Light on the Skids

Helicopter media - an update

I got a very nice email a while back from helicopter legend Dennis Kenyon. He politely pointed out to me that in a previous post where I listed helicopter magazines I had left out the rotary coverage in Loop. The helicopter news and features in Loop are often better than other GA magazines, not least becasue Dennis himself is a contributor.
It's a shame there is no dedicated section on the Loop website for helicopter news - perhaps that's something Loop should consider.

Must get the rotors turning

I must post more often on this blog - 18 months between posts is a bit useless! Anyway, I'be been prompted to inject some vigour into Light on the Skids by two very nice emails from people who have stumbled across this site recently.
Anyway, time to review my original plan for Light on the Skids (news for helicopter pilots) which is clearly too tall an order for me (am just too busy with two businesses and other committments). So I'm just going to treat it as a personal rotary aviation discussion. Maybe that way I'll be a bit more prolific.

A good excuse for a trip to California

I did the Robinson factory safety course last week, in California.

You can do this course in the UK, but I say go to Torrance and do it there. It's longer and more detailed, plus you've got a better chance of working on your captain's tan. And you get to meet Frank. Excellent.

Helicopter prejudice

I've not posted for ages, no excuse really other than struggling to get the time to fly let along write about it. But I was prompted to blow the dust off Light on the Skids today by an seriously frustrating experience.

I live in the centre of a small city. It's great, but I would really like more space one day - perhaps a garden big enough to land a helicopter.

I've been thinking about that a lot lately. So it was pleasantly surprising to come back from a cancelled Jetranger lesson to see details of a nice looking rural property had popped through my letterbox.

I rang the agent and asked how big the garden was. "Not really big enough for horses," came the reply, and I rather stupidly responded: 'But big enough to land a helicopter." The agent said she'd call back to let me know when I could view the property.

Half an hour later the call came back and said: "I'm afraid there isn't suitable to land a helicopter." Having taken a closer look at the details, which included six photos showing clear rural approaches and enough space for to do a five-aircraft fly-in at the property, I said: "It looks like there is plenty of room to me." At this point the agent confessed that the vendor did not want to sell the property to a helicopter pilot in case it 'upset the neighbours'.

I dug a little deeper and apparently there are already a few other nearby residents who land helicopters in their gardens and that this was a bit of a local issue. Explaining that I didn't even own an aircraft and that I would land in the garden only occasionally had no effect whatsoever - the strength of anti-helicopter feeling was too great for compromise.

So - there you have it, if you are looking for a place big enough to land in the garden just remember not to mention the fact you are a helicopter pilot until the purchase is complete!

Weather - my excuse

It's rubbish that I haven't posted for so long - I blame the weather. Isn't that what we VFR aviators do in the UK, blame the weather?

On that subject, I did the Met for Aviators course at the Met Office in Exeter a few weeks ago. Excellent stuff. Now I can tell excactly how bad our weather is going to be!

Seriously, I'd recommend the course to any pilot. At the very least you get to brush up on reading TAFs, METARs and those pesky 215s. And you appreciate the work that goes into forecasting.

Perception pervades over truth for heli safety

My father, who spent his entire career in the aviation industry, once said to me: "There is no such thing as truth, only perception." I think he'd just been on a course, probably to prepare him for his seat on the board.

Nowhere is this more 'true' than in the public perception of helicopter safety.

There are some friends of mine who will not get in a helicopter with me. They do not have a fear of airline flying. It's not a personal thing about my abilities as a pilot (though I would understand this if they were more aware of the gulf between a 95-hour and a 1,500-hour pilot). Instead, it is to do with a general perception that flying helicopters is dangerous.

So, I set about looking at the facts to see if they supported the perception.

From the CAA, I discovered the fatal accident rate for helicopters in 2005 was 15 per million hours flown. This is typical for recent years, the rate being very stable.

From the Office of National Statistics, I found the Department of Transport reported a road accident death rate of 55 per 100 million vehicle kilometres. 52 per cent of these were car users, the rest made up by pedestrians, cyclists, motorcyclists, bus users, lorries and other vehicles.

Assuming an average helicopter journey speed of 70 knots (130 km/hour), this works out as 15 deaths per 130 million kilometres travelled.

This extrapolates to 11.5 deaths per 100 million kilometres for helicopter travel, compared to 28.5 deaths per 100 million kilometres for car travel. You are two and a half times more likely to die in a car than in a helicopter.

I know how I'd prefer to travel.

Helidays - and why not?

I popped into HELiDAYS at Weston-super-Mare today. I just thought I'd check it out as it appears to be the only helicopter-specific event in the UK.

Getting there was a pleasant cross country nav on a beautiful summer's day. It was nice to chat to Yeovil Radar just prior to them closing down for a three week break (nice eh?). And once I arrived I found out how tricky it is to understand what a marshaller wants you to do!

It was a shame a few lads chose to ignore the beach wardens' instructions and stay in the sea, therefore causing the Navy Lynxs' display to be cancelled. But despite that hiccup I think it's great to see the UK helicopter fraternity getting together.

Maybe next year I'll stay for more than three hours and go to the pilots' barbecue, which is apparently 'legendary'.

In the meantime, check out the pics in my airshows photo album.

Mixed impressions from Farnborough

I'm not sure what I expected from last week's Farnborough air show, but I have to say it was a bit of a mixed bag.

The Bell/Boeing V-22 Osprey tiltrotor, making its UK debut at Farnborough this year, was the star of the show in my view. I have always been quite skeptical of this machine, thinking that despite it's design objectives it would be an inevitable compromise between the benefits of fixed-wing and rotary - an opinion hardened by the difficult gestation this creation has experienced.

But to see the V-22 zoom across the flight line in full 'fixed-wing' mode, then moments later be in the hover on the main runway, makes you realise how flexible this thing could be. It didn't seem to be as dynamic in the hover as a helicopter - spot-turns looked lethargic - but you could see how this thing could get a bunch of special forces in and out of a remote place with ease.

At the other end of the spectrum was the AH-64D Apache Longbow. A very dull display made up of maneuvres far to high off the ground to be exciting and puctuated by the momentary thrill of a couple of inversions. I'd like to see our helicopter display ace Dennis Kenyon come out of retirement to show Boeing how to show off an Apache. I think he'd do a lot more stuff sideways at 50 feet, that's what these machines are all about.

On the static display side of things, Agusta had the best range of machines on show. It was on this stand that I noticed what a lovely aircraft the A119 is in the flesh. Sleek, purposeful - a lot of the presence of it's 'twin' brother the A109. I guess this is up against the Bell 407, which is basically an upgraded LongRanger. What would you rather have, a four-bladed LongRanger or a single engine A109 with skids? I know what I'd choose, it's just a shame they called it the Koala.

The big trade show

It's the Farnborough International Airshow next week and I'm aiming to go along and take a look at the pretty reasonable selection of static helicopters which will be on display.

I'll take my camera too so expect some pictures on this site soon.

A lot is said about the Farnborough show having become more of a trade show than an air display - but there's nothing wrong with that. We may not do that much end-to-end aircraft development and manufacture in the UK any more but to have a major international aviation trade show in the calendar can only be a good thing for the UK aviation industry.

What do you get when you multiply 22 by 2?

I proudly presented myself at the Airport House, the CAA's Gatwick home, last Friday to get my R44 rating stuck in my licence.

I must say, I've heard people whingeing about the CAA - mostly professional pilots - but my experience has been excellent so far. I guess as a private pilot occasional interactions with the CAA's beuraocracy can be almost fun. But for the professional pilot, when your livlihood depends on the paperwork being right, dealing with the CAA could be almost as axiety-inducing as an engine failure.

Anyway, back to the R44. During my PPL training - on the R22 of course - I always thought of the R44 as simply a four-seat 22. How wrong I was. I admit my experience of types is limited, but the R44 is an incredible aircraft. Powerful and flexible. And autorotative characteristics that bear little relation to it's fiendish little brother. I guess that's a good job too - because I'm now looking for a baby seat that fits the R44.