They just need to nip across the road to here -


Alba Power


My future Son-in-law is the production manager, and I'm sure he could sort them out!


He sent me a couple of pictures of it sitting in the field.

Not rotary but they have a rather nice Hunter T7 gate guardian sitting outside the facility at Alba Power.

Slinging a Helicopter is never a "good" option in peacetime in a secure and benign environment. You might just drop the thing from a few hundred feet and that is far more expensive and hard to justify than just doing an engine change in a Farmer's field.:=

Seeing the original photo I thought it looked like the u/c had collapsed but seeing others I realise it's a rise in the field hiding them. It had lots of covers on various bits on the last local TV news I watched and it looked like the ends of the rotor were secured with some sort of tie-down as well. Plus a couple of little camouflage tents were visible.


You can see the rotor blade ties and some of the covers in the photo in this article:
Apache helicopter forced to land in Aberdeen field - The Scotsman

The AH64 was designed for maintenance in a field environment. An engine change in the field is really no big deal. As has been mentioned, slinging an aircraft is a risky process with respect to damage or destruction of the aircraft and should only be considered when the risk to the aircraft or personnel is higher if it is left in place.

Including all the 30mm pointy stuff if you have lost your tail rotor and every kilo counts :)

It's raining aircraft!
 

Gosh - it's getting like the Bermuda Triangle round here - what looks like a N reg Navajo lost an engine whilst flying from Wick to France around 1600 and put down in a ploughed field not more than 4 miles or so from the Apache landing site. Pilot is okay but I'm going to dig out my tin hat in case any more start falling around my house!

The Apache has departed under it's own power:

BBC News - Apache helicopter grounded in Aberdeenshire takes off

"Not rotary but they have a rather nice Hunter T7 gate guardian sitting outside the facility at Alba Power."


Picture from Christmas time here -
Alba Power helps Santa take flight - Alba Power