helicodger pilot Posted February 10, 2009 Report Share Posted February 10, 2009 I ran across this on an engineering software website and thought the VR crowd might enjoy it. Werner Greipl, a helicopter engineer, pilot, and alpine rescue instructor based out of Ottobrunn, Germany, has been involved in avalanche control flights in Europe where they apparently toss sticks of dynamite out of a helicopter to trigger controlled (or at least intentional) snow slides. While this sounds like a real "blast", I suppose after a while the novelty might wear off. "As we were throwing dynamite out of the helicopter's side door, it was always a little touchy," explains Greipl. "Having 50 kilograms of dynamite or more in the cabin and some guy sitting in the back with a lighter or some matches - it always made me feel a little nervous." As a result, he designed a device to do the job without carrying explosives inside the helicopter. Here's a link to the website about the avalanche blaster that has a video of the blaster (and the helicopter) in action. Pretty cool. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
heli.pilot Posted February 10, 2009 Report Share Posted February 10, 2009 "As we were throwing dynamite out of the helicopter's side door, it was always a little touchy," explains Greipl. "Having 50 kilograms of dynamite or more in the cabin and some guy sitting in the back with a lighter or some matches - it always made me feel a little nervous." When I was a student, in order to get me focused on smooth approaches and stable hovering, I was presented with a hypothetical scenario. The scenario was to imagine that there was a bride in the back seat, wearing her white wedding dress and sipping red wine from a very full wine glass. I think I just found my NEW scenario to present to students... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChprPlt Posted February 10, 2009 Report Share Posted February 10, 2009 Wow you had a back seat when you were training....I'm impressed! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
heli.pilot Posted February 10, 2009 Report Share Posted February 10, 2009 Wow you had a back seat when you were training....I'm impressed! Haha... just a "mental image"! I also had a "mental image" that I was flying something a little more like a EC130, and a little less like an R22! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HelliBoy Posted February 11, 2009 Report Share Posted February 11, 2009 We used to do quite a bit of explosive avalanche testing/control when I worked in heli-skiing. I would rather have a person tossing bombs than trusting a machine to light and release an explosive device. And no one uses matches or lighters anymore. Its all very controlled and quite safe really. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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