I miss the amount of helicopter shooting I used to do.  Every once in a while I come across a help in action and I feel like it is a little victory.  One time it was the local sheriff’s department practicing line work and that showed up here.  On this occasion, I was coming away from an interview I had done for a GAR feature.  I was at Yolo County airport in California.  As I drove down the road, an MD500 was hovering over the field next to the road.

I pulled off a short distance away to see what was going on.  PG&E is a local power company and they appeared to be running a training program for they power line teams.  They were hooking up transmission components and moving them a short distance to another team that then unhooked them.  This process continued as they moved items from place to place giving the ground teams practice with the various items.

There was a strong breeze and a bit of gustiness so the pilot was working quite hard but, since everything was at ground level, I suspect it was a lot easier than if this was at the top of a pylon.  He wasn’t the one getting the training, though, by the look of it.  I watched for a while and from a couple of different angles and then left them to it.  I hope the class was successful.