Tag Archives: Airbus helicopters

Who Do You Want to Rescue You?

Two rescue helicopters were on show at Heli Fest. The 129RQW from Moffett Field had brought along one of their Pave Hawk helicopters while head the other way up the peninsula and you get the Coast Guard based at SFO with their MH-65 Dolphins. If you find yourself in need of helicopter based assistance in the Bay Area, one of these units will probably be sent to help you. The Coast Guard unit will be the first to respond. However, if you are further offshore, the Pave Hawk may be the one tasked. If they are training nearby, they may just be the easiest ones to send.

Whichever unit and aircraft it is, you will, no doubt, be really pleased to see them. Both helicopters were popular with the visitors. They had long lines of people waiting to take a look and talk to the crews. I was chatting with the Coast Guard guys about their planned departure time. They were way too optimistic. The line of people was still big when they originally planned to go. Eventually, they had to put someone in place to mark the end of the line. They were still turning people away but they needed to clean up, check the airframe and get going at some point!

The Pave Hawk did a nice job of taxiing out of the confined space in which it had been parked. Both of them made nice passes prior to heading off. The Dolphin is a sleek looking airframe so it looked pretty cool as it made its pass. Good job by both crews for having dealt with so many visitors during the day.

Helos This Way Please

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I love helicopters and getting to see two in close quarters at Salinas recently was the sort of thing to make me smile. An Astar had come up to drop someone off and was heading back out again. Meanwhile, a local Robinson R-44 had been moved out on to the ramp next to it for its pilot to have a local flight. They ended up starting up and departing at almost the same time. What I hadn’t realized was that the departure path for both of them was going to take them right past me.

I had figured that they would start up and then hover taxi to the runway before departing in the runway heading. Instead, the approved profile made use of the taxiway next to where I was. The result was that they both pulled to the hover and then turned in my direction before accelerating right by. That was a lot better than I was expecting. The need to gain speed before climbing to minimize time in the “avoid curve” means that you get a nice low view of a helicopter when it takes off. This is far better than the fixed wing alternative in my view.

Regional Parks Astar

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While I was getting lucky catching the Huey at Hayward, this wasn’t the only helicopter I came across in action. A short distance away from me, an Astar was running up on the ramp. Before too long, it lifted, taxied across to the active runway and then departed to the southeast. It turned out to belong to the Regional Parks service. I had actually seen this airframe before when it had been at Livermore. This time I was a lot closer to it and able to get a far better view.

It is actually quite a nice paint job that they have applied. Some quick research suggests that they have a couple of these Astars. I wouldn’t mind finding out more about them and what they are used for. It could make for a more detailed piece at some point.

Coast Guard Air-to-Air (ish)

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My flight over LAX was intended to get lots of shots of airliners. We did also get a little benefit. For the time being, the Coast Guard have a base at LAX. They will be moving soon but, until that point, operations continue as normal. One of their MH-65 Dolphins returned to base while we were airborne. ATC vectored them behind us and around to land on their pad. We managed to yaw around to provide an angle on them as they came in.

Shooting the Dolphin was a bit harder than some of the other aircraft. I was using a 100-400 lens which was fine for the jets when I could keep the shutter speed up high to compensate for any motion or vibration. However, dropping the shutter speed for the rotors, even if I didn’t take it too low, meant a very high failure rate on the shots. Even then, we were still a reasonable distance away which didn’t help. A few of the shots are passable. However, they won’t handle too much scrutiny. I’m glad we got them though since they will be gone if I go back for another shoot.