B Model Chinook....Que Son Valley, Vietnam.....138 Vietnamese...plus crew of five ....folded seats up...closed cargo hatch in floor....everyone standing up....rolled forward and trod on the brakes....as the mob shifted forward...raised ramp with 20 more. Then off....barely!


Also, unit lost an A model Chinook near Song Be, Vietnam....best my memory serves me 53 dead Vietnamese, 1 Crewman killed retrieving injured and trapped Vietnamese, Flight Platoon Dog died as well....4 crew, 12 Special Forces, 17 Vietnamese survived. Caused by an engine failure on takeoff.

Those Crazy Record Breakers
 

I just watched a show on two people ( female and male instructor) who flew a R22 around the world. Now they are planning on a solo attempt at this. I dont know about you, but this seems like madness to me. Although that instructor guy did look very crazy, with that goatee and all. You cheat death once, and now you want to do it again. That little chopper looked like a toy, the whole piston engine thing, and the open ocean...well, it gives me the creeps. As a fixed wing pilot, this seems like madness but I am interested on what you fling wing boys have to say on the matter. Is this instructor know for doing stunts like this, and why is he still flying that little toy. You would think someone with his experience could get on a turbine machine.

Regards

BB

Its just another game for the rich....
 

This has been done in Bi-planes, in Jets, Row Boats, Jet Rangers and Bath Tubs............really there is not much of a challenge anymore.

A good GPS will do all the hard work for you...and work out your ETA's and hence fuel to the litre.,,,,so the challenge becomes that of urinary and backside endurance.

And of course the various countries which provide the SAR coverage for these modern day "mavericks" will pick up the cost of retrieving them when they screw it up.

Perhaps they just wanted to be alone......:E

Sound like one of "Q's" expeditioins
 

He unfortunately had a less succesful adventure which is discussed in the following thread.

http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthr...threadid=79533

Fortunately all survived but didn't win many friends within the SAR community.

I wonder if they can get insurance cover for this type of stunt?

'Q' and Jennifer Murray flew an R44 around the world quite successfully thank you in 1997, raising a lot of money for charity in the process.

Jennifer flew her R44 solo around the world in 2000, again very successfully.

Sounds like the program was both ill-informed and a bit out of date.

If you can do it in an R44, why not an R22? If you can manage to carry enough fuel somehow, and don't mind living in the same clothes for however long it takes - you have no luggage space and after taking essentials and fuel I doubt if you could manage the weight for even a toothbrush. But in my wilder moments I've thought about it vaguely...simply because it's never been done before. I could never afford it though. Someone once said to me that Jennifer Murray hadn't done anything I couldn't do, if I had her money. Very flattering, I've no idea if it's true or not, but I'll never find out, because I never will have her money. :{ But good luck to her, if she's the one attempting it!

Somehow I have this nagging worry the nexus of an R-22 and extended flight thereof.....connotes a short film.....and tenure on Planet Earth. Braver souls than I.....everytime I think of Robbies....I eat another big ol' greasy double cheeseburger and large size fries......in an attempt to keep my solo crew weight greater than the max crew weight for the Robbie.

I am begining to understand what these pilots were doing. Sounds like the instructor Q has done some crazy stuff in his day. What I dont understand is why Q would want to fly that little toy. In the video I watched it looks like if you ever had to move the control stick to fast the thing might just fall off. Most instuctors I know want to move on to fly bigger and better, and you would think with his fame he would have no problem getting on something that doesnt have mags. I give him credit, I would rather tie a buch of helium ballons around my waist and float that way, then jump in that tiny machine.

First - clearly a machine that can fly twice around the world without incident could hardly be classified as a "toy".

I can assure you that the "control stick" :rolleyes: doesn't fall off. Oh, and we usually try to fly in such a way that you don't have to "move it too fast".

Second, how do you know that Q doesn't fly turbines as well ?

If you don't want to fly Robbos, bb, that's your choice, but why not try it ? You never know, you might actually have a bit of fun !!

Two things we can all do without:

(1) Out of date Discovery Channel programmes (and people watching who can't tell the diff between a 22 and a 44).

(2) People who have never flown the Robinson product. Go to your nearest SFH airfield and fly the new Raven II. Then please report back.

Bushbum... you're a troll, right?

errrr....now look....I have never had SmallPox....nor Shingles....nor Cerebral Malaria....nor one second in a Robbie......nor do I need any of those things to know I don't care to have them. A mere vicarious experience is sufficient for those with a modicum of wit. To each their own....but for me....I will double up on those fatpills just in case I get a case of terminal CRS and get into one of the things.

:E I'll show them......round the globe in a Rotorway Exec. That'll take some beating by the mini 500 squad.....:}

Steve76,
You're crazy...but can I come along too? :)

SASless,
If you don't want to fly a Robbo, that's fine, honest! Please don't feel the need to kill yourself with cholesterol related diseases, just so that we R22 pilots don't drag you to one and strap you in kicking and screaming; I promise you, we won't. On the other hand, if you want to use non-Robbo flying as an excuse to eat good tasting junk food, that's OK too.:D :D But wait a minute...smallpox and nasty spots, shingles and feeling !!!!ty, cerebral malaria and a high chance of death...or flying an R22 which most of us manage to do quite safely while having lots of fun? Somehow I don't quite follow the analogy...but I am a bit tired this morning.

bushbum,
The R22 is small, and underpowered in a lot of situations, but most definitely NOT a toy! Q has thousands of hours on both it and the R44, which is much bigger and looks less scary to the uninitiated. Find out about it and go for a flight before you start jumping to conclusions.

Hey, I just had an idea...how about round the world in a RAF 2000 autogyro? :eek: :eek: :eek:

they gotta be nuts...... I flew a C172 from west oz to Manilla in the Philippines and all that water scared me. now I aint usually scared of much at all........ but around the world in a R22, apart from sounding like alot of fun, scares me.
have trouble when I think about taking a robbo over to much bush, neverlone all that water.
I would still love to have a bash at it though.
the GPS might make life a bit easier, but believe me when I tell you that without an agent doing all ya paper work for ya it can be a friggen nightmare....... I did it.

Just one question.

Who foots the bill when things go wrong and they have to be rescued.

I'd like to know, maybe they'll insure me for some record breaking daredevil stuff

I'm certainly not going to make any friends here but I'll admit to not liking flying the Robbie very much

....all kinds of placards of "Don't Push Here" and "Don't Pull There" and a rotor brake that looks disturbingly like the chain I use to pull on and off my basement lights, and a foamy cyclic grip that wouldn't be found on the cheapest kid's bike.

I've flown Bell 47's with various engines, wood blades as well as the metal ones, Hughes 300's and 500's, all the 206's (A,B,L,L-1,L-4), 205's, 222's, S-76's and 61's, but the only one I never really liked was the Robbie. And I gave it a good go too, a full fire season with water bucketing and slinging. No, it never quit on me as some of the others on my licence have done, and no, there wasn't grease to clean off the head after every flight, and actually, things tended to work as intended and there was very little maintenance required, and actually, it was kinda fun to fly after I got used to it, and when my rather over-inflated ego adapted to the many calls over the radio like "Can you sling a toaster over from camp 4?", I'd have to admit, it's actually a pretty good little helicopter.

But I still didn't like it. ;)

So someone drove around the world in a Fiat 126. Is that commendable, or clever, or anything other than just plain daft? The Robbo is the Fiat 126 of the helicopter world, and like SASless I'd never consider getting into one. Ever.There are too many stupid ways to die unnecessarily than to risk that. Rubber bands driving the transmission?????A real helicopter????You cannot be serious!

Bladestrike

Umm are you just pullin' my leg here? Just want some clarification, what did you use a R-22 for at a fire base??? Yea I know im naive. :8