Parts are very expensive for that bird. And with about a 20:1 in maint
hours, I think you would be hard pressed to do this. The Navy has lots
of spare parts, but until they get rid of all their H-3's, you can not
get those parts.

On 31 Oct 2004 07:11:43 -0800, (Clayton Ashley)
wrote:

I want to know what you guys think of trying to relieve a little of
the Op Tempo on our military by creating a mission specific helicopter
medevac/relief group?
The Presidential fleet is retiring its VH-3 helos. I think they
would be great as flood/Hurricane/tornado medevac in places like
Florida/Haiti/Honduras. I was involved in the start up of a museum for
WW2 warbirds and the old mechanics came out of the woodwork to work on
them again for free. I think the same could be done for staffing a new
organization that uses these helos for relief work. As long as they
were fed well and the crews were taken care of, I think retired pilots
and mechanics would love to do something like this. The big benifit
would be taking our overused military out of the requirement.
I am sure there are a bunch of people that want these helos. But I
think it would only need to use 4 or so of the 11 that are retiring.
What do you guys think?
Clayton