Author: Admin
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Jun
15
2020
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Posted by Admin
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I'm waking up, I feel it in my bones
Enough to make my system blow
Welcome to the new age, to the new age
Welcome to the new age, to the new age
I never thought that I would be quoting the 2012 hit song, “Radioactive,” by the Imagine Dragons, in Rotorcraft Pro magazine, but every time I tried to think of an opener for this issue’s letter, that song kept popping into my head. “Welcome to the new age,” indeed!
For the last two and a half months, COVID-19 has changed the world for virtually every person and every industry. Although the short-term impact on civil aviation has been devastating, the battered and bruised helicopter industry adapted as much as possible and will live to fly another day.
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Jun
08
2020
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Posted by Admin
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The next time you run across a pilot who complains about the navigation equipment in his aircraft — right after he enters his coordinates into the panel-mounted Garmin 430, the backup windshield-RAM-mounted Garmin 695, and the backup-backup glare-shield-mounted iPhone — ask him what he would have done during the time of the Transcontinental Airway System.
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Jun
01
2020
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Posted by Admin
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Manned-unmanned teaming (MUM-T) is a term that helicopter pilots need to remember. MUM-T refers to efforts by helicopter OEMs to integrate unmanned rotary and fixed-wing drones and helicopters into functional, teaming relationships – based on Aristotle’s observation that “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”
In the case of MUM-T, combining drones and helicopters creates teams that can do more than drones or helicopters alone. A case in point: Imagine a military ‘tank killer’ helicopter receiving targeting data from a fleet of autonomous surveillance drones. The drones would be tasked to spot enemy tanks and send their coordinates to the helicopter’s weapons system. The pilot/crewman in charge would then simply decide which targets to fire upon.
In the civilian world, MUM teams could be highly effective when it comes to search and rescue, police aerial searches, and humanitarian relief efforts. In fact, any mission in which wide-area, time-sensitive aerial surveillance is required is a natural for MUM-T -- especially if the drones are either autonomous or flown from the ground, leaving pilot(s) to focus on actionable intelligence gathered by them.
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Categories:
Helicopter Sectors
Company Profiles
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May
25
2020
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Posted by Admin
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After listening to Erickson Incorporated’s Vice President and General Manager Hayden Olson for an hour, one is not sure whether he just concluded an executive interview or finished a life coaching session. The momentary confusion is resolved upon reflection that Olson views all facets of his life as interconnected by his faith and calling to coach others. Thus, he can approach family life as building a high performing team as he similarly does on the job at Erickson where his team building is based on interpersonal relationships and caring. Away from family and work, he’s either coaching personal growth and fitness at the non-profit he founded, or he’s being coached by his “Core Four” board of mentoring friends to which he holds himself accountable for personal and professional growth. The interview all comes together when one realizes that Olson is not only an executive at one of the leading global rotorcraft manufacturing and aviation service providers of utility aircraft, but he’s also a determined, uplifting coach who expects himself and his teams to consistently perform. Olson is Nick Saban in a Fred Rogers’ cardigan. Actually, he’s more likely to wear athletic gear and a T-shirt; which is how he inauspiciously started his business career.
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Categories:
Career Development
Company Profiles
Human Interest
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May
18
2020
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Posted by Admin
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When I started planning for my transition from the Coast Guard a few years before my retirement, there was one thing I tried to do in addition to all the normal administration preparations. I researched companies. All sorts of companies, not just helicopter-specific companies: Twitter, Amazon, Tesla, Facebook, Apple, Starbucks, Walmart. Air Methods, REACH, PHI. I read everything I could about them. I looked for companies with aviation departments and I researched companies who had good reputations hiring veterans. I wasn’t sure if I’d find a flying job, so I was also hedging my bets and looking into operations management opportunities.
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Categories:
Career Development
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May
11
2020
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Posted by Admin
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Taiwan is taking a major dive into improved emergency health care access for its outer-island residents with state-of-the-art Leonardo AW169 multi-purpose helicopters, and Emerald Pacific Airlines is the biggest partner in that effort.
It's a huge dive for Emerald Pacific as well, since it has transitioned from a company that focused on electrical grid maintenance using Bell 206 helicopters to one that focuses on ferrying critically ill patients in larger and more powerful AW169s that cost 10 times more.
"The transition from the B206 to the AW169 is a very big job," related James Lee, chairman of the board at Emerald Pacific, aka EPAIR Taiwan.
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Categories:
Company Profiles
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May
06
2020
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Posted by Admin
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What is your current position?
Currently, I’m the lead pilot and Instructor pilot flying King Air 300s in Afghanistan for an aerospace company that provides intelligence, reconnaissance, and surveillance on a government contract.
Tell me about your first flight.
My dad was an Air Force pilot stationed in Orlando, Florida. I was nine years old and my dad loaded the family up in a Cessna 210 for a week in Naples, Florida. During the flight home he let me sit in the right front seat with the headset on. During cruise flight my dad looked over and said, “You have the controls.” For the short time I held the yoke I knew all I wanted to be was a pilot. He never pushed me to be a military pilot, but he knew exactly what he was doing by letting me think I was flying that plane.
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Categories:
Human Interest
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Apr
27
2020
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Posted by Admin
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Whoever has visited the southernmost country on the African continent agrees that it rightfully holds its nickname “The Rainbow Nation.”
South Africa has an intense, amazing history and because of its multicultural diversity it received this nickname. In all honesty, South Africa really is a colorful and diverse area, and not just from a cultural aspect. It holds breathtaking mountain ranges, offers bustling city life, unique and one-of-a-kind wildlife safaris, takes you down sun-soaked coasts, and introduces you to amazing and vibrant cultures.
South Africa is also home to National Airways Corporation (NAC), which is the largest general aviation company in Africa and one of the largest of its kind in the world.
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Categories:
Company Profiles
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Apr
20
2020
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Posted by Admin
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As a person of faith, I never really felt I was in complete control of things . . . at least not the big things.
Sure, I can control little things like when to go to bed and how many hours to work in a day. But when it comes to big things, like what career path my daughter will take or what my business will look like in 10 years, or when I will hang up my wings (rotary-wings, of course) for the last time, I believe I am not in total control of those things.
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Categories:
Helicopter Sectors
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Apr
13
2020
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Posted by Admin
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RPMN: What is your current position?
From the moment I started learning about becoming a helicopter pilot, I was not 100% certain, but I saw myself doing something that would help people; air ambulance was on that list. I consider myself both lucky and grateful to have achieved that goal. Today I’m a line pilot flying an H135P2+ for Air Methods Corporation in the eastern U.S. Additionally, I’m an account executive for Rotorcraft Pro Media Network helping helicopter businesses promote their services to the industry.
RPMN: Tell me about your first flight.
My first flight was way back in 1988. My eyes had always jumped skyward whenever I saw a helicopter cruise by. I grew up directly under the flight path of runway 1R at Washington Dulles International Airport and regularly saw Concordes arriving and departing which was awesome, but there was always something about helicopters like that of the Fairfax County Police Dept. that blew me away. My Dad was in the Army and in the mid-to-late ‘80s there were a number of movies released about Vietnam; Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, Hamburger Hill, MIssing in Action and so on. Naturally, they featured Hueys, etc. and they just captured my imagination. I used to beg my Dad to take me up on a helicopter and I thought maybe this was a possibility. Well to my surprise for my 13th birthday he took me to Reagan National Airport and I took a 10-minute tour over D.C. in a Beige 206. To say that this was one of the most impactful moments in my life is the understatement of the millenium
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Categories:
Human Interest