Basejumper.com - archive

purely hypothetical ...
... but if u knew how to fly a helicopter u could ...
fly & land your buddies atop of angel falls,
scout a building top before having to hike the stairs with the humidity of curing concrete,
determine the landing sides of an antenna and determine platform heights with your altimeter.
fly your buddies to the top of the norway fjords,
& (imagine this) have someone ask you if u could fly them up to the new river gorge bridge so they could take pictures of it .. ahhh 'i guess so' :)

any other ideas ?

blaine (rotorcraft instructor)
435-313-9373

""""""""Helicopters are without a doubt, by far, and with no competition the coolest things that exist or ever has existed. and possibly ever will.""""""""


-A quote from a random essay I wrote on Helicopters.

but yes, we know this. helicopters can do ANYTHING.

I know you said, "purely hypothetical" and, yes, that would be cool except the cheapest piston engine helicopter you can buy, the R22, starts at $225,000.00 USD. And it only carries two people. Avgas to fill the tanks is over six bucks a gallon.

Almost anything bigger, or with a turbine engine, even used, would be a lot more.

And I'm pretty sure BASE is the one sport where I've met the least rich people. There are a few, but not very many.

A small plane is "almost" as good, at least in the less populated areas, and is definitely cheaper to operate.

But, you'd need to be careful not to wind up like the two BASE jumpers who were out scouting cliff sites when they clipped a wingtip and were killed . . .

NickD

about a year ago, I was visiting a friend. we talked about getting a 4 seat R44 and flying it out to a bridge and/or a cliff.

would have been sweet, but expensive...

hmm heli's are sweet.

if i recall correctly, an r22 burns 9 gals an hour, a r44, fuel injected about 14gals, not bad. apparently those r44 tow the load 'so to speak' pull pretty good but i have never flown one (they still look like a flying sperm to me and i have this little thing about burning AVGAS in anything but my sled)

it can be dangerous shit though... especially when your 'driller' puts a rod through the Main Rotor

had over 1000 hours on this one. she was a nice ride

jeff

http://www.rotorspins.com/sfar_73.htm


I have ten or fifteen heli hours, but my experience with training helicopters is they are pretty useless for anything but training. especially Robinsons. I flew a Schweizer 300 and 333, never a Roby.

and from what I have heard you can get a well used, naked but airworthy, Hughes 500 (coolest heli ever) for around 300k US.

for anyone who has owned an airplane, from someone who has, besides the initial cost of training, then the cost of the aircraft, plus fuel/oil/charts/accessories/insane amounts of maintenance, storage costs, , it is WAY more expensive than you even think it is by looking at trade a plane.

that said, anything that flies with people in it is magic. and magic is well worth the cost.

I'm off to go count my gold dabloons in my vault!

The helicopter works very well for recon.... i highly recommend the high power zoom camera on the front and working off a rooftop in downtown doesn't suck.

One of the new maintenance flight procedures at our hanger involves checking to make sure the aircraft is OK to handle losing 150lbs at 2k feet.

very much agreed. way more so (somewhat surprisingly) than a small airplane, even over-powered ones. the ability to get very close and very slow is a huge difference in scouting reliability.

but nothing beats just bitching up and hiking there.

I was told that a helicoptor is how Carl Boenish discovered many sites that would otherwise have taken many, many years to find.

Yes, he did use helicopters to scout certain cliff jumps in the Southwest U.S.A.

NickD

yes .. smart guy :)

every base jumper should know how to fly a heli ;)

Every BASE jumper should have a friend that knows how to fly a helicopter.

I heard Maggot stole a helicopter once to scout out poachable New York City buildings, there's even video of it . . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uI4d5AeAi7g

NickD

ahhh the infamous schweizer 300 noob.
thats a great video. serious audacity there.

that was maggot? wouldn't put it past him.

Huh??? Dude, Airwolf is the coolest heli ever. They scouted E's all the time...

http://en.wikipedia.org/...age:Airwolf_side.jpg

Too bad you didn't notice the crapper on the roof of the B...maybe you wouldn't have blown ass less than two stories from the roof.

Blaine was tagging B's with shit before Maggot made it fashionable...

>>before having to hike the stairs with the humidity of curing concrete<<

I love that smell. Was thinking of marketing a BASE cologne called, "Wet Cement."

NickD

absolutely negative. fictional helicopters do not count.

H500 with 5 blade mod, naked, only engine and airflow instruments and external load capabilities. no competition.

here the news chopper does it for you . . .
but only for 5 min

glad u said smell of the concrete
1108 now that im done laughin at myself
im pretty sure your 51st floor affairs were totally uneventful

 
"H500 with 5 blade mod, naked, only engine and airflow instruments and external load capabilities. no competition."

nothing beats a 500D model. went inverted in one for the first time last week....twice. though fun, rotors just shouldn't face the ground.

i didn't know the FAA certified helis for acro.


thats AWESOME. I am jealous.

Yep, puked my guts out. Has to be the closest I've been to heat stroke in my life...

there were several of us climbing a terminal "A." We were 600ft +/- up and he had to um... go. So we climbed past him and he took a poo from 600ft +/-

The rest of the climb had to suck for him..

I would have climbed up another 200 feet or so and jumped from there if safe. Another thing, I know if I'll be on a mission that may last a few hours, take a pre-jump dump before you head on out. That would be gross for the remainder of that climb.

To Leroy: keep the dumb talk out of the heli base section.
To Everyone else: I took a ride with Blaine in the heli and scouted some A's and then went and jumped one. It was my first ride in a heli and one bad ass experience, they are the coolest things ever. I would say that everyone should take at least one ride just to see how cool it is. I can't imagine how cool it would be to scout some E's and B's with that thing. Its a must do for everyone... except Leroy and his poo talk.

Just remember, real men don't EVER land WITH the heli.

the pilot does!

Hey jsut wanted to say that the Heli is two for two at finding some great jumps that would have never been found otherwise. I'm going to take flight lessons just to find BASE shit as soon as i get lots of money

& also a great career :)

a student of mine sent me this link the other day

http://docs.google.com/gview?attid=0.1&thid=11ea42e6cc6097b3&a=v&pli=1

can someone make that link work if i did not succeed .. i fly the heli better than the computer ;)

That video can't be played by anyone it's not shared with since it's in either yours or his google docs.

ahh .. well that sucks

in short .. it says helicopters are a great career.

Send it to me, i'll host it for a while. I'll pm you my email address.

Damn, I love my job!

sweet machine :)
u give cutter & jeffy a run for their money flyin that one ;)

I'm med crew...not the pilot.
Mind you, I still get to dress up way cool!

*Click on the self aggrandizing pic

right :)
& fly around & see cool shit ;)