have been a helicopter pilot instead?
Absolutely.
And in hindsight, that would have been a terrible move. The reason I say that is because once I decided to become a professional pilot, I realized that there is a lot more money, opportunity, and a bit more safety involved in fixed wing flying.
I would still love to get my RW license someday. I'd have to be in a very comfortable position in the fixed wing world with a chance to instruct in helis before I started to learn flying helicopters.
When the time comes, I'll give it a try. But I'll always be a fixed wing pilot first.
No.
-mini
If it was the same price, everyone would do it - and you'd end up having to have 10k hours turbine, and three tours in 'Nam to carry oil riggers at $8 an hour.
No.
-mini
not sounding safe to me.
<--- Note the screen name.
I would have rather been in a helicopter. A 2000 lb plane has a lot of energy to dissipate even at 60 kts and that translates into a lot of real estate for the roll out. A helicopter can use as little as 0-50 ft.
These guys walked away. How many cars would a 172 have hit?
[yt]<object width="425" height="344">
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ED: Does anybody else see duplicate videos?
No thanks - I'll take the roll out.
(that looked like a crazy hard landing)
<--- Note the screen name.
I would have rather been in a helicopter. A 2000 lb plane has a lot of energy to dissipate even at 60 kts and that translates into a lot of real estate for the roll out. A helicopter can use as little as 0-50 ft.
These guys walked away. How many cars would a 172 have hit?
It's a hard market to break into, if only because it's
A) REALLY expensive to get into out of your own pocket..
and
B) You're competing with guys with a few thousand hours from the video below. (In RW stuff, 4000 or 5000 hours is considered "old hand")
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I admit I don't miss the deployments.. but this stuff was cool.
Honestly, no. I've never really had an interest in learning to fly a helicopter. It does look like fun, but it looks like other than an hour of buzzing landscape here and there, it would start to feel like I didn't get my money's worth as I would quickly run out of things to do.