Longest Sling Job

[DGP]

Seeing that we are on the slinging subject again...lets go for the furthest slinging job...I will enter my bid first...slung a 15 ft boat 178 miles...stopped for fuel once...lets hear from you guys! :up:

[cap]

Eight full drums of JP-4, 300 miles in the Arctic Islands. Got to within 2 miles of destination, someone called me on the HF, I pressed wrong button, lost load from 3000' and said the magic four-letter word over the HF. All the HF's had a very good range at that time and from far and wide all over the Arctic, I heard immediately on my HF......."I think Cap just dropped a load folks".....followed by other "supposedly" funny comments and chuckles. We all knew each other well and got along great with the crews at Atlas Aviation in those days (they were great with the "needle"), but I suppose someone has to supply the humour in isolated places and it was my turn that day.

 

I'm not exactly sure if this qualifies as an answer to your question DGP because of the fact I never completed that trip to it's normal end, but let's say that it MIGHT......... with an asterik......usually followed-up by a toothy grin by the reader.

 

I might also add, that that was in the day when the vast majority of my peers slung their loads with hook C/B "pulled" in case of just such a happening. I was one of the few that didn't partake because months before I had lost a good buddy, Dave Ramscart, at Sherrard Bay on Melville Island because he had to get rid of the NodWell flat-deck that he was slinging and couldn't.......because he had the C/B "pulled" and it cost him his life right on appraoch to the airport at Sherrard Bay.........and I was standing there and watched him "go-in" right in front of me. All that was left of that 204 was the right skid tube.

[Skidz]

Gee Cap, I'll bet you debated quite awhile whether to post this little gem in this thread or the other one on lost loads...

 

I was really pissing myself laughing, until the last part of course...

[Sexual Chocolate]

I towed a "bird" (survey equipment for those not in the know) from Rankin Inlet to a camp outside of Igloolik. Thats about 450 NM in a straight line. It required 3 fuel stops. That would have been one of my personal longest "ferry flights" with the "Bird". :shock:

 

But that was nothing, another one of our pilots at the start of that job had to tow the bird from Kapaskasing ON. to Pelly Bay in late march of last year. Don't even ask me how many miles that was. Too many for sure.

Thats a mega sling job. :up:

 

In the survey game we will now in this day and age have to do a survey job of as many as 24,000 line KMs. That doesn't include the reflies.

[cap]

Skidz -----oh, my list of dropped loads is very long. My first dropped load was New Years Eve day 1966 in 'Nam'. Sling gear let go on a whole bunch of boxes of "Willy Pete" (white phosphorus shells) and for about 20 minutes it was truly a New Year's fireworks display, but all in white. Nothing like starting-off with a "bang", if you're going to start your "dropping sling loads for whatever reason career".

[DGP]

Hey...makes my boat sling seem pretty sad...300 miles and 450...thats a lot of bobbin and weven...what a go guy's...Cap...I was up at Sharrard Bay back in 81...wasn't much left of that old huey...all I found was one main rotor blade...some dash placardes and doctors rubber gloves..now I have the whole story....keep em comin..... :shock: :up:

[cap]

DGP......didn't know there would have been any of that left at all after all those years. It was one of those flatdecks that the NodWells used to pull around up there for drill pipe, etc. Dave came in going down wind and made his base turn at the south button of the runway. He had a young co-jo with him and as he made the base turn, the load swung back towards the tail-boom, then forward almost level with the pitot tube, then back and almost hit the tail-boom, then the next forward arc took it right up into the M/R blades. Last words heard from him to the co-jo were over the dispatch radio (guess he was squeezing the "talk" button and didn't realize it) were the words "Jump.....J. C., Jump!" (the dispatch radio was "piped" outside the dispatch shack, so I heard it all). That was maybe, at best 100yrds from the dispatch shack and where I was waiting for him. I knew Dave and a lot of others flew their loads with the hook C/B "pulled" and although I never did so, I made a pact with myself then that I'd never even entertain the idea again. Why he didn't "kick-it-off" will forever reamain a mystery, but he was far, far from a "greenhorn" on type or total. That was about this time of the year 1970. I was also the one nominated to get his gear together and go see his wife. Let's say that experience put an exclamation point on the whole thing.

 

Sherrard Bay, Rae Point and the Sabine Penninsula were "the center of the universe" in those days.