Steven Hale Photography

Last night I was at the rather excellent Mill Hotel in Alveley for HeliflightUK’s Christmas Party. This is a great opportunity for all the staff and customers of Heliflight to mingle and meet other fellow helicopter pilots, along with their partners and friends.

All the guys were looking rather dapper in their suits and dinner jackets, and there were more seriously hot women than I’ve ever seen in one room! This turned out to be one of those rare nights where absolutely everyone was up for fun and having their photo taken, and some fabulous shots were the result.

I had a great time. Fantastic food, great service, and a disco ’till late. These chopper pilots certainly know how to party!

The gallery is here.

RotorTalk - HeliflightUK Newsletter

I had some more work published recently in RotorTalk the official newsletter of HeliflightUK Ltd.. They used several of my photos from Western-super-Mare Helidays back in July. I also wrote an article for them comparing model helicopters with flying full-size machines.

You can download the newsletter below, it’s just over 2MB in size so might take a little while.

Ready to throw the whiz-wheel out the window? Have a look at this flight planning spreadsheet that includes the solution to the Triangle of Velocities. With a convenient knee-board sized output and large clear display of all the most important information, you may never need your whiz-wheel again!

Simply enter your desired track, true air speed, wind forecast, and distance on the flight log just as you would with the paper equivalent. The spreadsheet then calculates the heading you require, your ground speed, and your estimated time enroute.

I’ve added a page for different aircraft checklists. At the moment it just contains the startup and shutdown checklist for the Robinson R22 helcopter. I’ll add more as I find them.

I’m in the process of designing a flight planning spreadsheet so that I don’t have to keep doing all the repetitive calculations by hand. One of the calculations involves working out the heading required to maintain the desired track in windy conditions, or in other words, how much you have to turn the aircraft to compensate for the drift caused by the wind. This is usually done using a “flight computer” such as the E-6B, known colloquially as a “whiz wheel”.

But what exactly does the wind side of the whiz-wheel do? How does it work? Before I could add the calculation of the wind-correction-angle and subsequent ground speed to my spreadsheet I first had to derive the solution to the Triangle of Velocities. I thought a page showing the solution here might be useful to the next person trying to solve the problem.

Renefiles Oracle Newsletter

I was contacted recently by Marguerite Krause, the webmaster of ReneFiles the official website of René Auberjonois. She had spotted my photos of René from SFB Reunion6 and was interested in using some of them in “Oracle” the fan club newsletter.

I sent some images over, and she kindly gave me a copy of the finished article. You can download the newsletter below, it’s just under 5MB in size so might take a little while.

I’ve now updated my helicopter weight and balance spreadsheet to include the Robinson R44. I have maintained the same format for both the R22 and the R44 so that the look, feel, and use is the same for both. The R22 page simply has the rear seats and doors greyed out.

Last weekend I visited Reunion 6 a science fiction convention in the West Midlands run by SFB Events. Contrary to popular belief, sci-fi conventions are not full of geeks wearing Star Trek uniforms, and nerds hoping to some day teach a girl about this human thing called love. Oh no, they’re full of geeks looking for three days of constant partying with their friends, with a few celebrity guests from popular TV shows thrown in just in case anyone gets bored!

Reunion is no exception. This year the event was held at the Quality Hotel Walsall - a new venue for this their sixth year. The star guests were Rene Auberjonois (Odo - Deep Space Nine), Louise Jameson (Leela - Dr. Who), Bodie Almos (Brendan ‘Hot Dog’ Costanza - New Battlestar Galactica), and Jennifer Halley (Diana Seelix - New Battlestar Galactica).

Friday night begins with the Opening Ceremony, followed by several party games including “MasterGeek”, and the first of three discos. The “Alumni” ticket holders also get an intimate cocktail party where they can mingle with the guests and enjoy the infamous Chocolate Fountains! During the day there are question and answer sessions where you get to quiz the guests about their work on your favourite show. Saturday evening had a fancy dress competition with the theme The Wacky Racers and Hanna-Barbera, with the winners judged by the star guests.

The whole weekend passed incredibly quickly, and soon the closing ceremony was upon us. The guests handed out prizes for the winners of the fiction, art and fancy dress competitions, and once more the music played late into the night for the last of the entertainment.

All in all a great weekend enjoyed by everyone. SFB Events also run another convention based in Bournemouth called the SFBall. Guests already announced include Mary McDonnell (Laura Roslin - New Battlestar Galactica), Robert Picardo (The Doctor - Voyager), Peter Jurasik (Londo Mollari - Babylon 5), and Stephen Furst (Vir Cotto - Babylon 5). Tickets are selling fast and I strongly suggest you book now before it’s too late!

More photos from the event can be found here.

Last night I was lucky enough to be invited to the wedding reception of John and Katie Dyson.  Everybody seemed to be enjoying themselves and the dance floor was packed for most of the night - thanks mostly I think to Katies Mum!  There were quite a few characters there being a joy to photograph.

The gallery is here.  Please contact John for the password!

Having spent some time looking on the internet for a good Weight and Balance Calculator for the Robinson R22 Helicopter and finding most of them to be poorly designed and difficult to customise, I decided to create my own.

This MS Excel spreadsheet has a clear layout and simple tables for adding additional aircraft details.

Simply enter your weight, and the weight of your passengers plus their baggage, and the calculator will tell you how much fuel you can load to reach MTOW, and also show you the CG position on the charts taken from the POH. Simple drop-down lists allow you to choose your doors and dual-control configuration, and see how the change in weight affects your CG position. If things start to light up red - you know you’re overloaded!