Great footage taken at the Helicopter pilot school in France. The video is a bit old and shows training procedures with the Aerospatiale SA 318C Alouette II including takeoffs, landings, and no flare autorotations. The guys flying are military pilots from the french Army.
Archive for Helicopters
Nothing really special here… just a guy in a helicopter collecting passengers. The special thing about it is the place. Check it out and see the great skill of the helicopter pilot.
Ground resonance is a hazardous condition during touchdown or at other times when the helicopter is running while sitting on the ground. A series of shocks to the landing gear can pass through to the rotor disk and cause an imbalance in the rotor system. Under extreme conditions, the imbalance causes violent oscillations that quickly build and result in catastrophic damage of the entire airframe. While filming an episode for MacGyver this Gazelle helicopter pilot encountered the first symptoms of ground resonance and managed to recover from this potentially dangerous situation by taking off. During takeoff, the helicopters door opened in flight but the footage was kept and was aired in the episode.
Tiff Needell, the host of the television show “5th gear” takes his yellow Porsche 911 GT3 against a Gazelle helicopter, in what he calls a race of speed and agility. Anyone can do a drag race against a jet fighter… but what about doing a full lap on the circuit?
Bernd van Doornick had some 22,000 total flying hours and is credited with more than 5,000 people rescued. September 1, 2007 marked his last flight at an air show, Bernd van Doornick showing the crowd gathered at Bex (Switzerland) what an Aerospatiale SA 315B Lama can do. The Lama holds to this day the absolute altitude record for all types of helicopters since 1972: 12,442 m. Quite an impressive helicopter, and with a skilled man at the controls this helo can do impressive stuff.
Great way to depart the drop off point. Nothing like taking your helicopter into a monumental dive over the cliff face. Yeah… a pure adrenalin rush. After watching this video I thought to myself there is nothing I’d like to do more than to switch places with that lucky bastard flying that Ecureuil helicopter.
The pilot of this Polish built Mil Mi-2 helicopter came in to land with a high rate of descent, stalling the helicopter close to the ground and as a result the helicopter bit the dust. Fortunately nobody was hurt.
Blue Eagles display at Shoreham a decade ago. The Blue Eagles are one of few professional helicopter aerobatic teams in the world and they fly four Aerospatiale Gazelle helicopters as well as one Westland Lynx helicopter, famous for doing loops and rolls at the various air shows the team performs.
Both of these helicopters are high tech mean machines built to surpass any rival. Airwolf is probably the most advanced helicopter ever built being able to outrun jet fighters and fly halfway around the world. Blue Thunder is the helicopter intended for surveillance and crowd control missions and has powerful armament, stealth technology that allows it to fly virtually undetected and other accouterments. So who will win?
The helicopter in question is an Aerospatiale SA330 Puma. The pilot in question is French and if you have visited this site before, you probably know by now that if the words insane, helicopter, Puma and French are thrown in together it can only mean one thing: somewhere in Chad this French pilot had a very good time while at the same time entertaining the guys on the ground. Lucky guys!!! For the rest of us couch potatoes, well… at least we have one very impressive video with this truly crazy low level pass.
