Author: Admin
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Nov
11
2019
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Posted by Admin
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Dr. Travis Bradberry, the award-winning coauthor of the #1 best selling book, Emotional Intelligence 2.0, and the cofounder of TalentSmart, a consultancy that serves more than 75% of Fortune 500 companies, once said, “Influential people are never satisfied with the status quo. They’re the ones who constantly ask, ‘What if?’ and ‘Why not?’ They’re not afraid to challenge conventional wisdom and they don’t disrupt things for the sake of being disruptive; they do it to make things better.”
Ron Abbott, owner of Evolution Helmets is definitely a disruptor in his business field; if you need evidence, look no further than his recent endeavor to enter another competitive space: aviation flight suits. Abbott, a U.S. military veteran, 22,000-hour helicopter pilot, and designer/manufacturer of the Evolution brand of flight helmets, has now developed a line of flight suits to complement the company’s helmet business. Evolution Flight Suits are made in the USA and is owned by Evolution Aviation Helmets, but associated with Sisley Clothing Australia and United Designs.
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Categories:
Company Profiles
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Nov
02
2019
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Posted by Admin
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It wasn’t expected to happen: The world’s insatiable thirst for oil and gas should have ensured that more offshore oil rigs would always be needed, and that suppliers who supported those rigs – like helicopter companies – would always have a secure, stable market to serve.
But then it happened: Oil prices unexpectedly plummeted “from a peak of $115 per barrel in June 2014 to under $35 at the end of February 2016,” states the World Economic Forum website. “The sharp fall is broadly similar in magnitude to the decline in 1985-1986, when OPEC members reversed earlier production cuts, and in 2008-09 at the outset of the global financial crisis.”
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Categories:
Helicopter Sectors
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Oct
28
2019
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Posted by Admin
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Looking back at my 26-year Army career, I have many things to be proud of, and only one regret. Before getting accepted to Army Warrant Officer Candidate School (WOCS) and then U.S. Army Flight School as a newly minted Warrant Officer One (W1), I was an Army Crew-chief/technician. I first worked on Cobras, and then moved on to Black Hawks and Little Birds (MD500). This leads me to my regret: before getting accepted to WOC School I was working on my FAA Airframe & Powerplant (A&P) Certificate, but once I was selected, in my short sightedness, I didn’t finish my A&P because I was going to be a pilot and didn’t need my A&P.
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Categories:
Career Development
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Oct
21
2019
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Posted by Admin
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When a company is born from a desire to help others, its people carry that passion with them, no matter what their title. Air Evac Lifeteam was established in 1985 by a group of citizens in West Plains, Missouri. Their desire was to provide air medical transportation and ensure access to a higher level of emergency health care for their remote community in the Ozarks. Back then, quick access to top-tier hospitals and health care was primarily confined to urban America. Air Evac Lifeteam founders believed that people living in rural areas needed that same rapid access to Level 1 and Level 2 health care centers that could best care for them.
Fast forward 34 years and it’s apparent today that the Helicopter Air Ambulance (HAA) company foresaw and fulfills a need – a need that continues to grow with the closure of rural hospitals nationwide. Since 2010, 106 of America’s 1,700 rural hospitals closed. Air Evac Lifeteam operates more than 140 helicopter air ambulance bases across 15 states, and more than 90 percent of those bases are located in rural America because nearly 90 percent of patients transported by air medical services are from a rural zip code.
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Categories:
Company Profiles
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Oct
15
2019
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Posted by Admin
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I was so lucky, when I first began flying helicopter EMS in 1999 when my first director of ops told me that he would rather me turn down a flight and go back to sleep, than push weather limits. However, the go/no-go decision was still my sole decision to make. At the time, I probably did not appreciate my director’s sentiment as much as I should have.
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Categories:
Safety
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Oct
07
2019
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Posted by Admin
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After a recent helicopter accident, some old topics popped up on a number of internet forums: aircraft repairs, aircraft data plates, and salvage parts. While it remains to be seen if any previous repairs have fault in this accident, the ensuing discussions demonstrated that there is an ongoing knowledge gap in how aircraft repairs can be performed legally.
First, the use of aircraft salvage parts in aircraft repairs is perfectly legal within the FARs and is a classic example of, “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” However, when it comes to data plates, there is – and has been – specific regulatory guidance on how they are made, attached, and maintained.
Unfortunately, some people are not aware of (or choose not to follow) this FAA guidance.
As such, the FAA and the OEMs have become more proactive in this area in recent times. For instance, as recently as October 2018 the FAA issued new guidance. So follow below as we continue the discussion.
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Categories:
Regulatory
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Sep
23
2019
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Posted by Admin
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Siller Helicopters Inc. based in Yuba City, California, performs lift jobs and aerial construction support across the USA flying two Sikorsky S-64 Skycranes, two CH-54 Tarhes, and two S-61s. The company has been doing lift work since the 1970s and is extremely experienced in all aspects of this demanding and very specialized work. Siller Helicopters is also well known for providing high quality and very well maintained firefighting aircraft on both contract and call when needed.
Rotorcraft Pro observed a recent lift job in the northern California city of Roseville at a large mall. The job entailed lifting eight 6,500-pound air conditioners, more than a Sikorsky S-58T can lift but well below the maximum 11,000 pounds their S-61 can lift. For jobs up to 10,000 pounds nothing can do it better than a light S-61. In addition to removing the old air conditioners, a few loads of support scrap metal from the air conditioning base plates were taken away. Precision flying is typical of such jobs, so this one was not particularly challenging for the flight crews. The mall was near sea level and it was a cool morning, so the S-61 had plenty of excess performance. This gave the flight crew many options to complete the job safely and efficiently.
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Categories:
Company Profiles
Helicopter Sectors
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Sep
16
2019
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Posted by Admin
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Are you a military helicopter pilot that didn’t keep your own logbook? Perhaps you thought it was sufficient to let the military track your flight time? You are now in the position of having to translate your military flight time into civilian flight time. Translating flight time is an unavoidable task, because most military pilots did not maintain a logbook. Though this is a very time-consuming task, it is not insurmountable. Most military pilots will need to translate their military time properly into a civilian logbook, as most employers will require a logbook in order to hire you.
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Categories:
Career Development
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Sep
02
2019
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Posted by Admin
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There are some helicopter search and rescue (SAR) missions that are just impossible.
A prime example of this was the crash of a Dehavilland DHC-2 ‘Beaver’ on Alaska’s Thunder Mountain on 4 August 2018. Flown by Rust’s Flying Service, the sightseeing plane had one pilot and four tourists onboard when it accidentally turned into a high-hanging glacier in Denali National Park.
At 1,800 hours, the pilot managed to get a satellite call to Rust’s Flying Service; asking for help before contact was lost. After many reconnection attempts, the pilot was reached once more. He reported being trapped in the wreckage with two possible fatalities onboard. Then contact was lost.
The National Park Service (NPS) dispatched its AS-350 B3e high-altitude rescue helicopter from its base in Talkeetna to the crash location reported by the Beaver’s emergency transmitter. “We had no ability to get to the site at that time, since snowy, windy weather had settled onto the mountain,” said Nic Strohmeyer, an NPS aviation helicopter specialist. “So our SAR helicopter had to return to base.”
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Categories:
Helicopter Sectors
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Aug
26
2019
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Posted by Admin
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Several times a year, I’ll field a question about aircraft records. Not the Chuck Yeager type, but those binders, stacks, or sometimes just boxes of documents and paper products that record the maintenance performed on an aircraft.
The specific topic may vary a bit, but one topic that continually repeats itself concerns the FAA required format for these records. While there is FAA guidance on the content and form for each maintenance entry made into these records, there is no mandated format, i.e. physical form, on which that entry should be written.
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Categories:
Regulatory