I guess it’s time for another story. In view of the current events in Ukraine, might as well talk about it.
The Ukraine trip,
This trip was one of the few I made with my wife, although we weren’t married at the time. We flew into Kyiv and took a small plane to a city called Lviv. This flight was not very nice to say the least. The plane was a twin turbo prop that held about 20 people. I don’t know the model, but I would guess it was made in Russia. It was loud. Loud to the point that we had to shout at each other sitting side by side. It also vibrated like crazy. If a helicopter pilot tells you something vibrates, believe him. The other thing about it was the door to the cockpit. It was made of aluminum and was rectangular as most doors are. The door frame was not. The door went past the frame at the top about an inch and a half. The door was to narrow at the bottom the same amount, so obviously it couldn’t be shut in to the frame. I’m assuming that it could shut went it was built, so that ment the whole bulkhead was egg shaped or something to make the frame a diamond shape. I spent most of the flight looking at that door trying to figure out how that occurred.
If that wasn’t scary enough, wait till you hear the next part of the trip. At the airport, this guy came up asked us to come with him. It’s funny how those guys just know who I am. I remember the a guy in Russia telling me everybody knows you are an American from a mile away. Anyways, we get out to the car. It is a black Mercedes with blacked out windows. It is not a limo, but a nice car never the less. In fact, I never saw a nicer car the rest of the trip. Everybody drive shit boxes there. We are driving to the nearby city of Truskavits. I’m guessing it’s 60 miles. The driver averaged about 90 mph. Obviously, the roads were good………not. All I can say is the road was paved. Other than that it was rough and narrow. I sware we left the ground at least three times. We also scraped the undercarriage multiple times. My wife would literally screamed several times. The guy that didn’t speak much English though she was joking, I guess. About the only good thing is the road was empty.
When we got to Truskavits, I thought, well at least he will have to start driving more sanely because of traffic and police around. He did have to slow down, but he completely ignored traffic rules. At one point, he cut off a police car and nearly ran him into a ditch. I thought, he’s in trouble now. But the cop didn’t even come after us. It blew my mind. (More on this later)
We get takin to a large resort. They put us in a room on the 7th floor or so. The room is the biggest hotel room I have ever been in. I’m going to say it was 1500 square feet and more like a condo. The guy with the car says he will be back next morning to pick me up. We have all expenses covered in the restaurant, but it was an ordeal to get food as no one spoke English.
The next day the guy shows up with two black Mercedes and the second driver spoke English somewhat. He said he was to drive my girlfriend anywhere she wanted to go while I go to work. (She went shopping) I went to an industrial site where I met some of the guys working for my “client”. Talking to them, I got the goods. It turns out that my client is the mayor of this city and everybody including the cops know his (4) Mercedes and nobody would look twice at one. My client is also the owner of the resort that we are staying in. He is also a doctor and the resort is a “health resort” that people come from all over Europe to stay. The resort is built over a natural spring of some kind of mineral water. They have a swimming pool in the basement that you can bathe in and they have “taps” in the restaurant so you can drink the water with your meals. Me and my girlfriend didn’t go in the pool and didn’t like the water. I think it tasted like it was mixed with WD 40.
At this industrial site (that he also owned) there was a large building and piles of rock and busted up cement with rebar sticking out. It reminds me of what I imagine Panzerfuhrer place looks like except his is probably bigger and neater. Finally, my client shows up and we are to fly in one of his helicopters to another airport where I’m to balance a couple choppers and give some instruction.
They pull out a Allowette III. This is an old French helicopter. It has two seats in front and four across the back. It sits on tricycle gear with big tires. The client gets in the pilot seat and I am co-pilot. Four of his employees get in the back. He winds it up and picks it up to a 6 foot hover. Correction, he picks it up 6 feet. There’s no way I would describe it as a hover. The piles of rock and shit are like two story’s high. Between those piles and the buildings, there’s an open space of about 50 yards square. It becomes obvious that he can’t keep it in that square. This puts me in a very dicey position. If I take the controls, it might piss off my client. Also, I have never laid eyes on this type of helicopter. What if I take the controls and wreck it? I like to think I’m hot shit, but I didn’t feel like being humbled right now.
Just about the time one of his gyrations was going to send us into a pile of rock, he pulls an armful of collective. That chopper was loud and vibrating, but it did have power. We immediately were up 150 feet in the sky. It was nice to be clear of all that shit in the yard, but he still didn’t have any kind of hover. He dumps the nose about 30 degrees and we are flying. Once he got it going at speed, he was much better. He offered me the controls and I flew it for a few minutes. I was greatful that I could handle it fine, so I wouldn’t have to be scared to take the controls from him. I did a few turns and such and than proceeded to do a very shallow “crop duster” turn. After I came out of that, he gets all excited and says I got it. He does a crop duster turn very steep. When you get to the top of a turn like that, you can either bank hard and turn back or just pedal turn around to face down again. It can be fun. He didn’t do either of those choices. He basically lost it and we tumbled on our side. It scared the shit out of me. I can’t imagine those guys in the back. I took it and straightened it out and flew the rest of the way. He said “sorry, sorry”.
When we get to the other airport, he says he wants to land it. I give him control reluctantly and he proceeds to establish a pretty good approach. I remember thinking how is he going to land when he can’t hover. That question was answered when he never hovered. He just kept going till we hit the ground. We nearly bounced off the legs and tires. I can’t believe he has been flying like this for some time. The 4 guys in back and I got out and he flew away. Those guys told me they were very happy that I was in the chopper. lol. I’m so glad my wife didn’t come on that flight.
I went about balancing the other chopper and I flew around a bit with his employees. The chauffeur picked me up from there and took me back to the resort. The next day, I balanced the Allowette and did some flying without the client. I gave the chief machanic some instruction. When the cliant got there, he asked if I would teach his 16 year old son. I spent the next two weeks teaching the client, his son and that mechanic how to fly. His son got good and we had a lot of fun flying around the countryside.
One of the things we did was completely crazy. There was a building about five miles from the airport that a tornado had gone through. On two sides, it looked like one of those mirror glass high rise. On the back corner the tornado cleaned it out right to the I beams it was built from. This building was about ten stories. We flew up to it and hovered next to it to view the damage. We could see right through the corner. We ended up flying into the building and out the other side. It was wild and reminded me of a James Bond movie. Over the next several days, we flew through that build probubly 20 times.
We also got to fly to restaurants up in the mountains and to his country house at a nearby lake. The cliant had a house in the city with a pond in the back yard. He had a helipad built in the center of the pond. He said he was always scared to fly the Allowette in there. No Shit! It was a small pond with a high fence around it. He asked me to land in there and I did. It was tight. He wanted me to teach him to fly in there. I said “not this trip”. He was still very happy to have a helicopter sitting there and he threw a party. It was a really good time.
The client ended up offering me a job teaching people to fly. It was very interesting, but I chickened out. My wife had fun, but she didn’t like the limited English there. When we got back, the client contacted me and asked if I would write an invitation for his son to come and stay with us for a summer. I guess it was required by our government to get a visa. He was a really good kid and I wrote the invitation. But I never heard from him after that. This was long before the trouble there now.
Truskavits is on the far west side of Ukraine, (far from Russia) so I’m hoping they are OK.
Edit, I just looked on google earth and the city is Truskavets. I could find the resort we stayed at, but for the life of me, I can’t find his house with the helipad in the pond. Maybe he filled it in.
