Safety of homebuild Helicopters

Linc wrote:
boB,

I would never bust on you for it, and anyone who would, "they should
hold their manhood cheap." I find it a prudent course of action and
like I said, if you have the tools to use, you handicap yourself by not
using them. My goal is to always live to fly another day.

Speaking of those rules, were they host-nation, USAREUR, or homegrown
within the unit?

Linc


Hi Linc. My unit flew out of Stuttgart International. My company was a
tactical unit flying OH58D's within a General Support Battalion. If it
would have been an Army Airfield the rules can be changed to suit the
training but the German Government wasn't keen to allow something they
deemed unsafe so we had to abide by the rules of the host country. It
usually wasn't that bad, .... what am I saying, it was Germany, it
seemed it was always bad...... My unit was a part of 7th Corp which
deployed to Desert Shield/Storm in December 1990.

But then again, flying in Germany was a LOT less restrictive than flying
in the US. Helicopter flights within Germany were usually flown below
500 feet and when the threat was elevated were were required to fly
below 100 feet. You could land where-ever you wanted throughout the
countryside as long as you weren't landing beside a farmer on his
tractor. It sounds fun, and it was if you were in an area you knew. But
flying across new terrain was a constant effort to see and avoid wires.
It got stressful at times and you were almost always on the wrong side
of the dead man's curve. But the Bell helicopters came through fine and
could be depended on for getting you out of bad situations. (except for
the AH-1Q's and OH58A's, the underpowered hogs)

--

boB
copter.six


U.S. Army Aviation (retired)
Central Texas
5NM West of Gray Army/Killeen Regional (KGRK)