Bladeslapper

This was pretty interesting in 40' seas in the Southern Ocean

Years ago when working as a crewman on the NSW fires we were tasked to winch lunch packs to ground crews. First and last time we ever did that for that particular season. I'd hate to think how much each of those packs cost.

I can relate to that one MC, perhaps you remember this occasion as well?

Second command IFR ME renewal in 70kt winds! Very interesting indeed. lol.

Half way down an IFR approach on a really crappy down-to-minima dark night, rather windy and working hard, my co-pilot (other Captain) handed me a piece of paper with the following on it:

"Glass of water?"

That was quite interesting.

High mountain flying in winter. Love that view!
(sorry for the crappy quality)

Winched a guy and his 5 dogs off a sinking catamaran north of Troughton Island in a Super Puma.

Flown an R22

Sprayed out of a R22

Gave flying lessons in a B47 to Tom Cruise and Eddy McGuire. Tom was good, Eddy locked in "D" and lost.

Lots of interesting stuff over the years, but taking Dad (91 and a WW2 Beaufighter pilot) for a fly last week and letting him have a drive was very rewarding

Give this thread a bump.

In the mid-90s I helped Hevilift pilots to place the towers for the Skyrail cablecar project in north Queensland.

Skyrail was an ambitious project. It is a cablecar running from Kuranda, north of Cairns, over the rainforest tops, via a couple of treetop platforms and walkways, to meet up with a train through the forest. The Greenies were absolutely against this project, and were bitter when it was approved. It came with conditions, though.

No roads were allowed to be built to the site of each tower.
No trees were to be damaged, outside of the tiny base area for each tower - a $1million fine applied if a branch was knocked off.

So, the workers preparing the base had to park on the road and walk up to a kilometer through the bush, carrying their chainsaws and daily supplies, cut down the trees, manually dig the footings and prepare everything by hand. The greenies were there to watch the whole time and photograph any infringement. And the mongrels would sabotage the workers' cars while they were in the bush. Nice people.

These long-line pilots had a skill of which I was very jealous – they could move a load around on the end of a 200’ cable and put it within inches of its destination. Some days we were lifting skips of concrete, and the pilot put the nozzle in the worker’s hand, and kept it there even while a ton of concrete poured from the nozzle and the helicopter wanted to zoom into the sky – he just kept lowering the power to hold that lighter-and-lighter skip at the same height above the ground.

The most tense day was when we were lifting sections of a tower onto prepared concrete pads. These towers were darned heavy, so we had the minimum amount of fuel on board, and after each lift of one third of a tower, we galloped back for a small refuel to continue the task. So there we were, lowering a base section onto a concrete pad. The ground workers turned the base a little to align the first foot with the bolts, popped it on, and tightened the bolts.

Same with the second foot, but the third was a bit tricky, and they moved on to the fourth, which went on quite well. They returned to the third foot, but despite them pulling it, the chopper dragging it from side to side, it just wouldn’t go on. But one thing DID go on – the MINIMUM FUEL warning light, meaning we had a maximum of 10 minutes until the engines stopped. And the fuel was 4 minutes away.

The pilot said “Undo the other three bolts, we will take it back to base and see what the problem is.”
A pause from the other end – “These are one-way bolts – we can’t undo them!”

Rats.

The options were to release the tower section from the hook at the end of the longline, which would make it VERY difficult to ever try to pick it up again, or wait for them to do up the last bolt. We opted for 2 minutes of trying to do up the bolt, and then he would “pickle” the load to save the aircraft.

Luckily, the bolt went on after 1 minute, they unhooked the sling from the tower and we made it back to the refuel base with the engines still running, and with me manually shuffling fuel tanks to keep the lovely stuff running.

But I still wonder, do any of those @rsehole greenies ride on the Skyrail? Or have they moved on to Extinction Rebellion and glue themselves to electric buses?

I was lucky enough to race a WRC car. I was then even luckier and was given a few hot laps as a passenger in the car.

Love the stories Eric.

Great stories.

Landing on top of our tallest mountain, twice. But better, going through 21,000 feet in a B3 on the edge of Everest...with (let's say...) not much gear, furniture or fuel on board. (I wasn't steering, but it was huge fun).

It was a beautiful view and lovely day.

Merry Christmas to all.

Arrrj

Got hired to hover inside Geelong cats stadium to dry out the pitch before a semifinal.

Another, Flew twiggy forrest and his mate around all weekend to a private party, some good conversations there..

Lastly, recently conducted a 10 hour day/night round trip, 4 refuels, head way off shore to winch up a holiday maker of a boat and get him to hospital..

Never gets too boring...

bladepitch wrote:Got hired to hover inside Geelong cats stadium to dry out the pitch before a semifinal.

Another, Flew twiggy forrest and his mate around all weekend to a private party, some good conversations there..

Lastly, recently conducted a 10 hour day/night round trip, 4 refuels, head way off shore to winch up a holiday maker of a boat and get him to hospital..

Never gets too boring...

Was the winch off the Solomon Islands in a 412 per chance?

No mate, mine was 90 nm off Heron Island..