This page has been set up to share photos & video relating to the "Helicopters" chapter of "Step By Step, A Tree Planter's Handbook." Visit www.replant.ca/books to see books about tree planting.
Optimism can only take you so far. After that, you need a helicopter.
This is a Jet Ranger helicopter, manufactured by Bell Helicopters.
A Jet Ranger seats four passengers, and the pilot sits in the front right seat.
A Jet Ranger has two blades on the main rotor.
This is a Long Ranger helicopter, also manufactured by Bell Helicopters.
A Long Ranger seats six passengers, and the pilot sits in the front right seat.
A Long Ranger has two blades on the main rotor.
This is a "Huey" 500 helicopter, manufactured by Hughes Aerospace.
The Huey seats four passengers (although most pilots prefer to only carry three passengers at a time due to weight constraints), and the pilot sits in the front left seat.
The Huey has five blades on the main rotor.
This is an A-Star helicopter, manufactured by Eurocopter.
The A-Star seats five passengers, and the pilot sits in the front right seat.
The A-Star has three blades on the main rotor.
This is a Bell 205. Not many planters will ever fly in one of these. This is basically a civilian version of the Hughes UH-1 Iroquois, a military helicopter that is common in movies (think of the Ride Of The Valkyries scene from Apocalypse Now). This machine can carry a pilot plus fourteen passengers, or conversely, it can sling a LOT of boxes. Typically though, it is used for personnel transport rather than moving trees around. Smaller machines are generally more efficient at distributing boxes, although sometimes a large machine will move the bulk of the boxes into a central location on a block when there is a very large ferry time involved. This particular machine was being used on Tolko's work in High Level, Alberta, where most of the camps are completely fly-in, and planters fly long distances every day from camp to the blocks.
Here is a back cargo hold. It's almost always going to be on the side opposite of where the pilot sits (ie. the side that passengers typically use for loading and unloading).
This is the belly hook, underneath the helicopter, used for slinging cargo. A pilot is not allowed to sling cargo when there are passengers on board.
The 500 has a cargo bay underneath the passenger compartment. It can be accessed from the front or from either side. Here's a photo of the front access door, which lifts up.
Here's a photo of the side access door of the cargo space under the 500.
Some helicopters have a cargo basket on the side. The latches on some of these baskets have a clip that must be pressed in before the lid can be closed. If you're not certain, ask the pilot to demonstrate whether or not the lid has a special hinge mechanism.
Here's a photo of the door mechanism, taken from inside the helicopter. Despite the labels, people get confused by these handles all the time, even passengers with lots of previous flying experience. Don't be scared to ask the pilot to let you practice closing and opening the door properly, both from the inside and from the outside. Many pilots will point out (or demand) that you don't need to slam the doors. In fact, on some helicopters, the doors can be damaged if you slam them closed. Helicopter doors are expensive. Don't slam them.
Here's another photo of the door lock mechanism, looking at it from the outside.
This sticker shows where the ELT is located. ELT stands for Emergency Locator Transmitter.
Here's a fire extinguisher. If there's a fire, the fire extinguisher should only be used after the helicopter lands. Do NOT set it off while the helicopter is still airborne!
This shows the flight panel of the Huey 500.
This shows the flight panel of the Long Ranger.
Here's a foot support. Try not to step onto the skids. Incidentally, if you're wearing caulked boots, let the pilot know. Many pilots don't allow caulks in their helicopters. You might have to wear a pair of hikers until you get to the block, and carry your caulks in.
This type of seat belt, often found in the front seat of various helicopters, is called a four-point harness.
These headsets allow passengers to hear what people are saying inside the helicopter, and have a microphone that allows you to talk to everyone else. Some of these microphones are called "Vox" (or VCD), which means that they are voice-activated. In other words, whenever you speak, as long as the microphone is close to your mouth, the mike will pick up your voice and transmit it through the system. In some cases, you need to push a button in order for your microphone to become active. By the way, the microphone needs to be positioned fairly close to your mouth, but please don't lick it.
When you're talking to other people in the helicopter, people on the ground can't hear you. The only person in the helicopter (other than the pilot) who can broadcast on the communications frequency outside the helicopter is the person sitting in the front seat. To do this, they have to push a switch that is normally labelled PTT or push-to-talk. Double check this with the pilot first. Don't ever start pushing buttons on the flight panel without the pilot's previous knowledge and permission.
Here are four balled up heli nets.
This photo shows a close-up of the hooks that are on the corners of a helicopter net (or helicopter sling). One corner has a round or pear-shaped ring, called the O-ring or pear ring. The other three corners have latching hooks.
When a sling has been loaded with tree boxes or gear, and needs to be closed up, the three hooks each attach to the pear ring. Do not attach hooks to other hooks, or to the rope of the sling. When it is time for the sling to be picked up, the hook at the end of the long line (or a lanyard hook) will also be attached to the pear ring, so the entire net is lifted up by this pear ring.
Here's a sling, loaded with tree boxes.
This carousel has eight hooks. It is most useful with a helicopter with fairly decent lifting capacity, such as an A-Star. By having multiple hooks, it is possible to move multiple cargo slings on a single trip, as long as the total weight of the slings doesn't exceed the machine's lifting capacity.
Here's a photo of a Hughes 500 (known as a Huey) landing in the background, and a pickup truck full of fuel drums and sling nets in the foreground.
Here's the jet turbine on the Huey. If you go back and look carefully at the photos of the other types of helicopters, you'll notice that the Bell machines and the A-Star have their exhaust ports on top. The Huey 500 is the only helicopter commonly used for planting which has the exhaust down at head level. The exhaust coming out of this turbine is heated to over five hundred degrees, so you definitely want to make sure you never duck under the tail boom. You'll end up looking like a piece of burned toast (that is, if the tail rotor doesn't do a Raiders Of The Lost Ark beheading on you).
Here's a close-up of the main rotor shaft for one of the Bell helicopters.
Be careful. The main rotor blades on a helicopter can dip much lower than most people realize, and you'd die immediately if the blade hit your head.
Here's a skid, one of the two "feet" that the helicopter sits on.
The pilot's skid has a mirror on the front, so he can see what's happening underneath the helicopter. Be very careful, if you have to walk close to the helicopter, that you don't accidentally kick this out of position.
Speaking of walking around the helicopter, this is the pitot tube. It's positioned on the front of the helicopter. It's used to help the instrumentation panel measure airspeed, altitude, and altitude trend (rate of change). It's delicate, so make sure you don't bump into it. Also, it's heated, so don't grab it.
The passenger compartment of the Long Ranger is quite spacious. It's the only one of the four helicopters shown here where passengers can sit facing each other.
This sticker shows where the survival kit is hidden. The contents of the survival kit are regulated by Transport Canada, and usually contain the means for starting a fire, for providing shelter, for providing or purifying water, and for visually signalling distress.
It only seems fitting to save the tail rotor for the end. The tail rotor spins quite quickly. For example, on the Long Ranger, the tail rotor rotates at almost four hundred revolutions per minute (ie. almost seven complete revolutions per second). When it's spinning that fast, it's a blur, and it's hard to see. This makes it very dangerous. It's very important that you never around the back of a helicopter that's powered up. In fact, it's a good habit to always walk around the front even when it's not running. Also, make sure that you never duck under the tail boom, as that means that you're much too close to the tail rotor for your own safety.
When it comes to lift capabilities for a helicopter (or any other aircraft), an increase in the "Three H's" make lifting more difficult: heat (outside air temperature), height (altitude), and humidity. When any of these three things increase, a helicopter will have a harder time getting slings off the ground, and gaining altitude quickly. On a cool dry morning, a specific helicopter may have no problem lifting 24 boxes, but if the same helicopter is moving cargo late that afternoon, in high humidity, it might be struggling to lift even two-thirds that number. Of course, the amount of fuel on board also makes a big difference. For a machine such as an A-Star (B2), which can carry more than 535 litres of fuel (slightly more than two and a half drums), the difference between being 20% fueled up and 100% fueled up is 428 litres, or 630 pounds (a litre of avgas weighs .72 kg). If you're moving tree boxes that weigh an average of 30 pounds each, that fuel difference represents 21 boxes.
How to Heli-Pack empty tree boxes.
Commuting to work in a helicopter.
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