Crazy Helicopter Ride Stories

I don't have a personal story of one in flight (I hate flying, ha), but one day I was riding my mountain bike at a local state park, and was inundated by just a wall of sound.  I came up on a clearing, and a branch of military (National Guard if I had to guess) was doing 'drop and go''s in the field-  Basically laying 2 Blackhawk's down on the ground, a full staff of soldiers running out to do a bunch of things I'm neither smart nor experienced enough to understand, while the helo's busted back up into the air.  Then a few minutes later, they'd come back around, and load everyhting up, seemingly as quickly as humanly possible.  

They are much more agile (and loud) than I expected.  It  was pretty damn cool to be onlya few hundred feet away from it all. 

In reply to golfduke :

That's pretty cool. Our USAF base is home to a squadron or two of B-52 nuclear bombers and 150 Minute Man III nuclear missiles. Whenever they transport an actual nuke through town you know it because of the extremely large military convoy which includes two UH-1 Huey helicopters, one hovering high above traveling at the convoy's slow speed and one buzzing at tree top height banking at extreme angles and circling the convoy at high speed like some fighter plane, both helicopters with their doors open and soldiers manning large machine guns looking for something to shoot at.

Once at the missile sight, there would be a gaggle of soldiers laying in the road ditch pointing all of their M16s at every car that drove by as well as a bunch of Humvees with their 50 caliber Brownings.

Kind of unnerving.  Definitely wouldn't want to own an old white Toyota pickup with orange front fenders.

In reply to NermalSnert (Forum Supporter) : 

My condolences for the loss of your Uncle.  I remember that flight was heading offshore from Amelia heliport to do crew change for a crew of sandblaster/painters.  All the PHI S-76 pilots I rode with back then were professionals who took pride in how they operated and did not take chances. I know it is little comfort, but some good changes came out of that mishap.

Oshkosh, 2022. Hellspawn is now mobile, making choices of what he wants to see. Helos. I think he might be a rotor head. We take him over to an AH-64 to look inside the cockpit. Crew chief asks him some questions and the boy answers as best 2 year old can. Chief likes those answers. Says to him, "You can start her up, if you know what button to push."

I say, "No, Chief, I cant let you do that. He's gonna know, and then we'll have a 2 year old with a functioning attack helicopter." Chief starts laughing.

In reply to HundredDollarCar :

Thanks. Right after that happened I did a bit of reading about it. Some of the things discussed were the, ahem, after market windshield, the lack of flight helmets because they thought it intimidated the passengers, and a few other things. It's been a while. I was on the boats 2 more years after that. I told my crew dispatcher that I was done crew changing by helicopter. We had to fly literally the next crew change.

golfduke said:

Basically laying 2 Blackhawk's down on the ground, a full staff of soldiers running out to do a bunch of things I'm neither smart nor experienced enough to understand, while the helo's busted back up into the air.  Then a few minutes later, they'd come back around, and load everyhting up, seemingly as quickly as humanly possible.  

 

We called that infield exfield. I was once just riding along on a training flight for an MC-130H. The pilot asked the crew if they were up on all their monthly training. The load master needed some infields/exfields so they landed at a civilian air field that was closed for the night. Lowered the ramp and I jumped out as they took back off. We did that a few times until the load master was current. I like to say that when I was in the Air Force I once took over an air field all by myself. 

My uncle flew in Vietnam and flew for a number of companies that did petroleum flights.  I got to fly with him a lot in Jet Rangers.

When my dad had a 911, I remember us 'chasing' my uncle very early one morning on a empty state highway.  We were doing about 100, and my uncle was pulling away from us at a pretty good rate.

My close call came in an old bomber though.  I went up in a B-17 known as Nine-O-Nine.  It may or may not have been a plane my grandfather worked on.  I have a lot of his nose art photos from then, but not of that plane.  It was a nice comfortable flight, right at sunset too, along the coastline.  A year and a half later, it crashed, killing all aboard, when the rudder cable snapped as the plane was on final.

Reading a lot of the info about how much the group that had that plane ran on an absolute shoe string budget...

Didn't stop me from going up in a T-6 Texan about two years ago though.  He even let me take the stick for about ten minutes.  Incredibly agile plane.

bearmtnmartin (Forum Supporter) said:

I have a cousin who is a helicopter mechanic. One of his friend did not tighten the Jesus nut. You all know that that is?

On some helicopters there is literally one nut holding the main rotor on. Kind of need to tighten it and not hope the night shift gets to it.

I used to work near Aberdeen Proving Grounds and Edgewood Arsenal.  At the time (1990s) they were doing Cobra refits.  Standard practice was for the test pilot and chief mechanic for each refit ship to get in, wind it up to full RPM, and throw the collective into it like sidestepping the clutch.  Those things would scream and then suddenly jump 5000 ft straight up.

I've been up in helos several times, but never anything that interesting.  Probably the last time would have been 1991-ish.  DW and I were sitting outside one summer afternoon when a Jet Ranger did a low pass over our house and landed in our back yard.  Turns out it was our neighbor (himself an interesting guy), a long-time pilot who was putting in hours for his rotary wing ticket.  We spent the afternoon sightseeing from minimum legal altitude.

David S. Wallens said:

Anyone else remember VertiBird?

I had one and it was my favorite toy until I got a motorcycle. I flew it so much my I wore it out and my dad had to refurbish it.  He also built a 120v>6V power convertor for it because I was tearing through the D cell batteries at an expensive rate.

I was in civil air patrol in middle school and high school. We did a 1 week bootcamp up the coast from me. They took us up in a Chinook for a demo flight. That was cool! Can't see much out but it was a unique ride. On the way to my kitchen duty I was pulled off and told to follow one the uppers in charge. He said they needed a few guys to fill seats on a Blackhawk. Now that was an experience. 
 

It left enough of an impression that I took a demo flight at a local flight school a few years back. R44 I think. Awesome experience! I can't afford flight school right now but I hope to one day. I still watch every helicopter that flies overhead until it's out of view. So rad

Cool, get your license if you can. Do what ever it takes.

My best friend from high school went to flight school back in our college days. He eventually flew C-130s for the Air National Guard back in the Iran-Contra days. He also took me up on an earlier solo ride required to get his private pilots license back in high school. Not sure if I was really allowed to ride along, but the clouds started to sock in and kept pushing us down closer and closer to the ground (non-instrument only). We finally found a highway and followed that back to our airport. I became worried after I read the look on his face as we where dodging the TV station's guy wires. 

I also know a family of aviation pioneers that I am trying to write a short story about that where legend folk aviation heroes in these parts.

When I was younger we booked a sightseeing helicopter tour at the Grand Canyon. The crazy part was that the helo had a glass floor.  I'll never forget approaching the rim of the canyon at speed then the feeling that the floor had instantly just fallen out from under me as we flew over the rim. 
 

Took my breath away. 

One of my best neighbor friends was an Army combat helicopter pilot in Vietnam. 
 

THAT man has amazing stories!

In reply to SV reX :

Try and get some before its too late.

My wife was the attending on call (for her specialty) through a hurricane passing near us off the coast at our local hospital some years ago. We're rural, there's a bridge that closes due to high winds between us and the bigger, better equipped hospital that they transfer to for more critical care. She needed to transfer a patient, life or death type transfer, and the bridge would not allow ground transport across. After calls up the chain on both the medical side of things, and the bridge management side of things (they wouldn't relent), bigger, better equipped hospital said they'd talked to helicopter life flight crew and that they'd be willing to give it a shot. 

Wife was used to dealing with them as they frequently handled more routine transfers. Said the crew members are usually cool as a cucumber. When they landed that day, one flight nurse walked in, said nothing to anyone, went straight to the bathroom, looked pretty green. Another crew member got out, got down on hands and knees, and kissed the ground. But they loaded her patient and successfully went back to bigger, better equipped hospital, and the patient ended up being fine.

So, I wasn't on the flight, but I did see it fly over both ways (our house sits right under the flight path between the two hospitals) and kudos to those guys/gals.

Wow, that sounds like the Cod scene in Hunt for Red October...

I used to occasionally ride in the back of S76s. Most of the pilots were similar to NermalSnert's uncle. One time they started taxiing over to the side of the pad rather than just lifting to a hover.  For a second I thought we'd end up over the side 8 stories down.

No connection, but this guy who appears to be a pilot of my hospital's program is building a helo in his basement!!

https://youtu.be/AuZlG1NIX1Q?si=2EEy95WvzeylkPyH

In reply to XLR99 (Forum Supporter) :

I can picture that scene to a T.

What's the matter Commander? You don't like flying, huh? Aw, this is nothing! You should've been with us five, six months ago! Whoa! You talk about puke! We ran into a hailstorm over the Sea of Japan. Everybody's retching their guts out! The pilot shot his lunch all over the windshield, and I barfed on the radio! Shorted it out completely! And it wasn't that lightweight stuff either, it was that chunky industrial weight puke!

VolvoHeretic said:

In reply to SV reX :

Try and get some before its too late.

Absolutely!  
 

I have drinks with him every other week or so.