I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
Lots of fun, miss jumping out of perfectly good airframes. Did 25 jumps from static line to hop and pops then 18 free falls with a little relative work in formation... life goes on, glad I had the experience of being under canopy and in the wind. Delta position from 14,000 is a blast!
Court; in one of my past lives, I worked as an A&P mechanic in a Helicopter Logging operation. Looking to the left of your buddy's boot, I see what looks like an S-64 sitting on the ground. The Sky Crane is a remarkable machine that is also maintenance intensive (at least the ones in Logging are). As your photos show, they are also very useful in constructing towers and structures in areas that have difficult access.
One of our better jobs was pouring concrete bases for ski lift towers up near Kalispell, Montana.
Anyhow, those photos brought back some good memories.
It’s fun . . . But, like 2 of my other hobbies. . . Terribly unforgiving of mistakes.
We primarily use 3 helicopters.
The MD-500 is used for pulling wire, moving people to tower tops and shuffling them and as a platform to stand on the skid and work live lines. It’s the light duty work.
For pure lifting . . . We use the Kaman K-max Synchropter that has dual angled main rotors and not tail rotor. I can lift 6,000# and we can pour LOTS of concrete (thing 12’ diameter hole 70’ deep) in a short time. It’s only 36” wide and is all about lifting. It’s popular with loggers.
For big lifting we go with the Erickson Sky Crane. It’s got a pair of Pratt and Whitney JFTD12-4A motors. Our only mod is adding a sheet of ballistic armor between the engines so if we loose a rotor it doesn’t take out the other. We can lift 20,000# and, by leaving some fuel on the ground. . . And with favorable DA ... I can sneak up to 22,000#. I’ve got tons of amazing, a couple scary ones that served as “lessons learned” pictures and videos. The fun days are when we’re working. . . . Sometime with tolerances in the mm range, in energized lines. We use 3 pilots on board.
Fun stuff.
Flying survey to take phots I. The MD-500 next week.
Rick- someday you should read the book (Dune) and then the 5-6 after it. I read them all, twice. Herbert's other sci-fi worlds aside from Dune are all pretty awesome too. I used to blow an afternoon every now and then at a great used book/CD store, found gobs of great sci-fi authors. David Brin's "Uplift War" series is great too.
Whoops, back OT... I'd LOVE to learn to hang-glide. Down almost to Chattanooga on TN411, there's a sailplane/glider port... always wanted to try that too. Not sure how active they are- tried to contact them a while back, no answer. Once hung out with a friend rappelling over the Tennessee River, fun times. Dunno about sky-diving... I'd probably do it once I screwed on some big balls. What's that 3 in 1 fun thing that folks have figured to do out on the West Coast? Seems it's skydiving or gliding, then dropping to sailboarding on the beach... I'll try to figure that one out unless someone here beats me.
Heck, I'd be happy with a little Sunfish sailboat or something similar.
