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Day in life of helicopter instructor
- Thread starter WaterH
- Start date
Ditchrunner
Red Skull Member
I was supposed to go on a Huey ride to a missile silo to get a look at the difference between our simulator and the real capsule.
My Sargent bumped me because he was a dick. Lucky for me because the Hiey had a catastrophic engine failure and had to ditch. Pilot almost pulled it off, it flopped just after touchdown apparently.
No one was hurt except the pilot, who fell off the side climbing out and broke his arm.
That’s my autorotation story. I know, cool starry bra.
My Sargent bumped me because he was a dick. Lucky for me because the Hiey had a catastrophic engine failure and had to ditch. Pilot almost pulled it off, it flopped just after touchdown apparently.
No one was hurt except the pilot, who fell off the side climbing out and broke his arm.
That’s my autorotation story. I know, cool starry bra.
Penetrode Offroad
Red Skull Member
- Joined
- May 20, 2020
- Member Number
- 493
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Name checks out.
WaterH
Well-known member
Ok, the Russian trip.
Part one, Arrival
I flew to Washington DC to pickup a visa at the Russian embassy. I was supposed to leave that evening. The embassy took two days to approve the visa that was supposed to be waiting for me. Then I flew to Moscow on a Swiss airline. I proceeded to customs. After waiting for about 2 hours, I got my passport stamped and proceeded to customs with my shit. My shit included an electronic balancer in a fancy pelican case. I waited in line til I got to a guy that didn’t speak English. He directed me to another guy.
I waited in line to see him. He spoke poor English and he had zero understanding of technical stuff. He told me that he doesn’t have authority to clear such a thing and I need to go wait in line for the big wheel. I wait for the big wheel and he doesn’t speak English. He has two solders (W/AK47s) escort me to an area to wait. When he comes over with the English speaking guy. After some explaining, he says you can’t bring this in to our country. It’s obvious that the big wheel is not using as nice of language and I’m not feeling very cozy right now. So I said “can I just stay in the airport and fly out on the next flight”. The answer, and I quote, “No, but you can go to jail”.
I started talking fast about then and said I have a commercial visa cleared by your embassy. After another five minutes of him talking on the phone, he told me to get out of here and he (the big wheel) doesn’t want to ever see you again.
When I go out in the terminal, there is a solder holding a sign with my name on it. He was waiting there since I landed four hours ago. He takes me out on the ramp where they have a R44 helicopter waiting. I jump in with this army guy and he starts the chopper and says go head and fly to the north west. I told him, there’s no way I’m going to fly out of this international airport right now. So he takes off and flys out of their traffic area. Then he gives me the controls. I know why he wanted me to fly. Because he wasn’t very good. I have minimal time in that machine and it was obvious that I was way better than him.
To be continued
Part one, Arrival
I flew to Washington DC to pickup a visa at the Russian embassy. I was supposed to leave that evening. The embassy took two days to approve the visa that was supposed to be waiting for me. Then I flew to Moscow on a Swiss airline. I proceeded to customs. After waiting for about 2 hours, I got my passport stamped and proceeded to customs with my shit. My shit included an electronic balancer in a fancy pelican case. I waited in line til I got to a guy that didn’t speak English. He directed me to another guy.
I waited in line to see him. He spoke poor English and he had zero understanding of technical stuff. He told me that he doesn’t have authority to clear such a thing and I need to go wait in line for the big wheel. I wait for the big wheel and he doesn’t speak English. He has two solders (W/AK47s) escort me to an area to wait. When he comes over with the English speaking guy. After some explaining, he says you can’t bring this in to our country. It’s obvious that the big wheel is not using as nice of language and I’m not feeling very cozy right now. So I said “can I just stay in the airport and fly out on the next flight”. The answer, and I quote, “No, but you can go to jail”.
I started talking fast about then and said I have a commercial visa cleared by your embassy. After another five minutes of him talking on the phone, he told me to get out of here and he (the big wheel) doesn’t want to ever see you again.
When I go out in the terminal, there is a solder holding a sign with my name on it. He was waiting there since I landed four hours ago. He takes me out on the ramp where they have a R44 helicopter waiting. I jump in with this army guy and he starts the chopper and says go head and fly to the north west. I told him, there’s no way I’m going to fly out of this international airport right now. So he takes off and flys out of their traffic area. Then he gives me the controls. I know why he wanted me to fly. Because he wasn’t very good. I have minimal time in that machine and it was obvious that I was way better than him.
To be continued
WaterH
Well-known member
The Russian trip,
Part two-the situation/job
So I have pick up lots of people at airports with a helicopter, but this is the first time I got that treatment. Kind of fun. We proceeded to fly to another airport where the “the Moscow air show” was going on. I flew into the show while a Sukhoi-27 fighter jet was doing aerobatics in the sky. This was rather unique in that I have been at numerous air shows where air force jets preform, but they would ground everything in 10 miles or more while they fly. It was really the Wild West here. (More on that later)
I land at the show and meet the rich Russian guy that is paying for all this. I met this guy once before at the Oshkosh Airshow a few month prior. He can’t really speak English and basically shakes hands with me and leaves on the helicopter. He leaves me with an English speaking chauffeur. I got to look at everything at the show and we leave for the hotel. I say chauffeur, but it wasn’t a limo. It was a small pos Russian car that reminded me of a corvair. He takes me to a five star hotel that over looks red square. The hotel was top notch in every detail except it had a single bed. Have you ever seen a single bed in a hotel?
I probably should have explained the job first, but here goes. The Russian guy I took for a ride at Oshkosh was very rich and he secured the exclusive dealership to Robinson and Safari helicopters in all of Russia. He had four helicopters shipped to Moscow and I was to balance them and check out their pilots. This rich guy was a helicopter pilot himself, but he had military pilots on his payroll for this endeavor. The Robinson R44 that they picked me up in was just put together a couple weeks back and they have been flying it. It was supposed to be balanced before flight, but “who got time for dat”? (It did kind of vibrate)
Anyways, the driver told me he will pick me up in the morning.
To be continued
Part two-the situation/job
So I have pick up lots of people at airports with a helicopter, but this is the first time I got that treatment. Kind of fun. We proceeded to fly to another airport where the “the Moscow air show” was going on. I flew into the show while a Sukhoi-27 fighter jet was doing aerobatics in the sky. This was rather unique in that I have been at numerous air shows where air force jets preform, but they would ground everything in 10 miles or more while they fly. It was really the Wild West here. (More on that later)
I land at the show and meet the rich Russian guy that is paying for all this. I met this guy once before at the Oshkosh Airshow a few month prior. He can’t really speak English and basically shakes hands with me and leaves on the helicopter. He leaves me with an English speaking chauffeur. I got to look at everything at the show and we leave for the hotel. I say chauffeur, but it wasn’t a limo. It was a small pos Russian car that reminded me of a corvair. He takes me to a five star hotel that over looks red square. The hotel was top notch in every detail except it had a single bed. Have you ever seen a single bed in a hotel?
I probably should have explained the job first, but here goes. The Russian guy I took for a ride at Oshkosh was very rich and he secured the exclusive dealership to Robinson and Safari helicopters in all of Russia. He had four helicopters shipped to Moscow and I was to balance them and check out their pilots. This rich guy was a helicopter pilot himself, but he had military pilots on his payroll for this endeavor. The Robinson R44 that they picked me up in was just put together a couple weeks back and they have been flying it. It was supposed to be balanced before flight, but “who got time for dat”? (It did kind of vibrate)
Anyways, the driver told me he will pick me up in the morning.
To be continued
SomeGuyFromOlympia
Well-known member
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- May 31, 2020
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this reads like one of those choose-your-adventure kids books
WaterH
Well-known member
The Russian trip,
Part three, near death experience.
So the driver shows up around nine to pick me up. I have to say, I got to know this guy pretty good and was glad to have him the whole 3 weeks I was there. I got to ask him all kinds of questions about life in Russia. One of the funny things he told me was when ever you see a fancy Mercedes with 3 or 4 SUVs around it, you know it’s a gangster. The SUVs will have four guys in them and the guys will have guns. Driving around Moscow, this was somewhat common. (At least once a day) Anyways, the rich guy we were working for rode around in a fancy BMW,,,,,,,,,,with 3 range rovers full of guys. Hmmmm
So we get to this airfield where this guys shop is. The airfield looks to be a military airfield because it has all manor of military aircraft parked on every available spot that was not a runway or taxiway. The military guys were across the airport and weren’t do much of anything. There I get introduced to the rich guys chief mechanic. He’s a good guy and speaks some English. He tells me the boss will not be here for awhile. He says the boss told him that I can entertain myself by flying the R44 some more if I want. I thought that was cool and said sure. He points down the taxiway and says “it’s down there”. I asked where the other pilot was and he said he won’t be in until later also.
I looked at him and said “does the control tower speak English?” He said “no and I don’t think you should talk to them.” This guy seriously thought I’m going to take off from a Russian airbase and fly in Russian airspace by my self. More about this later, but I passed on flying solo and helped him uncrate another R44. For those of you that don’t know, a R44 comes in 3 crates. One for the tail boom, one for the main fuselage and one for the main rotor blades. These guys were very particular about how they did this and gave me a good feeling about them not being hacks.
The Ride,
So the rich guy gets there and I tell them I’m ready to go to work balancing. The pilot says the boss would like to go flying some before we hook up the sensors and stuff. He would prefer that I fly. We go down to the helicopter and me and the pilot sit up front and the boss sits in the back. This ride was one of the funnest flights I have ever made. We flew all over Moscow, some times just 50 feet off the road ways. If you want to know what attention is, fly a helicopter down red square at 50 feet. Everybody was watching us fly below building roof tops. It was completely wild. I remember a story where a kid from Germany landed a Cessna 150 in Red Square. I thought how did he not get shot down. Now I know. I know you’d be arrested at the very least if flew like that in DC. There nobody did shit. I often wonder if I’m the only American to have ever flown a helicopter over Red Square.
Anyways, back to the airport, I land where I took off. The pilot says that the boss would like to do some flying. I start to get out and he says “no no, I will get in the back”. He proceeds to swap seats with the boss. Now I have to clarify some things. This guy is a licensed helicopter pilot. I flew with this guy for a short time at the Oshkosh airshow. He couldn’t fly for shit, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he can’t fly a different helicopter. He owns this chopper and they’ve been flying it for a month. I figured he was going to be as bad as his army pilot. So I’m not completely oblivious, but I sure wasn’t ready for what’s to come.
He gets in and buckles up. He is slowly winding up the rotor to flight speed. We are parked right next to a Russian fighter helicopter. I believe it is a Hind. It was big and crude looking, but still very interesting. I was just looking at the rotor head when the pilot in the back seat taps me on the shoulder and says “be careful”. I started to turn my head to look back at him. I made it about 15 degrees when the boss pulls all of the collective in one yank. This would have scared the shit out of me if we were going straight up, but no, we were going in an arc right over the chopper next to us. We were literately at a 90 degrees to the ground and our blades were probably 6 feet from hitting this chopper.
I immediately grabbed the controls and got us somewhat up right. Because he pulled it so fast, the governor could not keep up and rotors were slowing down. The bird was coming down and there wasn’t a thing I could do to stop it. I dumped the nose and the fuselage went down between two the the rotors on that big bird. For the life of me I don’t see how our blades didn’t mix with its blades. We hit the taxiway at a pretty steep angle and hard. We were still in one piece and the machine was idling. I looked at the boss and he said “sorry” in English. The pilot in the back lost all composure and was yelling “you need to follow closely”.
No shit Sherlock. If I had not intervened, we would have crashed upside down on that military thing. I would hate to think what that cost. We went for a short flight after that and I could tell that this guy had never flown the R44 without the pilots hands on the controls all the time. He apparently thought he could fly it. When we got back and shut down, we discovered the skid legs were damaged. (Should have never gone flying with out checking it out)
The rest of the trip was not bad and they wanted me to stay for another week. I had been there for 3 weeks already and I was scheduled to go to South Africa 4 days after I got back, so I couldn’t stay.
I got home September 10, 2001. If I had stayed another week, I’d have been there a long time. Like Paul Harvey says “that’s the rest of the story”.
You kids better not ask me who Paul Harvey is.
Part three, near death experience.
So the driver shows up around nine to pick me up. I have to say, I got to know this guy pretty good and was glad to have him the whole 3 weeks I was there. I got to ask him all kinds of questions about life in Russia. One of the funny things he told me was when ever you see a fancy Mercedes with 3 or 4 SUVs around it, you know it’s a gangster. The SUVs will have four guys in them and the guys will have guns. Driving around Moscow, this was somewhat common. (At least once a day) Anyways, the rich guy we were working for rode around in a fancy BMW,,,,,,,,,,with 3 range rovers full of guys. Hmmmm
So we get to this airfield where this guys shop is. The airfield looks to be a military airfield because it has all manor of military aircraft parked on every available spot that was not a runway or taxiway. The military guys were across the airport and weren’t do much of anything. There I get introduced to the rich guys chief mechanic. He’s a good guy and speaks some English. He tells me the boss will not be here for awhile. He says the boss told him that I can entertain myself by flying the R44 some more if I want. I thought that was cool and said sure. He points down the taxiway and says “it’s down there”. I asked where the other pilot was and he said he won’t be in until later also.
I looked at him and said “does the control tower speak English?” He said “no and I don’t think you should talk to them.” This guy seriously thought I’m going to take off from a Russian airbase and fly in Russian airspace by my self. More about this later, but I passed on flying solo and helped him uncrate another R44. For those of you that don’t know, a R44 comes in 3 crates. One for the tail boom, one for the main fuselage and one for the main rotor blades. These guys were very particular about how they did this and gave me a good feeling about them not being hacks.
The Ride,
So the rich guy gets there and I tell them I’m ready to go to work balancing. The pilot says the boss would like to go flying some before we hook up the sensors and stuff. He would prefer that I fly. We go down to the helicopter and me and the pilot sit up front and the boss sits in the back. This ride was one of the funnest flights I have ever made. We flew all over Moscow, some times just 50 feet off the road ways. If you want to know what attention is, fly a helicopter down red square at 50 feet. Everybody was watching us fly below building roof tops. It was completely wild. I remember a story where a kid from Germany landed a Cessna 150 in Red Square. I thought how did he not get shot down. Now I know. I know you’d be arrested at the very least if flew like that in DC. There nobody did shit. I often wonder if I’m the only American to have ever flown a helicopter over Red Square.
Anyways, back to the airport, I land where I took off. The pilot says that the boss would like to do some flying. I start to get out and he says “no no, I will get in the back”. He proceeds to swap seats with the boss. Now I have to clarify some things. This guy is a licensed helicopter pilot. I flew with this guy for a short time at the Oshkosh airshow. He couldn’t fly for shit, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he can’t fly a different helicopter. He owns this chopper and they’ve been flying it for a month. I figured he was going to be as bad as his army pilot. So I’m not completely oblivious, but I sure wasn’t ready for what’s to come.
He gets in and buckles up. He is slowly winding up the rotor to flight speed. We are parked right next to a Russian fighter helicopter. I believe it is a Hind. It was big and crude looking, but still very interesting. I was just looking at the rotor head when the pilot in the back seat taps me on the shoulder and says “be careful”. I started to turn my head to look back at him. I made it about 15 degrees when the boss pulls all of the collective in one yank. This would have scared the shit out of me if we were going straight up, but no, we were going in an arc right over the chopper next to us. We were literately at a 90 degrees to the ground and our blades were probably 6 feet from hitting this chopper.
I immediately grabbed the controls and got us somewhat up right. Because he pulled it so fast, the governor could not keep up and rotors were slowing down. The bird was coming down and there wasn’t a thing I could do to stop it. I dumped the nose and the fuselage went down between two the the rotors on that big bird. For the life of me I don’t see how our blades didn’t mix with its blades. We hit the taxiway at a pretty steep angle and hard. We were still in one piece and the machine was idling. I looked at the boss and he said “sorry” in English. The pilot in the back lost all composure and was yelling “you need to follow closely”.
No shit Sherlock. If I had not intervened, we would have crashed upside down on that military thing. I would hate to think what that cost. We went for a short flight after that and I could tell that this guy had never flown the R44 without the pilots hands on the controls all the time. He apparently thought he could fly it. When we got back and shut down, we discovered the skid legs were damaged. (Should have never gone flying with out checking it out)
The rest of the trip was not bad and they wanted me to stay for another week. I had been there for 3 weeks already and I was scheduled to go to South Africa 4 days after I got back, so I couldn’t stay.
I got home September 10, 2001. If I had stayed another week, I’d have been there a long time. Like Paul Harvey says “that’s the rest of the story”.
You kids better not ask me who Paul Harvey is.
WaterH
Well-known member
Not me. Can’t say I would declare an emergency in that case, but the article says a female pax got out and took pics. Fishy.
Animalmother
Flexed cracker
How come we dont see people flying around in quadcopters. They seem like they would be more maneuverable and safer than helicopters.
WaterH
Well-known member
My guess is reliability . The answer (so far) has been “good parts and less of them”. An example of this is the 45* gearbox you see on big helicopters. (This is the gearbox that is on the tail boom that kicks up the tail rotor to the same level of the main rotor.) From a handling standpoint, that is a great advancement. But you don’t see it on small helicopters because it is another failure point.
Donk
Piss Artist Formerly Known As OllieNZ
The practicalities of it.... Most quad copters use fixed pitch props and electric motors. They control thrust by changing RPM, the thrust variation is what provides the direction changes and stabilisation. Courtesy of the electric motors a quad can make thrust corrections in nanoseconds to maintain stability. Depending on total available thrust, CoG and programming a quad may be able to safely descend on 3 or even 2 motors but controlled flight is virtually impossible.
Replicating that on a full scale is difficult. The mechanical system of the V22 Osprey is probably the closest to what you'd need, but a quick look at the development and the operational reliability of those will tell you pretty quickly that you'd be shoveling shit up hill with a pitchfork. With currently available technology a conventional heli still represents the best combination performance, reliability and safety.
billdacat
No road...no problem.
This thread re-enforces my belief that I will die in a helicopter. I have been extremely lucky considering the number of helicopter flights that I have taken without a major incident. No emergency landings or auto-rotations.
I will not even consider taking a recerational helicopter ride; because that will be the one that kills me.
I will not even consider taking a recerational helicopter ride; because that will be the one that kills me.
Last edited:
WaterH
Well-known member
I think the chances of dieing in any particular flight is the same as a ride on a motor cycle. I believe that statistic refers to airplanes. Not sure if helicopters are worse.This thread re-enforces my belief thatI will die in a helicopter. I have been extremely lucky consideringthe number of helicopter flights that I have taken without a major incident. No emergency landings or auto-rotations.
I will not even consider taking a recerational helicopter ride; because that will be the one that kills me.
Ranch Hand
Red Skull Member
My first flight offshore one January morning: "Alright, the life raft is over-head. DO NOT inflate it until it is out the door. This is your life vest, pull the lanyard to inflate, if that fails there's a manual inflation tube under this flap. Marker dye is in this pocket, signal mirror is here, and shark repellant is here."
I ask, "Does that shark repellant really work?"
"Doesn't matter, you'll freeze to death in 30 minutes anyway."
And away we went.
I ask, "Does that shark repellant really work?"
"Doesn't matter, you'll freeze to death in 30 minutes anyway."
And away we went.
ndtguy
Mr. B
- Joined
- May 26, 2020
- Member Number
- 1505
- Messages
- 39
Who’s Paul Harvey?
J/k. I would go with my Dad in the rig on weekends and when Mr. Harvey came on you always listened. I admit I enjoyed listening.
Seriously thought cool Russian experience. When in mother Russia, well you know.
SomeGuyFromOlympia
Well-known member
- Joined
- May 31, 2020
- Member Number
- 1706
- Messages
- 1,008
Who’s Paul Harvey?
J/k. I would go with my Dad in the rig on weekends and when Mr. Harvey came on you always listened. I admit I enjoyed listening.
Everyone enjoyed listing to that ol fella
WaterH
Well-known member
So yesterday this guy flew in to my airport.
He taxied up to the fuel pump on the wheels. Something this big makes allot of wind (even when taxiing) and we were parked down wind. He hot refueled which I’m not sure about the legality. Then he proceeded to take off from this location. (Not taxi) I couldn’t believe he did that. I have half a mind to report him.
He taxied up to the fuel pump on the wheels. Something this big makes allot of wind (even when taxiing) and we were parked down wind. He hot refueled which I’m not sure about the legality. Then he proceeded to take off from this location. (Not taxi) I couldn’t believe he did that. I have half a mind to report him.
Wades_76_cj7
RZR guy, NO I am not gay..
no idea what kind of helo that is but it looks sexy as hell with that paint job. and $$$$
YJLOPES
Red Skull Member
- Joined
- May 19, 2020
- Member Number
- 352
- Messages
- 253
Don't do that. If you want to do something, reach out to him directly. There is enough karens in the world, don't add to them. I've always seen being a pilot as part of a brotherhood, and we police our own.So yesterday this guy flew in to my airport.
He taxied up to the fuel pump on the wheels. Something this big makes allot of wind (even when taxiing) and we were parked down wind. He hot refueled which I’m not sure about the legality. Then he proceeded to take off from this location. (Not taxi) I couldn’t believe he did that. I have half a mind to report him.
So yesterday this guy flew in to my airport.
He taxied up to the fuel pump on the wheels. Something this big makes allot of wind (even when taxiing) and we were parked down wind. He hot refueled which I’m not sure about the legality. Then he proceeded to take off from this location. (Not taxi) I couldn’t believe he did that. I have half a mind to report him.
Gonna have to side with the pilot on this one. If I'm flying a fucking blackhawk, I'm gonna do whatever the fuck I want.
Bebop
Well-known member
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- May 26, 2020
- Member Number
- 1458
- Messages
- 4,850
BlackHawk, right?
WaterH
Well-known member
It’s a Blackhawk. Very few in civilian hands. Probubly 20 mil.
Yea, if we would have had damage, it would be different. We were holding the blade. I guesstimate the wind was 70-80 mph.
WaterH
Well-known member
At my previous job, we had S92s that were that kind of size. If one of our pilots had done that, they would be fired quick if word got to management.
WaterH
Well-known member
I should tell you guys the funny part of the story.
I was training the girl that took the pics. It was the wife of the guy standing with me. When that thing first taxied up, we were all just finishing fueling our bird. His wife goes over to the right side of the fuel pumps to look at it. That thing was so loud that you couldn’t hear yourself think.
Anyways, me and my friend were at the tail of his aircraft trying to talk. The guy fueling obviously was new at doing it and we were kind of laughing at him. After a bit we look over and see the copilot come out from behind the fuel pump. I never saw her get out of the bird. She was not doing anything with the fueling. (That was the fat guy and the guy with the orange helmet.) So what was she doing? She had a tan jump suit on. Must have been quite a trick for her to take a piss there. Not clear in the pic, but there’s a road on the other side of that fence. It’s very hard for a man to take a piss without being seen, let alone a woman in a center zip jump suit. lol.
(from what I could see, she was not hot looking)
I was training the girl that took the pics. It was the wife of the guy standing with me. When that thing first taxied up, we were all just finishing fueling our bird. His wife goes over to the right side of the fuel pumps to look at it. That thing was so loud that you couldn’t hear yourself think.
Anyways, me and my friend were at the tail of his aircraft trying to talk. The guy fueling obviously was new at doing it and we were kind of laughing at him. After a bit we look over and see the copilot come out from behind the fuel pump. I never saw her get out of the bird. She was not doing anything with the fueling. (That was the fat guy and the guy with the orange helmet.) So what was she doing? She had a tan jump suit on. Must have been quite a trick for her to take a piss there. Not clear in the pic, but there’s a road on the other side of that fence. It’s very hard for a man to take a piss without being seen, let alone a woman in a center zip jump suit. lol.
(from what I could see, she was not hot looking)
WaterH
Well-known member
Looked up registration. Corpat inc. out of Missoula, MT. That I was built in 1980! Looked dam good for that old.
2big bronco
Og irate
Is that a water tank for firefighting underneath?
Ranch Hand
Red Skull Member
We did that before on an unmanned platform coming back from a long flight offshore. The pilot had me get out, clamp the ground cable on and fuel it up. Was that not right?
The guy probably had a starter going bad and didn't want to risk it, I had a car like that back in high school.
