Part of the 365 Days project.

First flight of the year. We popped out for lunch to Lake Vyrnwy in North Wales. Unfortunately we were too late for lunch and they didn’t start serving dinner until 7pm! Oh well, back home for curry it is then!

Following the success of my CG calculator for the Robinson R22 and R44, I have now produced a version for the Bell 206B. I have maintained the same format as for the R22 and the R44 so that the look, feel, and use is the same for all aircraft.

Many thanks to John-Hendric Durrer for assistance in developing and testing this new spreadsheet.

I’ve made some improvements to my flight planning spreadsheet, and I’m please to announce that version two has now been released!

Not only does it include the solution to the Triangle of Velocities to allow automatic calculation of heading and groundspeed based on the given wind forecast, but it now also calculates your track and distance using the Rhumb line between your waypoints.

Flight planning has never been so easy!

Decending back down to around 1000ft we visit downtown LA. After circling around the skyscrapers (try doing that in the UK!) we head back home to Long Beach. What an awesome flight!!

We leave Burbank airspace, and it’s time to pull the collective up to maximum continuous power, bring the speed back to 60kts, and start a climb up to 6500ft as we take in the Mt. Wilson Observatory.

Turning right at Santa Monica, we head towards the Hollywood Hills and buzz the famous sign.

Flying out over the Pacific coast from Long Beach to Santa Monica. A helicopter transit through LAX airspace involves going low level at less than 150ft over the beach underneath the main arrival/departure path. Great fun!!!

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!

Check out the gallery for more photos.

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.