Amazon is finishing up a huge fulfillment center up in Arlington WA.  I understand it will be over 600k sq ft of space.  The structure is approaching completion and they needed to install the air handler units on the roof.  The most efficient way to do this is by helicopter so, after my many times with helicopter lifts in Chicago, I was looking forward to this happening.

They contracted with Croman Helicopters.  This is an operation out of Oregon, and they do a lot of firefighting work.  The lifting is. A smaller part of their business.  However, it is still a good line for them.  They brought two helicopters up for the lift.  One was an Astar (which might have been theirs or might have been chartered since it had a different name on it) and the other was one of their S-61s.  I’ve shot S-61s a couple of times but not often, so this was something I was looking forward to.  They came up ahead of the lift and parked on the main ramp at Arlington.  Conditions were pretty good and I was able to get some shots of the airframe.

Most of the pictures I have seen of their S-61s have them in a yellow scheme but this one was a dark grey.  It was a nice-looking finish but a bit tough if the lighting wasn’t great.  The S-61 has plenty of rivets which make for some cool textures in the right light.  It was also fitted with a good bubble window for monitoring the load along with some duplicate engine gauges on the outside in the line of sight of the lifting pilot.  I had fingers crossed for good conditions to get it in flight…