Author: Admin
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Nov
30
2020
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Posted by Admin
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In an era when so much aviation industry news and training focuses on new technology and keeping up with so-called proficiency as proverbial boxes are checked, one often overlooked important aspect of being a pilot is being neglected—professionalism.
Recently, a colleague reached out for assistance on a new project; his company wanted to create an advisory board to offer advice on their aviation services. I was humbled he sought my advice. He garnered my full attention when he said the company was writing a quick bio on me, and then he asked me, “How long have you been flying as a professional pilot?” I had an easy and ready answer: “Since. Day. One.”
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Tags:
commercial pilot certificate
professional pilot
Categories:
Career Development
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Nov
23
2020
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Posted by Admin
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What is your current position?
I’m the owner and operator of Helicopter Air Specialty Service, owner and operator of AMP/HASS LLC a Robinson Service Center, owner and operator of the Maple Grove Heliport (E66), and manager of the Maple Grove Airport (65G) at Fowlerville, Michigan.
Tell me about your first flight?
I had a chain of 126 retail stores and needed to get to one of them fast. I hired a pilot that turned out to be a CFI to get me there. He let me fly! Most expensive flight I ever took. It was a thrill. Five lessons later, I was buying my first helicopter: a Robinson R22. I had no license, but I owned a helicopter, which forced me to get my license. Failure was not an option.
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Tags:
Dennis Bowdoin
Helicopter Air Specialty Service
Meet A Rotorcraft Pro
Categories:
Career Development
Opinion-Editorial
Human Interest
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Nov
16
2020
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Posted by Admin
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I clearly remember that life-changing day in April 1990. It was my first day working as a helicopter mechanic at Carraway Methodist Medical Center in Birmingham, Alabama. The radio call dispatched the helicopter, the pilot brought the machine to life and the medical crew strapped in as the Bell LongRanger took to the air. It seemed like only minutes later the aircraft returned, and the patient was rolled past me to the Level I trauma center. From that moment on, life was different as the purpose for my work became clearer in that instant.
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Tags:
Helicopter Maintenance Tools
Maintenance Minute
Mark Tyler
Categories:
Opinion-Editorial
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Nov
09
2020
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Posted by Admin
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1943 was the first year that helicopters were used to perform emergency medical services (Helicopter EMS; aka HEMS). According to The Smithsonian Institution’s magazine Air & Space, it was a Sikorsky YR-4B flown by the U.S. Army in Asia that conducted the first HEMS mission in April 1944. The two-seater YR-4B flown by Carter Harman rescued three wounded U.K. Commandos and a downed pilot from the Burmese jungle, lofting one at a time to safety using four separate flights.
Since then, helicopters have become essential civilian/military ‘air ambulances.’ The road from that relatively fragile YR-4B to today’s formidable HEMS machines made by Airbus, Bell, Leonardo, MD Helicopters, and Sikorsky (now part of Lockheed Martin) has not been a smooth one. It took persuasion and performance to convince skeptics that helicopters belonged in the EMS realm.
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Tags:
Air Evac Lifeteam
Flight For Life in 1972
History of EMS Helicopters
Med-Trans
REACH
Sikorsky YR-4B
Categories:
Opinion-Editorial
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Nov
02
2020
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Posted by Admin
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President Tyson Phillips of startup AT Systems LLC is at the very beginning of his business career. He’s never been an executive officer of a leading aviation company and his name is not known throughout the industry. He has yet to even turn a profit. This begs the question: Why profile this newcomer in “Executive Watch,” a feature that historically profiles executives with a history? Well, the answer is simple: Pilot Tyson Phillips is likely on the verge of making history. If the company he co-founded fulfills its promise, AT Systems will transform aviation training.
It is often said that need is the mother of invention. Oklahoma National Guard Pilot Phillips co-founded his company with fellow military pilot Andre Lavallee out of the mother of a need—the need to prevent the leading cause of often fatal helicopter accidents: spatial disorientation caused by degraded visual environments such as inadvertent instrument meteorological conditions (IIMC) brown/white out.
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Categories:
Company Profiles
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Oct
26
2020
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Posted by Admin
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Frasca International occupies a unique and storied position in the flight training device world, thanks to founder Rudy Frasca and his involvement in the early stages of building FTDs back in the 1950s. Now five of his eight children continue to carry the torch and keep the company ranked as one of the top simulator OEMs in the world.
Frasca president/CEO John Frasca and his siblings were raised in the world of aircraft. Their late father Rudy was as passionate about piloting aircraft as he was about building flight simulators to help make aircraft safer.
Now with 62 years of experience, Frasca International is the only major family-owned flight simulator company. It employs more than 130 people, and about 3,000 of its sims are being used across more than 70 countries.
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Tags:
Aviation Training Devices (Basic or Advanced).
FAA levels of Full Flight Simulators (FFSs)
flight simulation
flight simulators
flight training devices
FRASCA
FTDs Level 1-3
Categories:
Company Profiles
Training