Nacreous

This is a bit old but interesting all the same..

I was working on a very large fire in Alberta about 20 years ago. We were flying left hand circles (206) with one forestry officer that was directing the several mediums bucketing at the lowest level. Other crews were being ferried back and forth above them and we were circling above both of these traffic flows down below. As we came around one of these many orbits we had a very close encounter with an unknown Astar that was flying at cruise speed transiting the fire zone. It was about the same altitude and we probably only missed each other by maybe 2 - 300 meters. I spent some time thinking about how fortunate we all were to have avoided the shear horror of a midair like that and still do.. I am sure a few others out there have had similar uncomfortably close encounters, known or unknown or maybe ones that required immediate action in smoke or low visibility to avoid a possible collision. Re Niagara, this is a bit off topic but they also had 2 helicopters exchange rotor systems on the ground in a collision between a G2 and a G4 right in front of the old fuelling pump. I think one machine had just landed and the one beside it started up and the blades hit each other during a cyclic control check. Others may know more about it but I was told this happened the summer before our class trained there so maybe 1975/6.

RE: I had issues with vertigo. I'm not a pilot but just in regular life if I was looking up and down repetitively I had vertigo issues. Vertigo triggered by head movements can often be caused by BPPV and becomes more common with age. Here's some more info.. https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/benign-paroxysmal-positional-vertigo-bppv

Bad day in the office! I wonder what caused such an unusual attitude with this machine... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvV2P8T7-a4

Open, looking at the diagram with the red marks, to me it looks like an error in the last 2 gears, #13 at the bottom of the figure 8 belt should be and looks to be counterclockwise so #14 should be clockwise and # 15 counter clockwise causing it to open.

Very little information so far.. It was down about a week ago in Ontario and they are reporting 1 person with injuries. Hopefully the injuries are not too severe... Does anyone else have any more info?

Well it was good to see the two people walking away on their own after they got out.. It will be interesting to see what happened. I agree that it does look like an accidental take off as It kind of looks like what you might expect to see after pulling up on the collective at fight idle if the gross weight wasn't too heavy. I have never read any reports about that so I'm not sure what would happen if that occurred for some reason..

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/markus-dyck-polar-bear-biologist-remembered-1.6006459 So sorry to hear about this accident..Condolences to all the friends and families for their loss. There is a real allure to flying north of the Arctic Circle as I'm sure others know as well. It's a real shame when these tragic accidents occur.

A BUCKET!! Some guys get all the perks! That's a step up from "the shovel" and the dark cloud of insects just waiting for their feast the second you drop your drawers...

That's an interesting design they are working on here... https://verticalmag.com/press-releases/bell-showcases-electrically-distributed-anti-torque-demonstrator/?utm_source=vertical-daily-news-todays-news&utm_campaign=vertical-daily-news&utm_medium=email&utm_term=todays-news&utm_content=V1

FYI: 206 trans oil level, I had a machine once that the sight glass would keep filling up and after telling an engineer about the problem he was yelling "NO WAY! THAT'S IMPOSSIBLE!" so we drained it below the dot and sure enough after a test flight the sight glass was again full on level ground. Engine oil down too. Now we were "both" convinced. As it turned out, the problem was a bad seal in the freewheel unit that allowed oil to transfer from the engine to the transmission.

Thanks for your keen observation, maybe try reading the initial post again.

I started looking through my log books and found the highest day was a 13.3. That was on a tree planting job and part of 43.2 in 4 days. I found 4 or 5 different weeks in the 50 - 60 range on either large fires or tree planting but the busiest was 68.9 in 7 days and I ended up with 99.5 hours on the 12th day, It was a large tree planting job with about 50 planters and a lot of distance between the various blocks so there was always work to do. I was happy to be that busy with a Bell 206 at the time.

I generally worked straight through from May to Sept and I would average somewhere between 350 - 450 hours.

I'm sure many pilots have had some exceptionally busy periods during their careers that may have likely contributed to the flight duty limits we have today. What was your busiest day, week, month or year prior to the current limitations?