Tag Archives: helicopters

Another Experience of Northwest Regional Aviation Consortium

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This year I did make a return trip to Arlington Municipal Airport for the Northwest Regional Aviation Consortium emergency exercise. This is a gathering of various operators from the region that would be called on in the event of a major incident. There are aeromedical operators, helicopters from the local counties and local military units. Search and rescue teams participate along with first responders.

Plenty of helicopters come and go during the day heading off to remote locations for parts of the exercise. Some drills are conducted on the field including one of the cooler elements when a helicopter carries teams up on a platform that can be used for lowering them onto the roof of buildings should that be needed.

I was not covering the event for anyone so didn’t have any preferential access. I stayed a safe distance away to watch as the teams were at work and, in the downtime between movements, I could get on with some other work I had to do. I was pleased this year that the Navy Sea Hawk was a around more. The previous visit, it had come in and then departed again, never to return. This time I had a bit more of a chance to photograph it. I don’t know whether the exercise was a success or not, but I am sure they all learned a lot from the training it provided and can tweak things to make them better if that is needed.

Construction Helicopters at the Mart

wpid7220-C59F9985.jpgPreviously I posted about the work with Midwest Helicopters at the Merchandise Mart.  This post included the stills of the job while this one had some video.  That job was all about erecting the steel to support the new chiller units.  Construction Helicopters had the job to lift the chillers themselves since they were considerably heavier than the S-58T can lift.

wpid7210-C59F9951.jpgThis time I ended up shooting the lift from along the river.  While I had originally planned to be back on the roof, the plan changed but it ended up being a better solution.  I wish I had planned it to be so but I will take being lucky any day.  The view from the ground was one I had intended for the first lift if it had gone to the second day so this time i was able to get shots of the building with the helicopter operating in front of and above it.

wpid7218-C59F9978.jpgThis was the first time I had seen the Super Puma that Construction Helicopters have acquired.  I have had a soft spot for the Puma family for many years dating back to a model of an RAF Puma I made as a kid.  It is a great looking helicopter and certainly a powerful performer.

wpid7222-C59F0030.jpgThe weather was excellent and the lift went very smoothly.  The chillers were picked from a barge on the river in front of the Mart and lifted to the roof.  I certainly wasn’t alone in watching the work as quite a crowd gathered along the river to watch.  Great job to everyone involved.

Global Aviation Resource Piece

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Realized that I haven’t been totally comprehensive in plugging one of my pieces.  If you don’t follow Facebook or Twitter (and in that case how do you even know that this is here?) then you won’t have seen a piece show up on Global Aviation Resource’s site that I wrote about Mauna Loa Helicopters.

 

Click on this link and you can see the article.

Midwest in the mist

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Got a call from the guys at Midwest about some upcoming work recently.  Asked if I wanted to come out and ride along for the jobs, one of which was in the Chicagoland area and the other was over in Indiana.  Let me think about that for, oh, I don’t know, a microsecond.  Sure, I will be there.

There is one downside to these jobs and that is that they mean an early start.  The night before Jim texts me to say the weather is looking pretty dodgy and do I still want to come along?  Predicting weather is not something that I can rely on so I was still in and if the weather screwed things up, then we scrub it and have another go some other time.

I made the early trek down to their base but before I left I checked the weather radar on the computer.  There was an evil looking line of storms marching up across the state.  Looking out of the window, the tops of the surrounding buildings were shrouded in mist.  This wasn’t looking promising.  We would see…

When I walked in, Jim had already been talking to the O’Hare controllers since one of the lifts was under their approaches.  With the storms coming, it was already clear that we would postpone the first lift until the storms had gone through.  As for Indiana, that was looking unrealistic since the south end of the lake is the most unpredictable for weather and it was a long run across even to get to the job.  We hung out and waited.

The storms never appeared!  They stalled a way off and the mist lifted a bit.  In the end, it was good enough to go so Jim, Phil and I loaded up and headed out.  Joe was on the site so he had to sit there and wait it out.  I suspect he was glad we finally showed up!  We ferried out to the site and set down.  I hopped out while the long line was attached and Jim make quick work of the two picks.

For the journey back, I climbed up to the second seat.  The cockpit in the S-58T is right on top of the airframe so you have a great view of things.  Shame the weather meant it was not a great day for sightseeing!  The transit back to base was a fun run and then we all headed off for breakfast.  Not a bad way to start a day!