Helicopters

I know nothing about helicopters. I had a few rides. One guy let me try to hover. I couldn't keep the thing in a 40 acre field. When I was a line boy at College Park, I had to be there at 6AM on weekdays to open up. This was so I could be ready for Captain Dan. Captain Dan was the traffic reporter for the Washington D.C. area. He was on WTOP, the most important and popular station. He would hustle in and land at the pumps with his Hughes 300, and I had to be there waiting for him. Every second counted. He needed more than a quick turn around. He needed down and up now. He said our pumps were so slow he was gonna go someplace else. But he never did. I had to hold on to that nozzle on the back of that helicopter with the rotor spinning just above my head. You had to be really careful when you pulled the nozzle out, that you didn't catch the rotor. I never got used to it, and I was always scared and Captain Dan complained I was too slow. But good ole "Cabbage Park" was damn close to D.C. People used to tell me that Captain Dan had flown choppers in the Army back when Nam was just somebody else's war. Somebody said that Dan had more time in a Hughes 300 than any person in the world. Dan was a legend. But Captain Dan was not the best helicopter pilot at College Park. Because the best helicopter pilot in the world happened to be at College Park. His name was Jan and he was my boss. He was Brinkerhoff's 50% partner and friend. Jan Bingen and Jeff Brinkerhoff were and are the two best pilots I ever knew. I was hired as a line boy by Jan. I was checked out in the Piper J-3 Cub by Jeff. Jan was an airshow pilot in the Army. They painted a face on an Army chopper. Jan was the U.S.Army Bozo the clown. Jan was the examiner for helicopter ratings in the area. Guys would show up from all over the place in all kinds of choppers and he would give them thier license. One cloudy day a guy came in in a Hughes for a checkride. Without much preliminaries, Jan climbed in and off they went. The next twenty minutes was an airshow exhibition. The helicopter was turned to a 90 degree bank which it can't do. It was pointed straight up, which it can't do. It did a dance bobbing it's nose and wiggling it's tail rotor. We were on the ramp, about seven of us, because the mechanics had come out to see. We were yelling and cheering and we couldn't believe our eyes. Even the guys who had seen it before. I had never seen it before. After the show, Jan was writing up the guy's brand new temporary airman certificate for rotocraft. Jeff said to the applicant, "did he let you fly it at all?" The guy says "No actually. I started it up. Taxied across to 13 and did a take-off run and when we hit transitional he took it and you saw the rest." The guy was smiling and so was Jan and so were all of us. Another time I saw the WTOP Hughes way down in the weeds by the woods. It was hovering and pitching. The airport bums were kind of walking down that way. I asked Buz who was the hardest working instructor in the industry, "What's goin' on down there"? He said, "Captain Dan is letting Jan show him a few tricks". I ran to catch up to the others. What the hell kind of tricks could they do in a swamp at the end of the runway? What they were doing was playing with some old empty 55 gallon drums that were now scattered on the ground. I've never seen anything like it before or since. You had to be there. You see, if you blow a drum with the rotor wash, you blow them all. But you can blow just one if you do it right. You can stand it up, roll it around, bang it into another drum, line them up, put one skid on a standing barrel, roll a barrel with a skid. You can wreck a helicopter real fast doing this. You can kill yourself showing off doing this. I was entertained, but I was nervous. And Dan! Mr. Cool radio personality. Involved in brazen flat hatting! One rainy day nothing was going on. But the big construction company had their Alouette Turbine rolled out and "Gary" who flew it was hanging around. My boss Jeff was trying to schmooze himself into a free rotocraft rating. He was making a deal with Gary to trade favors by letting him use the 172 for some commuting he needed to do if he could get the use of the the Alouette for an hour or so. At the same time he was telling Jan that the Alouette was all set up for a checkride and his paperwork was all in order and it was rainy and they weren't busy. I had no students and I was supposed to be cleaning the 150's, but I was sweeping and cleaning in the building because I wanted to see what what my bosses were going to do next. How could Jeff Brinkerhoff get a rotor rating? I had never even heard him talk about helicopters, let alone fly one. Did he have a written? Would he know how to fly a big turbine Aerospatiale Alouette? Not exactly a trainer. Would a big construction company just lend Brinkerhoff thier aircraft? The next thing I knew that big turbine was whining so loud you had to cover your ears inside the building. They took off in the rain and disappeared. No airshow in that monster. They come back shortly. More noise. Gary is smiling. His aircraft is safe and sound. The turbine winds down. Jeff and Jan are smiling. A temporary gets written up. This blows my mind more than the 55 gallon drums. So I've gotta say it before somebody else does. To Jeff I say, "So, did he let you fly it? "Yea I flew a lot" "But he flew it too right?" "Oh Yea".