Operated across Royal Australian Air Force, Navy and Army (with lettering accordingly). Primarily for training, but some operational off the back of our frigates, including while deployed in middle east. I am fairly certain they were all delivered as AS350B's and only later upgraded to AS350BA. No longer in ADF service now, but a number came onto the Australian civilian register after retirement from ADF.

Nev bartos starts a chopper thread .
irony ?

We inquired about getting the kit as a retrofit for our fleet here in Canada but the price quoted was unbelievably high!

Flew in the back of one of those during a pleasure flight over New York.
After the safety briefing and life vest training the first thought that crossed my mind as they strapped me in the back was "If this goes down over the water good luck getting out of the back".
Having said that it was a very pleasant flight, Could hardly tell it was moving.

I flew left hand drive, but it had the regular FFCL, I do not believe there was a mod available for civilian LH drive.

We operated a LH-pilot version, built in Canada, and it had the rotten floor-mounted throttle quadrant next to the door. The collective lock was also down there, and it grabbed the lever during my endorsement when I lowered it to do an auto. Discovered it locked when it came time for the initial pitch-pull to control RRPM in the flare, so I just kept the speed up and lowered the nose to level the skids and we bounced and skidded on the grass to a stop. So, you can pull off an auto without using collective AT ALL. But I then snapped the lock off so it wouldn't do that again.

Thanks for the photo helispotter :ok: A keeper.

Glad you enjoyed it. Not my photo, rather by David Carter, who had been quite prolific taking such photos which we can now all enjoy seeing on AirHistory.net. I was only a very young lad when that photo was taken!

Is there a particular reason why it's left hand drive?

Yes, to protect the collective from the SLF.

Make room for more front row seats.

As best I can tell, gusty conditions at KBVU around time of crash:KBVU 280035Z AUTO 17011G20KT 10SM BKN090 17/M02 A2977 RMK AO2

Similar in type events:

SEA07LA110
DEN04CA058
CEN15FA164

Sounds logical.

I now know what I am watching tonight, Obviously most people did not get the joke.