Category: Helicopters and Humans

  Ah-ah! Do not sneer… It’s way easier to do than you might think… Of Helicopters and Humans Part 22: “Sounds like a stupid thing to do “ With a sigh I left someone dear and floated off into the mist and fog with oars bent for Loyang and Kuangling’s bells and treeline fading this…

Of Helicopters and Humans Part 21: “People who fly in glass helicopters, shouldn’t fly low “ This bird of the immortals born for the wind With turquoise lapels and robe of green Regards my feathers as peculiar as I twitter away thinking I can sing (Wei Ying-Wu, Chinese poet, AD 773) A foggy morning in…

I love the view from my office… Of Helicopters and Humans Part 20: Ring Around the Roses, One Time, Darling (why bother to fly one time around the platform??) Crew room talk. As opposed to bar room talk. Same passion, without the booze. And without Dotty Lotty, the Bar Maid. The luscious one, with the…

Hummm….This is my alternative uniform Of Helicopters and Humans (Part 16) “The Pakistani Captain” I speak a half dozen languages, but Pakistani isn’t one of them. But I think you subconsciously get used to picking up on traits and vocal oddities when bloody foreigners (like me) try solemnly masticating American English as their second language.…

I AM BEAUTIFUL – REGARDLESS Of Helicopters and Humans Part 19 – “Our little Nigger Joke “ For all you lobotomized Media lapdogs who now obediently hate Paula Dean (recently fired in a Media Storm, for some kind of alleged Nigger comment…) Things are going a little too bloody far these days. And it is…

Of Helicopters and Humans Part 17: Fire in the Hole! I was flying, off the coast of West Africa, quite happily, minding my own business. I was on my own, playing with the giants, as my friend Eric calls it, sailing past tall fingers of cumulus clouds, enjoying the sun, the blue, the visibility, and…

Just when you thought things couldn’t possibly get any WORSE… f@#k’n SHARKS… Of Helicopters and Humans Part 15 – Things that go “Klunk!” in flight Have you ever had something unexpectedly go “Klunk!” in Flight? Or even “Klunkety-Klunk-BANG!” Or something suddenly set up the Rattle from Hell? An unexpected series of explosive pops? Have you…

the day started with the Assumption of Normality Old Zeke based on… truth and also “Maybe conceited Electricians should think twice before judging an old Plumber…? “ A long time ago, somewhere in this small and insignificant world, there were some offshore Oil and Gas installations. They were serviced by helicopters. The choppers would come…

Of Helicopters and Humans Part 11: Near Miss over the Gulf Given the colossal amount of helicopter traffic that beeps and honks its way noisily along the myriad Freeways over the Gulf of Mexico,it is astounding how relatively few mid air collisions have taken place in the last fifty years. The sky is indeed a…

Of Helicopters and Humans (10B) Shillelaghs, hair-trigger tempers, and three… Greens? (Part 2) We landed back that evening, after our “Three Greens – or not” incident, and I remember just being relieved. We were walking in from the ramp, under the heavy, dark, grey evening skies, with daylight rapidly disappearing. The way it does, at…