Flying a Helicopter?

[dmccarty]

....
Funny story. Flying to Tikrit, across open desert, 100ft, fast. I had headgear on and was listening to the crew visiting. Co-Pilot looked over at Pilot and said "powerline". ...

There is a NG unit at RDU airport flying Apaches and Blackhawks. About a decade ago, an Apache was out flying at night and decided to follow one of the local rivers down low and they did not see the power lines. :shocked: Not a good ending on that one.

The NG copters fly over our house frequently. I get up every time to go watch them. Can't help it. One can tell the Blackhawks from the Apaches from the sound. Really cool when there is a bunch of them. :thumbsup: I am not paranoid when I say the Gov'ments Black Copters are flying over our house! :laughing::laughing::laughing:

At the end of the last century, I got on a copter to patrol the Everglades and the coastline of SE FLA. The pilot used to fly copters in Viet Nam. At one point he/we were flying just off the saw grass and I swear I could have reached out and touched it. Which would not have been good since it is named saw grass for a reason and flying that fast would have made touching saw grass a very bad thing. :laughing::laughing::laughing: We went down the coast counting turtles and ended up over the port of Miami and a square rigger was leaving Government Cut. :thumbsup: Awesome to see that from the air. The pilot put us in a VERY tight turn around the ship and we were almost horizontal. That thin little door did not look like it would hold my weight if I fell on it. :shocked: We ended up flying to near where one of the other people on the flight lived and the pilot landed in a field. Power lines to right of us. Power lines to left of us. Power lines to front of us. :shocked: He set the copter down perfectly, the person got off, and we then took off to return to the airfield. I was mighty glad to be clear of those power lines. :laughing::laughing::laughing:

Later,
Dan

 

[ovrszd]

Yes, that is a great photo. Lots of emotion but you don't know what the emotion is about so it is up to the viewer to decide/think/wonder. :thumbsup:

Later,
Dan

Exactly. The middle guy might just be mad because they are late for chow. But my imagination tends to go the other way.

Here's another.

 

[ovrszd]

Dan, flying across Iraq we often were 100ft or so, which seems much lower when going that fast. In early Spring the Shepards take their herds out into the desert to graze. They didn't much like us flying over them. Almost always scattered their herds.

 

[ovrszd]

The helicopters were equipped with a flare system that would fire if any type of electronic sighting device was pointed at them while inflight. Idea being if fired upon the rocket would track the falling flares. Was very, very common to see this in/around Baghdad.

 

[dickfoster]

Here's a pretty much forgotten chopper, the H73 Huskie.
It had two counter rotating intermeshed rotors so didn't need a tail rotor. A rescue crew flew it down from MacDill daily and they hung out next door to us in the hanger. When things got slow, I often played rescue dummy for them. On an afternoon flight back to MacDill one day lightning struck one of the jesus nuts on one of the rotors which of course took both off and it fell straight down out of the sky killing everyone aboard. I knew everyone of the guys on the flight. I'd hitched rides back and forth to MacDill on that thing many times. It was very leaky, loud and rough riding machine. Fuel and oil were constantly dripping from the overhead. I don't know if Huskies are still in service but my guess is probably not.

 

[ovrszd]

Sorry for the loss of your friends Dick. Great picture. I've never saw one.

I've flown in Huey, Chinook, Blackhawk.

 

[dickfoster]

Sorry for the loss of your friends Dick. Great picture. I've never saw one.

I've flown in Huey, Chinook, Blackhawk.

It was many many years ago. Something like 1969 or so. We all lost a lot of friends in the Military back then.

 

[Redneck in training]

I had job on a platform in the gulf many years back. When the job was finished they call heli to take me back to shore. We were supposed to pick up another guy from another platform but when in flight we got a message that he was not ready and it could take for a while before he finishes his job. Since I was single passenger the pilot said lets's go "sight seeing". We crisscrossed the sea looking for sharks, dolphins, some big fish hunting for shrimps making them jump above water, chased a water spout. It was fun flight flying high then low making crazy turns. I flew many hours in helicopters while working offshore. All flight were by the book except this one.


The heli was German made MBB Bo 105. I think.

While traveling in Colorado for vacation we stopped at Royal Gorge. When we were not far from the bridge a helicopter shot up from the gorge made a vertical U turn over the bridge and went nose down back to the gorge. It crossed my mind that it is going to crash at first moment. It happened very fast and was very loud. I run to the bridge and saw the heli level up just above the water. One guy standing near me said: "It looks crazy. But don't worry. The guys knows what he is doing. He does the same maneuver several time a day."

 

[dfkrug]

The huey has a distinctive sound. Can usually identify them before they are in sight.

Yes, it is very loud and distinctive. You can always tell when they are off to a fire. It has the old
2-blade design. I don't think I have seen a Huey with 4 blades.

Our county sheriff uses a Eurocopter, and I have snagged a ride once about 5 y ago. Very
smooth and civilized.

 

[flyerdan]

Never did get to fly in a copter. When I was growing up in North Idaho, I'd work weekends and summers at the airport, one time a mineral survey team was operating out of there for a couple weeks, they had one of those twin rotor Huskies, dragging what looked like a torpedo. Haven't seen one since.
I've also seen the R-44s at Royal Gorge, they sure know how to work that canyon.

 

[dmccarty]

Dan, flying across Iraq we often were 100ft or so, which seems much lower when going that fast. In early Spring the Shepards take their herds out into the desert to graze. They didn't much like us flying over them. Almost always scattered their herds.

I don't know how low we were over the Everglades but we really were just skimming on top of the saw grass. If the pilot had had a wiffle fart we would have left a smear in the ground. :laughing::laughing::laughing:

My wife has a family member who was Medivac copter pilot in Viet Nam. He got shot down three times but lived to tell the tale though one crash really messed him up. The family had a diary operation when he was in the Army and one time he flew a Huey home and landed in the pasture. The family was glad to see him but his uncles and father were ticked because the cows did not give milk for a day or two. :shocked:

This guy is the Luckiest Man in the world. Might be good luck or bad luck though. Three shoot downs in copters but he survived. A decade or so ago, he bought a new car and then hit a herd of deer which totaled the car but he survived. Shortly after that he was working on his roof. Alone. He was on a ladder on the back deck which has multiple layers to get into the house. He fell onto the deck and had a compound fracture of a leg AND an arm. :shocked: He had to crawl across the deck, up some stairs, I think down stairs again then back up stairs to get into the house. :shocked: Course, he had a hard time standing to open the door to get inside. :confused2: Then he had to crawl across the kitchen floor to stand up again to use the phone. :shocked: But he survived.

He likes to BBQ, especially whole hogs, and he has a garage stuff full of different sized BBQs. One day we were at this house, well, for a BBQ, and I noticed he was a bit red in the face, on parts of his arms and legs. A few days earlier he had lit a BBQ and it, or one of the other tanks, had been leaking. There was a flash from the leaky propane and his exposed skin had gotten a nice healthy red hue. :shocked::laughing::laughing::laughing: But he survived.

Later,
Dan

 

[ovrszd]

Wouldn't want to stand near him during a lightning storm huh!!!!!!

I've got a poem that would reflect his Vietnam service, I'll try to find it.

 

[ovrszd]

Here it is.

The Man In the Doorway

They came in low and hot, close to the trees and dropped their tail in a flare,rocked forward and we raced for the open doorways. This was always the worst forus, we couldn't hear anything and our backs were turned to the tree line. Thebest you could hope for was a sign on the face of the man in the doorway, leaningout waiting to help with a tug or to lay down some lead. Sometimes you couldglance quickly at his face and pick up a clue as to what was about to happen.We would pitch ourselves in headfirst and tumble against the scuffed rivetedaluminum, grab for a handhold and will that son-of-a-***** into the air. Sometimes the deck was slick with blood orworse,
sometimes something had been left in the shadows under the web seats, sometimesthey landed in a shallow river to wash them out. Sometimes they were late, sometimes...theywere parked in some other LZ with their rotors turning a lazy arc, a ghost crewstrapped in once too often, motionless, waiting for their own lift, their ownbags, once too often into the margins. The getting on and the getting off werethe worst for
us but this was all he knew, the man in the doorway, he was always standingthere in the noise, watching, urging...swinging out with his gun, grabbing theblack
plastic and heaving, leaning out and spitting, spitting the taste away, asthough it would go away...

They came in low and hot, close to the trees and dropped their tail in a flare,rocked forward and began to kick the boxes out, bouncing against the skids,piling up on each other, food and water, and bullets...a thousand poundsof C's, warm water and
rounds, 7.62mm, half a ton of life and death. And when the deck was clear, wewould pile the bags, swing them against their weight and throw them through the
doorway, his doorway, onto his deck and nod and he'd speak into that little micand they'd go nose down and lift into their last flight, their last extraction. Sometimes he'd raise a thumb or perhaps afist or sometimes just a sly, knowing smile, knowing we were staying and he wasgoing but also knowing he'd be back, he'd be back in a blink, standing in the swirlingnoise and the rotor wash, back to let us rush through his door and skid acrosshis deck and will that son-of-a-***** into the air.

They came in low and hot, close to the trees and dropped their tail in a flare,rocked forward, kicked out the boxes and slipped the litter across the deck andsometimes he'd lean down and hold the IV and brush the dirt off of a bloodlessface, or hold back the
flailing arms and the tears, a thumbs-up to the right seat and you're onlyminutes away from the white sheets and the saws and the plasma.

They came in low and hot, close to the trees and dropped their tail in aflare, rocked forward and we'd never hear that sound again without feeling our stomachsgo just a bit weightless, listen just a bit closer for the gunfire and look upfor the man in the
doorway.

Igot this poem, if you want to call it that, when in Vietnam. I don稚 know who the author is. Doesn稚 really matter. What痴 important is to hope he still is ableto hear that sound today.

 

[Redneck in training]

Helicopter pilot lived for danger | News OK

I remember this case. I used to live near by the place where the last attempt happened.

 

[Kyle_in_Tex]

Helicopter pilot lived for danger | News OK

I remember this case. I used to live near by the place where the last attempt happened.

great story!

 

[tractorshopper]

The helicopters were equipped with a flare system that would fire if any type of electronic sighting device was pointed at them while inflight. Idea being if fired upon the rocket would track the falling flares. Was very, very common to see this in/around Baghdad.

View attachment 485413

Commonly referred to as "chaff". We had it on our HH-60H's. That's the Navy Combat search and rescue configuration of the Seahawks. A SEAL team worked with our squadron from time to time and that was what they would fly in with door guns, etc. We also had SH-60F's, which were set up for more standard duty including submarine tracking, search and rescue diving missions, transport, etc.

Here's a pic of my squadron's plane, one of the CSAR set ups. You'll see the chaff pod on the tail cone near the fuselage.

 

[ovrszd]

David, "chaff" is a great term for it. Hadn't heard that before.

I often wonder how much different things would be without rotary wing aircraft. Think about all the variations we have discussed in this thread alone. We have barely touched the commercial uses.

 

[dmccarty]

Here it is.

The Man In the Doorway

I don't know who wrote that either but I have read it before.

What some of those Medivac crews did was unreal.....

I am a voracious reader and have always read history along with some fiction, mostly science fiction, years ago. I stopped reading fiction since there are so many things that have happened for real who needs made up stuff. If people knew about these events they would consider the actions works of fiction. If what some, well many people, have done were made into movies, nobody would believe it happened.

Later,
Dan

 

[ovrszd]

I don't know who wrote that either but I have read it before.

What some of those Medivac crews did was unreal.....

I am a voracious reader and have always read history along with some fiction, mostly science fiction, years ago. I stopped reading fiction since there are so many things that have happened for real who needs made up stuff. If people knew about these events they would consider the actions works of fiction. If what some, well many people, have done were made into movies, nobody would believe it happened.

Later,
Dan

I've watched two movies in the last couple yeasr that impacted me (militarily) heavily. First was American Sniper. Second was Lone Survivor (might have the name wrong, might be Sole Survivor). Both are at least based on truth. Both will cause you to quietly reflect. I saw American Sniper in a theater. When the movie was over everyone left eerily quiet. Watched Lone Survivor at home and talked to the TV thru most of it. "Don't do that", "gotta move, move", "this ain't good, not good at all". My wife quietly watched the movie, and me.

 

[tractorshopper]

"Unbroken" is another great movie. I read the book about a year before the movie came out. The movie was good, but really couldn't do justice to the book. There was so much more in the book that couldn't possibly be added or developed in the movie just due to time constraints alone. What the greatest generation went through was nearly unbelievable to us today.