A whole hour’s BBC documentary dedicated to the Sea King… Good on you The Beeb!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01r1z3g

Look what I came across while walking through Hyde Park… Talking to the co pilot got me pretty envious. 6000 hours, most of which were off shore oil rigs before landing a job with Hertfordshire Police and then the London air ambulance. And yes, he still loves it.

I was enjoying one of those rare moments I get to just surf the net, when I came across this:

I, as a newbie at least, was seriously impressed. For those that don’t know, that is how to land a helicopter in the event of an engine failure.

Sent this by a work collegue, I was always going to like it. Mountains, snowboarding, to loves of mine, but it was the slow motion shots and maneuvers that the various helicopters in this video that impressed me most:

www.artofflightmovie.com

A great overview of what is involved:
http://www.britishhelicopterassociation.org/helicopter_pilot.aspx

I was warned about this… ‘British weather is unpredictable’. I know that! ‘Always call the flight school before leaving for the lesson’.  Pretty sound advice, so I actually checked the forecast the day before only to see the worst rain forecast for the whole month. I called and the receptionist said she’d get my planned instructor to call me back.

When she called she confirmed that conditions definitely would not be suitable for a trial flight so we postponed for the following day. Checking once more, the following evening we ended up postponing one again, but not before I had aa long chat with another pilot who told me a fair bit about his career so far and how the ‘discovery day’ was much better way to get insight into flying than the standard one hour trial flight. More excited than ever, I’ve not got another week to wait until I can get my hands on that cyclic!