S9coldfire

I took my wife up as my first passenger and she loved it and didn't seem nervous at all. Now I can't wait for my son to get old enough (9 months presently) to take up for a ride. The only concern I have now is that if he catches the addiction how to explain to him that he has to pay for his own flight training. But maybe I'm getting ahead of myself.

Definitely start by checking out the regs. Robbies are also limited to 9,000' AGL even if they're below 12,500'. So also check your POH. I've climbed several 14'ers (mountains above 14,000') and have never felt altitude sickness but I have some friends who get altitude sickness just driving over some of the 10,000' passes here. But there are always people on the mountain hiking with their dogs at that elevation and they appear to do just fine. So just like everything else in flying - you'll want to evaluate for yourself to see how you react. But for a lot of people and pets it's no problem being at higher altitudes without any supplemental O2 or side affects.

Check out AOPA life insurance. They don't have any aviation exclusions (that I'm aware of). Depending on your age and tobacco use they have rates as low as 8.3 cents per $1,000 of coverage ($83/month for $1 million policy)

My wife got helicoptered off of a 14'er after a boulder broke her arm. Commercial or not, that ride saved her arm from getting infected and possibly her whole arm. She and I were both extremely glad it was available and for the people who risked their lives to help her!

I had to demonstrate settling with power and (more importantly) proper recovery in my recent PPL checkride. Both times, with my instructor and on the exam, we didn't get into it right at the quoted >300 fpm descent, >20% power applied and <ETL. So perhaps we were just nibbling at the edge as Gomer said and certainly nowhere near a 2,000 fpm descent!

At least it looks like they caught the people who did it.... http://www.cairns.com.au/article/2013/07/01/244649_local-news.html

I started flying RC helicopters before I started in on the real thing. A little while ago I came up with a system to drop payloads from my RC heli. As Flying Pig and rubidug pointed out though weight does become an issue quickly. The heaviest thing I ever dropped was a Coke can.

I got to help out with a charity golf ball drop and got to land on the driving range prior to the drop (with permission from the golf course of course!)

Here's another video of a precision landing (if you can call it that) at 13,700'. It happened before I started taking lessons, but I was already interested in helicopters. My wife, a friend, and I were hiking a 14'er in southwestern CO, almost at the summit when a 100lb boulder she grabbed on to suddenly came loose and broker her arm. She was lucky it wasn't worse, like her head. I have the utmost respect for the pilot and the paramedic that pulled this off!

So just out of curiosity - what do you use a mattle black helo for? Sure looks like fun though!

Another option is to use a WiFi only iPad and get an external GPS unit that either plugs into the iPad directly or communicates to the iPad over bluetooth, such as Bad Elf. This would at least let you take the GPS with you, if you ever wanted to upgrade, without having to pay for multiple cellular capable devics that you're not using.

My school has one for its instrument trainer and for students wanting to do turbine. The rationale I heard was that it is harder to hot start - making it good for training students. Definitely not the prettiest looking bird though!

I was in Rio in 2009 and when we first got there we were kind of dissapointed at the size of the waves (even coming from Colorado). But within a few days everything had changed and the waves were big enough that they were advising people not to go swimming, but unlike here in the states, they still let people go out if they chose to. We watched at least 1 person get rescued and winched into a heli everday, including a guy that was staying at our hostel. I don't think they charged him anything, but I can definitely think of some better ways to get a helicopter ride! S&R would make the most sense as to why it was so low with so little airspeed..

I just saw this thread for the first time, thanks to Paul, and after reading all of the recommendations, I picked up Chickenhawk from the library this weekendend and couldn't put it down! One of my favorite parts was when he described being loaded down, milking the collective and using a right pedal turn in order to get over a barbed wire fence surrounding a mine field that they were stuck in. Since Vietnam is more recent hisotry it always seemed like we never quite got there in history class when we inevitably fell behind throuhout the year. And I was a bit too young for most of the 'classic' Vietnam movies when they came out. But after reading Chickenhawk I've already had a couple of fascinating conversations with a coworker and my wife's grandfather who were both there. It's gone from feeling like something just in the history books to something that actually happened...

Thanks for the link! I just watched the whole thing on youtube last night. In the last year I also found out about "Blue Thunder" (move & TV), "Airwolf" and "Fire Birds" (terrible acting but still some great heli scenes). James Bond often has some good clips too! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHkJPF7IqHI