Bored...post some pics of flying

[probes]

The “Gnomes”: Timothy & Tabitha go everywhere with me.

And how did they find you?

[G~Man]

And how did they find you?

Long story short:

I flew helicopter tours in Hawaii for 7 years, in an Astar—2 seats up front with me, 4 in back, I used to have “Stitch” from the movie “LILO & Stitch”, in an Elvis suit—-on a surfboard, riding my dash……

I had a rule that kids sit up front with me, and would taunt them to tell me “how high are we”, “How fast we going”, “lets talk about weight and balance”—-Pythagoras etc….. showing them a correlation between the boring stuff they learn in school and the real world…….

One day, I had a “kid” with Downs Syndrome on my flight, he was not high functioning, however, he resonated with Stitch….and his need was greater than mine….he now has Stitch…..

I googled looking for a replacement and found a site at the time with “Gnomads”….. I bought Timothy and the rest is history……

[G~Man]

So I had aa fun flight 2 days ago with a great tight landing spot----this was for PG&E Hydro division landing radio techs to repair an automatic reporting station at one of their measurement places. And yes, the gnomes were there......

Position: 36°55'34.0"N 119°00'42.1"W Elevation around 4,200'

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[Ex-Ascot]

eeek. Did the gnomes refuse to get back on board? Seriously though how did you know if you could land there? Just go down and give it a go?

[G~Man]

eeek. Did the gnomes refuse to get back on board? Seriously though how did you know if you could land there? Just go down and give it a go?

We have LZ plates for most of the places we land when working for Hydro division. They are graded green or yellow, yellow being a high technical difficulty which requires you are trained on the landing site and have landed there with an instructor pilot prior to taking employees down there. This was a last minute flight, I had never landed there, and so I had to drop the guys on another "green" site first and go land there by myself first. I will try attach the plate to this message....

[Ex-Ascot]

Interesting, thank you.

[G~Man]

Couple more today....

Position. N38° 33.53’ W120° 13.0415’. Altitude 5929ft Temperature 26Deg C

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Position N38° 35.93’ W119° 58.4559’ Altitude 7891ft Temperature 19deg C

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.And Moi..

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[G~Man]

And yes....the gnomes were on scene

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[ricardian]

For charlieonesix

[CharlieOneSix]

Thanks ricardian - great video. Tracking and balancing that Mi-26 main rotor system must be an epic adventure!

[G~Man]

Couple from yesterday---I am back in Northern California flying now. These were PG & E Hydro division flights.

Landing spot to inspect a pen stock N41° 01.8688’ W121° 58.5991’

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Yes the gnomes were there
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View behind us after I took off---this is Mount Shasta a little over 14,000 high

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[Ex-Ascot]

Never approached ATH from this angle before.

[G~Man]

Never approached ATH from this angle before.

Perfect, 90% of the time, helicopters approach airports at a 90 degree angle to the runways and cross mid-field for a 270 deg or direct landing on the ramp.

[Hydromet]

eeek. Did the gnomes refuse to get back on board? Seriously though how did you know if you could land there? Just go down and give it a go?

We have LZ plates for most of the places we land when working for Hydro division. They are graded green or yellow, yellow being a high technical difficulty which requires you are trained on the landing site and have landed there with an instructor pilot prior to taking employees down there. This was a last minute flight, I had never landed there, and so I had to drop the guys on another "green" site first and go land there by myself first. I will try attach the plate to this message....

G~Man, Gaging (Gauging) stations can be some of the tightest spots to land, often being at the bottom of steep gorges or having other hazards. We visited one in Bougainville that hadn't been visited for a while, and had some new growth around the pad. The pilot chopped some of the growth away with the rotor. At another one, just over a ridge from the base, most pilots used to circle to gain height to cross the ridge, the do a big loop to come back to the gauging station. One pilot, fresh back from Vietnam, used to take off from the base, fly close to the valley wall to get uplift from the wind blowing up the valley, repeat as necessary, then put the throttle to idle and drop down to the pad, just bringing the revs up again in time to land like a feather at the station.
Another one, having picked up a drum of fuel, slung underneath, from a station, forgot about the recently-installed cableway. Just in time, he dropped the fuel and managed to clear the cable by inches.
A trap for young pilots was landing on wet mine tailings that were almost quicksand to pick up tailings samples. As the samples were loaded the skids tended to sink into the river bed. we always warned the about that, because if it happened, we had to unload the samples, carry them to the new landing spot and reload them.
All good fun in a Bell 47.

[G~Man]

All good fun in a Bell 47.

Yeah, we do have some fun spots like those, especially being heavy sometimes at the beginning of the flight we use the up-flowing winds a lot to gain altitude, some of the spots on the snow courses where we land to check the snow pack are in excess of 10,000.

My boss has a Bell 47 he keeps just for himself---although he is not a pilot:

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And some of the dams we land at are surrounded by wires and bottom of the canyons...

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[Hydromet]

Yes. We had a job just below a dam with a cableway below it. When I spoke to the operator he knew of the cableway and that he had to beware of it. Sadly, he was killed when he hit power lines several years later. When he worked for us he was extremely thorough in all his planning.

[G~Man]

OK, I got to get some pics f my pilots working the other day..... In case you ever wondered how we replace power poles in remote areas.

First we assemble the workers, the poles and the helicopters:

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[G~Man]

Then we lift the workers out to the pole to remove the wires and guide the new pole:

https://youtube.com/shorts/cmAyA850ojQ? ... q58G5MxavE

Then we lift the pole:

https://youtube.com/shorts/9ln6PpWKs24? ... Vvzn_lnPGd

[G~Man]

Oh, I forgot about flying the box of tools out:

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And yes, the gnomes were there too.......

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[Woody]

Meanwhile at LHR

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/c99xx7np5m8o

Quote from an arriving passenger

just landed in on the BA1394 LHR-MAN, the first attempt at landing felt pretty hairy and we abandoned it quite high up and went around for another go. 2nd attempt was shaky but successful, sounds like quite a few pax used the sick bags