Tag Archives: MD Helicopters

MD-500 Doing Something Odd

It might be an old design but the MD-500 still holds some fascination for me.  It is an agile machine and has a five bladed rotor which gives it a distinctive sound.  Paint it in a sinister paint scheme and I am sold.  This one was flying around at Boeing Field when I was down there recently and I got to shoot it a lot as it was flying a lot of pattern work.  (I missed a cracking shot of it as well but that is a different story.)

The first time I was shooting it, I could see some flashing light coming from inside the cockpit.  Looking at the shots afterwards, the guy in the right seat was using some device which would flash periodically.  I am not a specialist on helicopters but I do know the rotor tracking is a thing that has to be done so I wondered if this device was a strobe to freeze the blades to allow them to be tracked.  Anyone know whether it is.

The second time I was shooting it, the pattern was reversed so I got to see the other side of the airframe.  Some cabling was clearly taped to the outside of the fuselage and then going in through one of the doors.  No idea whether this was for the same purpose or something else.  All good suggestions (and maybe some silly ones) are welcome.

Hawaii Helos

Anyone that has vacationed in the Hawaiian Islands knows that there are loads of helicopters around.  The sightseeing flight operations are extensive and there are a variety of types that are used.  The Astar was a big feature of these flights but the EC130 was developed to provide something best suited to these flights and it is now very widespread.  There are other types in use too.  I used a Robinson R44 for one of my flights for example.

There are the occasional MD500s around too which is what you expect to see if you ever watched the original Magnum PI TV series.  The helicopter area at Lihue was a busy place to be with a steady stream of operators moving from the different pads.  I wasn’t on vacation to spend time watching helicopters but of course I managed to slip a little time in with them!