On Thu, Dec 17, 2009 at 06:58:49PM -0500, John Sessoms wrote: > > The second helicopter is a heavy lift cargo desgn. It was meant to lift > a standard shipping container. Straddles it, hooks on & lifts. The water > container/dispenser with the snorkel is a package system suspended > beneath the fuselage on this one.
I've often considered those guys have to be some of the best pilots around; it's hard enough to hold a helicopter on hover ten feet or so above a lake when the weight stays constant, let alone when they are gulping up tons of water as fast as they can pump it! But then, all helicopter pilots are crazy. I'm of an age that several of my co-workers at DEC (and at other places) had served in Vietnam, and it was always the helicopter pilots (and especially the rescue chopper guys) that had the most hair-raising stories. Another good place for crazy chopper guys is working for the power company. Holding a bird steady, close enough that a guy sitting on the skids can reach out and work on the power lines, with the rotors spinning with maybe ten feet total vertically between 500KV lines? How crazy do you have to be? -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
