Whitestone

http://www.911hardfacts.com/report_12.htm#

I DID answer your question, and I quote, "Manufacture a villain, one who incidentally has changed is appearance a few times in the ten years or so he has been paraded in front of us." I guess I should have spoken more plainly for your benefit... it's hard to show someone, dead or alive if they never existed. That isn't to say that a person with that name didn't exists, just not the person they made him out to be. Show a picture of a man with a beard and a turban hundreds if not thousands of times and tell the public he's the enemy (yes, a guy is waging a war on the most powerful and tec

The free thinkers among us will always question the government. I suspect that in pre-world war 2 Germany some questioned whether it was in fact Hitler's own Brown Shirts that attacked the parliament which gave Hitler the excuse to institute martial law to "protect" the people. Fast forward to today, we have a massive military industrial complex that is suckling off the taxpayers teat. With the end of the cold war there was the possibility of an end to hyper military expenditures but this is not in the interest of those who profit from it so what to do... Manufacture a villain, one who in

Well if you want to believe that when you die you go to Heaven, or Elysium or where every it is your specific religion sends you as a reward for venerating some invisible all encompassing god then fine. From what I have seen so far, other than that somewhat questionable reward it doesn't offer much except the fuzzy warm feeling that things just don't end when you die. There are those of course who use it as a tool (usually on the uneducated though not less intelligent) to control and tax them. One other "minor" trait is that it is used to turn women into second class citizens in most cases.

AND a big thanks to our politicians and bureaucrats for screwing both the soldiers and the taxpayers. http://www.casr.ca/ft-selling-off-chinooks.htm Don't get me started on what B$ the whole democracy for Afghanistan, 9-11/Bin Laden thing was/is, no kidding they didn't show the body after he was "killed", many believe that he never even existed but was a contrivance of the Americans in order to justify giving tax money to defense contractors while at the same time taking away the civil liberties of its own citizens. Time will tell where this whole thing is going. Remember how Hitle

...and this is what "8 out of 10 found work" looks like in most cases. Sorry to hear that DirtyBH47. My experience was similar, the old "work hard on the ground and you will get your chance" carrot. I had two false starts for a total of three years of no flying but I could clean ANYTHING like nobody's business, LOL. Trucks, cars, hangar (or is it hanger?) floors, snow from parking lots, even wrench on rotary and fixed wing, build fences, haul gravel, and all sorts of other $#!% not related to flying helicopters in the least way. I was the same way, running out of money but managed to get

Come on, you know you were thinking it too... ha ha ha

I'd be curious to know where all those graduates from big schools or any school are, I haven't seen a 100 hour pilot in years myself. What are they doing, driving trailers delivering fuel, sweeping, washing, answering the phone, carpentry, mowing the lawn, roofing (did i miss anything)? One thing for sure, they aren't flying, at least not within my eye site! The biggest joke in this industry is the same schools that take money from Canadians and painting them such a rosy picture (it's a good time to do your license, the [insert name of certain demographic] is about to retire...) are the sam

Trucking, I have contemplated the similarities many times and the great differences. Know a few guys who have jumped ship and gone to work in the patch, good for the most part except for the night shift which studies show is quite literally killing people as we human mammals were not meant to be awake at night. The seasonal slowdowns are a drag for sure not to mention the cyclical (pardon the pun) ups and downs of the years, this makes it very stressful for the VFR pilot. At the end of the day you have to be able to pay your bills. W.

There are very few of us who did not at some point feel your pain but working for free is only going to bite you and it bites us in the butt right now. The simple truth is as someone on here long ago pointed out that there are certain jobs that have great perceived curb appeal or coolness factor and pilot, be it fixed (less cool) or helicopter is one of them. This caused more people than the industry needs to do the training and there you go, an oversupply of freshly minted pilots. Training isn't driven by a demand for pilots but by the idea of it and a slick sales pitch by the schools doesn

I think that this is something in the back of everyones mind, more so when we park at an unsecure location: "did someone mess with my machine...?". W.

If I remember correctly, we could only charge the machine out at cost. Once in a while there might have been a little side trip for someone that got billed as excavator time... but I don't remember that well any more, it was a big company and I used to get a call to go somewhere and pick up someone or something... never asked anyone for ID. The nice thing was, no paperwork, just the log book. As Skidz pointed out, there is no anual training required and it sure showed when I got back in the mainstream... Even if it's just your pick-up truck, you should be going to a school and doing y

This is just another example of the bar being lowered. It's like the box stores who don't give anyone full time so they don't have to pay benefits, it's like your favorite donut and coffee shop hiring all their staff from the Philippines, it's like all the security guards being hired from Nigeria or some place like that. It's about tour companies not paying their employees. It has nothing to do with giving someone an opportunity and everything to do with giving yourself an unfair competitive advantage and putting more money in your pocket. I think we all know how most "charities" work thes

Can't speak to how others do or did their maintenance but years back I worked for a non-aviation company that had a huge contract that required helicopter support. They crunched the numbers after using a commercial operator for a while and decided to get a machine of their own. It was privately registered and maintained to a commercial standard by an approved maintenance organization and other than not doing a PPC I conduced ops like a "regular" commercial operator. ...other than the fact that I hauled only people who worked for our company and their freight. Sure pissed off a couple of th