External Loads-what Have You Dropped?

[T tail]

This maybe an urban legend but I was told this years ago and it made me laugh..Years ago Mr helicopter pilot was doing some work in a 500 and somewhere along the way he had to lift something. Making it easy he opened his door to let it flap in the wind, unfortunately while leaning wayout the door it flapped forward and rapidly back resulting in his helmet going thru the perspex..Now Mr pilot is in a dilemma on what to do, the only (since his gentex wouldn't fit back thru the hole) thing he could do was to find somewhere to land with his head jammed thru the perspex and extract his head from his door

BELIEVE IT OR NOT

 

Cheers TT

[matt_as350]

Would of loved to see the look on his engineer's or ground crew's faces when he landed back

[Skids Up]

Would of loved to see the look on his engineer's or ground crew's faces when he landed back

 

Never happen!

 

There is no way you would land where anyone else would get to see that!!

[Skidz]

Heard the same story about a pilot getting his head "wedged" in a wedge window...

[alphonso]

It was a nice summer day and I was longlining in the 206. I forget if it was hot or if the loads were heavy but all the doors were off.

 

I had my head out on approach beside the powerlines watching the load 100' below. Out of the corner of my eye I catch a flicker of movement. The slow motion camera kicks in as I watch the modular right hand rear seat cushion catch a bit of wind, wave good bye and jump out of the machine.

 

Being a stellar pilot I catch the suicidal cushion on my bear paw (yeah, I couldn't believe it either). A nice slow approach into staging, watching not only the cushion with a death wish perched on the bear paw but the load, the trees and the powerline. Good thing the slow mo camera was still working otherwise I might have suffered from overload.

 

I justified not filling out any paperwork by reasoning nothing really happened. However as there are now AD's out about flying with doors off and seat cushions installed I guess I wasn't the only one. Needless to say I always take the cushions out now.

 

Its better to be lucky than good but its best to be both.

[canook pilot]

Had a horse fall out of a sling back sometime. It didn't make it!

[w squared]

I haven't dropped anything yet (not surprising given that I'm not a pilot yet) but...

 

I was working as a shooter on a heli-assist seismic operation close to Spirit River, AB. We hadn't been able to get the pilot that we normally used (who was an absolute artist with a longline) and had to use one that had never flown for a seismic company before. Given that we were "breaking in" a new pilot, I went out of my way to make all of the flagging on the ground oversized and very easy to see.

 

As I was returning after flagging the first line, I came into a clearing just as the pilot was entering a hover, and lowering the the three bags he had on into position. I was walking towards the bags, waiting to being laying out the gear.

 

At that point the pilot made a small mistake in the cockpit. Instead of releasing hook #1 on the carousel, he punched off the longline. :shock: This was more than a little disconcerting given that I was about 10 feet away from the carousel at the time.

 

Luckily for all involved, I was able to avoid the falling longline and pear ring, and the clearing was large enough that the pilot could easily set down the 206 and give me a chance to reconnect the longline. No harm done.

Edited November 12, 2005 by w squared

[Murdoch]

I remembered this thread when I saw some of the responses to "Longlining the shack" and I thought I'd bring this to the top (been done once already too, but hey, why not). I had a crappy weekend and I needed a good chuckle.

[koalaa119]

I remembered this thread when I saw some of the responses to "Longlining the shack" and I thought I'd bring this to the top (been done once already too, but hey, why not). I had a crappy weekend and I needed a good chuckle.

 

 

Thanks for bringing it back. I have thoroughly enjoyed the laughs. I have up to this time avoided losing anything, but seen it happen once with a 50 gal drum of water, which exploded when it hit the ground.

 

I too have given in to the pressures of the drill crew and tried to move a drill in 40 knots. All was going well until I was positioning the tower. Of course we were down a man :down: so there was one guy hooking me and one guy receiving. When I brought the tower in to him it was facing the wrong way. We were half way down a 200' slope and the downdraft and wind gust were keeping me very busy to say the least. (Did I mention that my fuel guage was a stick and I was running on the higher end of fuel because of the lack of accuracy related with the stick) Unfortunately as I was struggling to bring it in the ground crew ( who only spoke french and I don't ) grabbed the base and pushed with all his might to spin it around. Before I knew what was going on it was coming around and I watched as it took him right off the floor. Of course he radioed up to me with great expresion and a few hand gestures of which I understood nothing accept the hand gestures. Finally set the thing on the floor and came back with the other guy to position it. At the end of the move, I got a call from a drill foreman from one of the other drills wondering what the heck was my problem. I mentioned that I had a brain fart and in the future drill moves would have to wait until the wind was more reasonable and there were at least two on the receiving end for placing the tower. After a slight pause I explained what the guy had done and I found out that both guys on the ground were in there first season of drilling with a helicopter. Thanks !! :down:

 

Oh the joys.

[coastdog]

A long timer I worked with years ago was telling his war stories about some of the interesting things he's done with helicopters. One time he convinced this salmon farm company that moving fish with a helicopter would be a fast and economical alternative to boats. They didn't have any special tanks like they do now - they used a bambi bucket! Load 'em up at one end with a bit of water to keep the fish alive and just dump the load right into the pen at the other end. So they do this this all summer, flew thousands of salmon. Worked real good too.

 

Couple of years later he's flying this insurance guy off to a claim out in the bush somewhere and in friendly conversation he's talking about some of his more unusual claims - like the time this woman calls and says she's driving down the highway, minding her own business, when this 30 pound salmon slams into the hood of her car ........