Underslung Load!
 

The town of Bodenwerder, on the River Weser, in Germany is the birthplace of Baron von Münchausen. Part of the legend has him accidentally being shot from a mortar and riding through the air on a cannonball.

When I was stationed in Germany in the 70's they used to have an annual lights/water/music festival. Part of the festival was a re-enactment of that cannonball ride. And no, it's not a dummy.
https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....39a4e8628.jpeg

cool ..do you know who owns that AS350B Squirrel?

cheers

Looks like he has been eating too much Sauerkraut!

Livery looks like Helicopter Service Hannover.

http://www.helionline.net/567-675482...3/355//42.html

skadi

Hmm...it was over 40 years ago.

I beg to differ
 

It was clearly a dummy. No smart person would do that.

Well there are plenty of humans who are not that smart.
Bungee jumping from a helicopter comes to mind.

I favour it being the "not smart person" option. Unless the distress smoke flare could be activated from the cockpit it needed manual activation and that could only be by the living dummy on the wire, unless it burnt for a considerable time from the pick up point.

Plenty of people earn their living being HEC - not something I would do but it's horses for courses.

I took the photo. It wan't a dummy.

Don't worry, I got it.


https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....fbfd0d092c.png

I have flown HEC (Human External Cargo) many times before it even became something that had a name.... And I clearly did not invent it......

Nothing wrong with it-sometimes its just the only thing that works..

Nothing for inexperienced pilots, though.....

Really? Air Days and similar we often had crewies down the winch wire acting as a Wicked Witch, or in RNAS Portland's case a water skier across the approach to Chesil Beach with a late lift to clear the causeway :cool:

I had a permit for Bungee jumping from my BK117 for a TV programme, with a raft of safety compliance requirements. It went so well that if I'd had a spare approved pilot I would have joined the contestants and had a bungee jump myself :ok:


https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....77e9a133c2.jpg
​​​​​​​

Then again, I'm not that smart. I ride a motorbike, too.

Done it a couple of times from `unfriendly territory`,and at night. Posted on `Long Lines thread,page 2,#41..
Abseil tapes were secured inside the cabin,not on hook or winch..
Back then we didn`t have `Loadies/winchies,; we just did a bit of training during SAR training phase....won`t be allowed nowadays I expect..
I ,too used to ride/race m/cycles,,,got 3 ,in bits in the garage/shed.....

Did some trials at Boscombe with a 'Jungle Penetrator', intended for SAS recoveries out of high tree areas. The penetrator had three fold down arms as seats and the device was intended to be carried on the external load hook. Trial flight was on the Seaking and the line was 300' of 'nylon' rope. Once deployed, we did incremental speed runs over Salisbury Plain. From memory, the 'trail' angle was manageable until aboiut 40 knots, when the rope developed an uncontrollable sinusoidal rotation. The device, complete with rope, eventually went solo and returned to Mother Earth complete with trial dummies.! There were no further attempts while I was at D sqdn!!

We used the JP quite often in the jungles.... But on the hoist, not on the belly hook..

Worked fine and saved many lives..

Used FRIES (Fast Rope Insert Extract System) - a fancy name for 90 foot swarming ropes with attachment points for 3 lucky(?) souls at the business end - a few times; Chinook could manage 5 simultaneously. Noted that after picking up just one operator (plus bergan) per rope and flying them a relatively short distance, each rope was now approximately 120 feet. Wouldn't want to use each rope more than once.

Human- pseudo USL
 

I did quite a bit of this a long time back including some trials and a mock one to undersling a trainee “Buzzard” at STANTA. Personally I thing the main concern was usually the attachment mechanism, I certainly would never (apart from the spoof one mentioned above) consider the SACRU😎😇

The photo in the original post shows two lines coming down from the aircraft with some kind of spreader bars, but not clear quite what it is attached to at the top. I’m guessing it is to stop the person spinning, but that wouldn’t work if it was to a single attachment point at the aircraft. Is anyone familiar with this kind of system - is it specific to HEC?