Night flight with no lights in tight formation...

Low level night vision goggle flight, single engine, with students, and you will have the only compressor stalling engine of your flying career...over trees and high tension lines.....

When flying nights, you will suddenly see position lights being turned on and coming at you about 100 feet away, you bank right, he banks left, and your rotor system barely passes over his, in the traffic pattern.....

Flying down the Autobahn with skids 3 feet over the tops of rush hour traffic, trying to beat the heavy snow, fog, and failing light to make it home with a 20 minute fuel light glowing brighter than you thought possible....hoping there aren't any new wires anywhere, and your IP is missing happy hour standing on the ramp hoping you make it home.....and he doesn't chew you out until the next day.....

Flying goggles means you will hear a buddy say he has a cockpit fire and is going down....(he makes it okay)

Coming in to work for the afternoon student shift to find a crowd of senior IPs marking search grids on the flying area map, won't tell anyone a thing, all flights are mysteriously cancelled for the day, and everybody waits 3-4 hours for the bad news. The girlfriend is in Europe visiting family, comes home 3 weeks later to get the news, and ends her life. Wife, who was in Ca. suing for divorce, won't let us name the building after him....


Good thread Jim, but you sure make me miss flying full scale all of a sudden!


Rule # 31- A new helicopter pilot will say nothing if somebody asks him to fly. He will sit on his hands and monitor the standby load meter.