sweet!:cool:

Most rememborale moment?
Just dangeling along with Vy with passengers over a lake in the hills, 2-300 feet above the water, killing time cause I could ´t drop them.
When I slammed down the collective and they started to cheer, thinking some fun flying would start.
When I said, negative fun, just saving our lives nobody understood.
So I flew a circuit and went to a hover at the same spot. Everybody looked out, including the Co-Pilot and nobody saw the danger.
After I pointed out three narrow lines on the left over may be three meters beachy shoreline and asked them, to follow the lines, they suddenly understood.
A nice non marked powerline hard to see against the waves in the sun...
Sure it was my fault in the first time decending below the horizonline- even with lots of feet over the water. Would ˋt do it again without proper recee....

Georg1na, yet you lived to tell the tale. Maybe we should here it.

KiwiNedNZ, thanks for the offer once again. My second flight as pax on a helicopter is the most memorable. Arguably it was the most pointless flight I ever took yet I did enjoy it. The helicopter was to cover a car race, and it was not allowed to stay overnight at a local military which was used during the day. So they shuttled it out about 3 minutes flying time away. I was offered a seat on the transit and it was nice to fly out of an airport and land in a landing zone outside one. For some one only flying scheduled fix-wing flights it was memorable.

Happy 2018 to all.

Georg1na, yet you lived to tell the tale. Maybe we should here it.


Very luck day! SH going 250knts one way - me going 110knts t'other way.


SH fin to WX5 tailwheel/pylon. Lots of bits fell off. Too much for gaffer tape.


I land in pub car park he landed back at Yeovilton. Big cock up on ATC front but they could not have planned it even if they had tried to. They are not that accurate!!:}

Thanks for the offer Ned. Your photos are always top notch :ok:

Most memorable moment - hmm. There are so many.

The mistakes - hitting a tree, going IMC with no IFR capability or telling the customer to F off.

The beauty - cascading glaciers and towering mountains, pingos in the arctic or the sunrises.

The jobs - longlining a $3 million robot submarine, herding reindeer or replacing insulators on 500 kv energized transmission lines.

The locations - the arctic, Kuwait and Iraq and then for something completely different, the mountains of BC.

The people - highly professional coworkers who mentored me, customers who educated me and most of all my wife who loved me ( she got airsick but still went flying with me on occasion - made me a much smoother pilot ;)).

For me it's taking people for their first helicopter experience, sometimes their first experience in an aircraft.
The smile they just can't get rid of is priceless.

My first student passing wings checkride:ok: I still get a buzz when any of those I have taught pass their checkrides.

As a PAX with Air Mauritius for Heli Lunch(no not lunch in the helicopter!) heading back to the airport a few days later with same company, encounter cloud over the mountains and the pilot took 1 second to say we are turning around and avoiding this! Have had similar experiences with the great team at St Lucia helicopters avoiding cloud in the mountains.

My most memorable day with helicopters was October 6th 1983. At that time I was a flight test engineer and that day I flew for the first time on a brand new prototype. The total time accumulated by the helicopter in the previous 3 flights was 1hr and 20 min. The flight with me on board was the 4th. It last 30 min and was mainly dedicated to track the MR (with the strobo light and the Chadwick vibrometer) and to expand the flight envelope up to 120 kts. All the minutes of that flight are stamped in my mind for ever.

My first helicopter flight way back in 1974 was in the first civilian Gazelle in the UK G-BAGJ from Battersea Heliport to Leavesden. Such a wonderful day and got me hooked on helis.

Flying an R44 with an instructor to a distant airfield to meet an examiner for my annual re-validation when the warning lights started coming on and the gauges on the panel started going crazy. I thought the FI was pulling circuit breakers to test me, as my examiner on my initial test had done.
I asked him to stop messing with the breakers, and he said he wasn't doing anything.
A quick Oh Heck moment was followed by an immediate precautionary landing in a field next to a road to aid recovery.
After rapid shutdown we discovered the regulator completely burnt out. Being in the middle of nowhere with no mobile phone signal, we walked across the fields to the nearest farmhouse to call the maint org and await the engineers arrival by road.
The engineers came out and performed a temporary fix so we could fly it to the maintenance base, about half an hour away.
With a train ride home, I was glad I had dressed in my usual outdoors gear, and sensible shoes despite the summer heat, whereas my FI had shorts, vest and flipflops on, not good for walking across fields or travelling on public transport.

Thanks for the offer again this year. One recent memorable moment, taking my neighbour - a Somerset farmer - for a ride. As he buckled in I asked him if he'd been in a helicopter before.
"Nope, never".
"But you enjoy flying?"
"Never tried it before."
"You've never been in an aeroplane?"
"Nope. I went on a train once though."
"Where to?"
"London. Too many people. Came home again."
He was a brilliant passenger and has enjoyed many local flights since.

My most memorable moment was on a Los Angeles layover, flying an R44 with two of my mates in the back. We’d already done low level along the beach from Redondo to Santa Monica, over Beverly Hills, Universal studios, the Hollywood sign and downtown LA, and now we were transiting LAX international airport just as the BA283 was making its final approach to land. Why was it so memorable? All three of us did our integrated ATPL(A) course together as BA cadets, and now 15 years later, had flown a 747 into LAX the day before. It was perfect timing, purely by chance, at the end of an amazing sightseeing flight around LA.

Most memorable
 

My most memorable moment was my first flight. Between the uncertainty and nerves my adrenaline was flowing. Unfortunately I haven’t done a lot of flying, but it’s something I will never forget.

Returning to the airport from a doors off scenic tour and suddenly, in the middle of my well rehearsed patter, the cabin is filled with plumes of white feathers. I prepare for the worst thinking I have just hit one or many birds but I felt no strike and have no indicators of a problem.....I look back in the cabin and see the female pax with quite a bemused look on her face and her once ample goose down jacket has been diminished substantially, and the contents thereof scattered over the beautiful island of Kauai.

Still pinch myself that I got paid to do that!

Me as a Combined Cadet Force (RAF) Corporal attending an armed forces recruitment fair in 1979 and being granted a nap of the earth experience flight in a Aérospatiale Gazelle. Beyond jaw dropping. Never mind my most memorable of countless memorable moments in a helicopter; it's right up there with the most memorable experiences in my life.

Lifting off from Shoreham in a B206 with John Cranfield as PIC in 1984 aged 14 and doing my first departure with him no-where near the controls... he was cool as cucumber but it was very vivid moment for me - im 47 next month and still flying :)

Couple of ones for me: (pre-licence) taking off from a remote lodge as pax in the Rockies and hearing the pilot say "**** we've too much weight in the back, don't know if we can make it" and waiting puckered up as he coaxed her through translation with the trees just below us.
Highlight - taking my mum and dad flying in the R44 shortly after getting my CPL and her commenting, never ever thought I'd have a son who'd take me up in a helicopter and my dad just grinning!

Getting airborne from an airfield somewhere in Norway in 10M vis before an engine failure just after TDP :{ Oh wait, that was the sim...

Most memorable moment in an acutal helicopter - probably nearly getting speared by a pair of F-15s while flying a Jet Ranger up Glencoe...

There we were, bimbling along at 100 knots, soaking in the scenery. What a lovely day it was to be airborne over the glorious Scottish countryside instead of indulging in some mundane ground-bound pursuit.

Half a second later, two of Uncle Sam's finest death machines appear from nowhere - one flashes above, one below, followed by the aroma of jet exhaust wafting into the cockpit. There wasn't really time to do anything apart from hope there wasn't a third one lurking round the corner.

Fortunately I was wearing my bicycle clips that day :8


Honourable mentions to flying with friends and family, seeing an EC225 getting towed along by an offshore supply boat, watching the Northern lights and landing in places where you are the sole indicator of any human existence all the way to the horizon.

Got to love it.

I've had so many memorable moments, mostly sharing the joy of flight with friends and family.. One moment that stands out was during training. My CFI and I took off on a hot summer day from a taxiway less than 1000' from airport perimeter. Golf course is adjacent to the airport. As we're sluggishly climbing out, I see a golf bar cruise by right in front of us, not 10' ahead and at our altitude. I'm certain we ruined someones fairway drive with our downwash and we made sure to gain more altitude before leaving airport property ever since.

First time I tried landing an AS350 on sloping ground after my crossover to helicopters. I remember thinking 'ooh this is a bit different'. Then working my nuts off for the next 6 months trying to crack sloping ground!

My company had a requirement to move an S61 from Aberdeen to Dhaka in Bangladesh for a new contract starting in the January. The ferry flight was due to depart on 1st December and the ferry crew would return to Aberdeen towards the end of January. It is probably for this reason, that I and a very good friend got the trip as all the senior pilots didn't want to be away over Christmas. I had only been a captain for 2 months at this point, so i was stunned to be offered this trip of a life time.

So, on 1st December 1997, we departed Aberdeen in S61 G-BBHM with $20,000 in cash, two ferry tanks and the instruction "be in Bangladesh by Christmas".

After leaving a very cold Aberdeen for Humberside and then Great Yarmouth to pick up our engineer we spent the night at Orleans just south of Paris. The next two weeks took us through Briare, St. Yan, Nice, Naples, Corfu, Heraklion, Alexandra, Cairo, Luxor, Medina, Riyadh, Dhahran and Dubai where we went u/s. We could have gone u/s in Dhahran but we all felt that Dubai would be somewhat more refreshing. We spent three nights in Dubai while an engineer from Redhill flew out with an engine front-frame assembly to cure our oil leak.

After a couple of ground runs, it was off to Pasni (that's another story), Karachi, Ahmadabad, Nagpur, Bhubaneswar and Calcutta where we spent a couple of nights waiting for final diplomatic clearance into Bangladesh.

On the 15th of December, G-BBHM finally touched down in Dhaka after 63h 20m flying time and the best part of 5,000 miles.

Apart from a few administrative issues on the ground from time to time, it was, without doubt, the best flying experience of my life. Even looking back at the administrative issues; they were the source of many a story to tell on our return.

A truly memorable experience and in a couple of days time it will be 20 years ago. Where did all that time go.............

What a fantastic story about a fantastic adventure, XA290! Thanks for sharing.
It's therefore a shame to have just read how G-BBHM ended her days back in the UK. :(

THanks for the offer....
 

Getting dragged in early hours one Bank Holiday Saturday for a Standby call-out.
HF fire across the Irish Sea, radio set now somewhere on seabed. Refuel at Valley SARTU where thoughtful land rovers formed a landing spot -but it would have been easier without the headlights as Goggles closed down.
Through Snowdonia to Heathrow from Aldergrove.
Moonlit evening then flashes of lightning again glaring the goggles out - it was the early 90s ;-)
Circling over Shrewsbury - which was just a glow through the low cloud cover below - whilst the ‘co’ changed the DECCA chain.......South toward Lyneham then direct to 09L mid-point to repatriate our ‘compassionate’ with his dying father. Lift direct to Odiuos for a well-earned cuppa and return via the Welsh coast on BH Monday pebble-dashing nude sunbathers - Happy Days ;)