Articles for category Helicopter Sectors
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May
21
2018
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Posted by Admin
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When people think of drones and natural disasters, they imagine search-and-rescue (SAR) drones directing rescue teams to victims in need of immediate assistance. However, the actual use of drones in natural disasters is quite different. Forget SAR: “In the last year and a half (in the U.S), the American Red Cross used drones to conduct overall assessment of damage as well as detailed damage assessment of residential homes,” said Brad Kieserman, the American Red Cross vice president of disaster operations and logistics. “We also make considerable use of drone video footage that we get from our partners—both in and out of government— to do broader scope damage assessment: what neighbors are inaccessible, what the overall level of damage is, how high the water is and where it’s impacting.”
“On an international level, the Red Cross is using drones to collect imagery and data for our disaster preparedness and recovery work,” Kieserman said. “In the Philippines, where we are still helping people recover from Typhoon Haiyan, we’re using drones to gather aerial imagery. The imagery is a valuable resource for response, planning, monitoring, and resilience-building activities in these disaster-prone areas.”
Why Drones?
Helicopters are better suited for SAR: They have the personnel and the lifting power to get victims out of harm’s way as soon as they are spotted. Drones do not.
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Categories:
Helicopter Sectors
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May
08
2018
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Posted by Admin
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If I were to describe the state of the aerial firefighting industry today, it would come down to two words: preparation and uncertainty. Preparation is for fire seasons that are only getting worse and much more destructive. Uncertainty is because nobody yet knows just how federal budgetary issues and funding for wildland firefighting are going to play out.
At least the good news is that as fire seasons get longer and merge, the industry is well prepared. There is no better evidence of that than the industry’s performance throughout the 2017 fire season. Starting in Florida in early February, and spreading nationwide with almost no letup, wildland fires raged out of control, often for weeks at a time. In California, the state experienced the most destructive fires in its history, as more than 9,130 fires burned over 1,381,400 acres, consuming in excess of 10,800 structures and taking 43 lives, including two firefighters. Particularly hard hit were the densely populated, wildland/urban interface areas of southern California, as well as the San Francisco Bay region’s northern counties.
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Categories:
Helicopter Sectors
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Mar
12
2018
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Posted by Admin
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Ever wonder where, or how, some of the parts on your helicopter were made? When I say “made,” I’m talking about made from scratch...like turning a raw block of steel, aluminum, or titanium into an impeller or a transmission housing. In aerospace, it’s the highest level of engineering and manufacturing, where margins of error are so small that they are measured by laser beams.
I recently had the opportunity to learn more about a helicopter parts manufacturing powerhouse by visiting Aerometals in El Dorado Hills, California. Founded in 1984, Aerometals has spent the past 33 years transforming itself into a full-service manufacturing business that serves not only the helicopter world, but also the aerospace industry as a whole.
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Categories:
Helicopter Sectors
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Feb
19
2018
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Posted by Admin
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The economic downturn that has been affecting the global helicopter industry has been very hard on original equipment manufacturers (OEMs); the companies who design and build the world’s rotorcraft. But these OEMs have been through tough times before, and survived. Here’s what they are doing to cope, as they wait for the next inevitable market upswing.
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Categories:
Helicopter Sectors
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Jan
22
2018
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Posted by Admin
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At the tender age of five Patric Wells was moving milk and pop bottles from his father’s Stratford, Ontario retail food store to a nearby storage building for 5 cents an hour. That’s quite a young age to join the business world, but it provided the foundation for his success today. “I guess it gives a kid a good work ethic, because I still work hard every day,” Wells relates.
Wells doesn’t have to prove his continuing work ethic; knowing that he operates four businesses simultaneously is enough. Combined, they offer a full range of services to customers seeking to buy or lease a helicopter and mold it to fit their precise needs.
East West Helicopter Inc. (EWH) based in Harrison, Ohio has supported the helicopter industry for more than four decades, providing maintenance, parts sales, helicopter sales and leasing. Panterra Heli Support Ltd (PHSL) based in Beamsville, Ontario, provides MRO, heavy maintenance, avionics integration, engineering, custom paint and other customizations, completions, one-off configurations, and field support for existing leases. NS Air Leasing and Borderline Air expand upon the sales and leasing aspect of the group, especially the Airbus product line.
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Categories:
Company Profiles
Helicopter Sectors
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Jan
08
2018
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Posted by Admin
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While the Southeastern U.S. was being inundated with record hurricane floodwaters during the fall of 2017, record-breaking wildfires were torching California’s Wine Country.
More than one million acres burned this year in California. The “October Fire Siege” fanned by Diablo Winds in Northern California constituted the deadliest series of wildfires in the state’s history, killing 43 people. The infernos torched at least 8,900 structures and 245,000 acres, forcing the evacuation of more than 100,000 people. As many as 11,000 firefighters were battling 21 major blazes in an area nearly one-third the size of Rhode Island. Insured property damage totaled more than $3 billion, making them the costliest complex of wildfires in U.S. history.
“I’ve never seen the utter devastation and destruction I saw around Santa Rosa and Napa,” said Barry Lloyd, helicopter program manager for Cal Fire (California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection). “It was absolutely stunning.” This is coming from someone who has been a helicopter pilot for 52 years and fighting fire for 44 years. He flies one of Cal Fire’s 12 Type II Hueys.
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Categories:
Helicopter Sectors
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Dec
12
2017
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Posted by Admin
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Maintenance of helicopters’ onboard batteries is a critical function and it is structured on the basis of their component maintenance manuals. However, the knowledge of industry practitioners on how to accomplish onboard batteries related maintenance tasks sometimes is limited only to what is available in maintenance manuals. To inform professionals involved in helicopter maintenance, we reached out to experts in the field and identified a few factors to consider when performing and managing maintenance on these critical components.
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Categories:
Helicopter Sectors
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Nov
27
2017
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Posted by Admin
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In late August, the Rotorcraft Pro team was diligently working on the feature articles for this issue you are reading. Though every story involved helicopters, none had anything to do with hurricanes. Then storm history occurred on what seemed like a Biblical scale. I watched in shock from the safety of my Florida office the heart-breaking images coming out of the Houston, Texas, region in the wake of Hurricane Harvey. Upon dumping a record 51 inches of rain on the area, massive flooding left tens of thousands of citizens trapped and in need of rescue.
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Categories:
Human Interest
Helicopter Sectors
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Nov
14
2017
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Posted by Admin
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Considering the complexities of the air medical industry, completely removing all risk is a challenge. The road to progress, if not traveled in a deliberate manner, could lead to bad outcomes—this industry has seen far too many outcomes of that type.
Although many factors can lead to bad outcomes in HAA, some unfortunate events can be attributed to the very thing that gives our industry its name—helicopters. They are labor-intensive machines that have regularly scheduled maintenance. However, from time to time well-maintained helicopters simply break. Pilots spend most of their time in one primary aircraft. When maintenance issues dictate, they swap to their backup aircraft. Herein lies the problem.
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Categories:
Safety
Helicopter Sectors
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Oct
30
2017
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Posted by Admin
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Upon graduation, the young man came very close to working in banking and finance. “The guy that ran NationsBank in Dallas said something to me that really changed my career path. I was very outspoken back then, and he told me that in the corporate world, 50 percent of the job is political. He told me that if I wasn’t prepared to play that game, then banking and finance wasn’t the place for me. That struck me and I realized my heart was in aviation.” After Mast realized his plainspoken, direct nature wasn’t tailored for bankers in Brooks Brothers suits uttering politically correct bromides, he returned to his first love and to the company that had helped him pay his college bills. AvGroup’s Ed Tomberlin had a job for the returning graduate that required neither political maneuvering nor silk over-the-calf banking hosiery. Nevertheless, Mast was expected to wear clothes. “He offered me $2,000 a year more than my banking job and $500 so I could buy some clothes,” Mast chuckles. “Ed was truly a brilliant man and entrepreneur. I was fortunate to learn the ins and outs of the industry under his tutelage.” Yes, Mast found employment in an industry that he loved and that fit him better than banking. Parts and components don’t care what you say or wear. Aviation is all about “mission accomplished.”
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Categories:
Career Development
Helicopter Sectors
Company Profiles