Helicopter Pilots Are Crazy

[Subdeacon Joe]

https://youtube.com/shorts/3XsFl9K8qPs?feature=share4

[Gracos Kid]

I was detached one summer to the Marijuana Eradication Program, where LEO Helicopters and spotters were locating pot fields, to be cut down and destroyed by the ground crews.  One Pilot during the lunch break would purposely but carefully hover beside and then move over and land underneath a power line, just to show that he could....   Yes, some are crazy !!

[Duffield, SASS #23454]

The crazies are the crewmen who fly with them.

[bgavin]

Next week the gal who owns and runs the cabinet building company is coming to our house for measurements.
She speaks of her hubby being a helicopter pilot.
Previously trained by the military in the Middle East, and is now the guy who hovers over those huge electrical towers for installation and repairs.

 

[The Original Lumpy Gritz]

Spend an hour or so watching power line helicopter pilots 

[Cypress Sun]

I watched a medivac chopper land in a clearing that was definitely too small for the large chopper. He was chopping small (1") sprigs off of the oak trees surrounding the clearing and it was even worse taking back off. The pilot was very skilled, adept and at least somewhat insane. I guess the pilot thought that the risk was worth his life and the life of the crew to pick up a child that had drowned in the family pool. The child did not survive.

[Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984]

In the 70s and 80s Digital Equipment Corp had a fleet of helicopters and two fixed wing aircraft. My neighbor was one of the pilots. One day one of the choppers was taking off with four passengers and experienced a problem and autorotated to set down in the fire pond.  The passengers waded ashore, the pond was 3-4 ft deep.  The pilot stayed aboard.  As it happens the pilot was the most experienced and was the guy who gave the annual autorotation tests.

 

all of the pilots had Vietnam experience.  The pilot quit flying because he realized he didn’t know how to swim.

 

there were a few experiences that I remember. The copters flew people between plant and from plants to Logan an Manchester airports where they had terminals. One time at Logan I was a passenger when we were taxiing to the terminal, of course at low altitude. A jet started its engines. That chopper went up so fast!  (Got out of any blast)

 

and taking an evening ride out of Logan over Storrow Drive at 120 or so, was wonderful. Nothing but bumper to bumper down below.