For all rotorheads

[Monsoon65]

This was taken in 1963 at Larson AFB, WA. My father was doing an FCF on this as the flight engineer when it crashed. It was after lunch and the pilot was a diabetic and didn't know it until he blacked out doing touch and go's.

No one hurt (except Dad scraped his shin climbing out the open crew door to get the guys up front out thru the broken cockpit windshield. And the pilot's flying days came to an end.

[CPTAUSRET]

Looks like a Kaman, glad no one was hurt!

[Monsoon65]

That's correct. I forgot to say it was a Kaman HH-43.

I did some search and the aircraft was actually fixed (Dad said they were told it was scrapped). It later crashed in a California forest doing some logging (which a lot of these helicopters were used for with civilian agencies), killing the pilot.

[Huey14]

Shit, those were some ugly birds.

[Air.177]

The new version of that bird, the K-Max is still in use. No Passenger capabilities whatsoever, but it's a pretty decent GP Helicopter. B/C of the way the rotors arc, you always approach these from straight ahead. These are used extensively in Logging and fire-fighting in this country.

Here's some Specs for the K-max:
The Kmax lifts 6,000 lbs. at sea level, and will still lift over 5,000 lbs. at 8,000 ft. density altitude, while only consuming 84 gallons fuel/hour (322 liters/hr).


Good times,
blake