Scudrunners

I love hanging around airports because you never know who will pop in for a visit.


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I was out there today tinkering with the airplane when I heard an unusual helicopter noise.  I looked up to see a Chinook (I've never seen one up close before) and a Blackhawk, which is pretty cool then I look closer and saw that they're on skis!  Must be going to do some ice fishing or maybe heli-skiing.  I was actually a bit surprised to see them on skis at all.  The operators around here just run low skid gear with bear paws in the winter and just let them sink up to their bellies in the snow.  I've even seen a Cormorant do it (that didn't work quite so well though because they lowered the gear first and the wheel wells got plugged with snow that the flight engineer had to shovel out).     

The chinook is pretty amazing. I have seen them in Oahu flying and thought I might have been hallucinating initially. Last summer we were in Washington State at a small lake near Tacoma and a few of them were flying in the distance.

They must be interesting to operate at lower speeds or hovering.

Chinooks are ugly as sin, and smell too....

Now the Blackhawk... now that is a sexy bird... 

:)

Where's the motorcycle ramp on the Blackbird?

This sort of thing turns my crank.  [youtube][/youtube]


Okay okay, maybe there is some utility in the shit[font=verdana]-hooks[/font]

If it's in the budget we probably should get both.

Different mission sets. 


Want to kick ass?  Get a few Blackhawks... 
Want to move some gear, get a few more Chinooks. 

It would be nice to bring a jeep, a nice fishing boat and a tiki bar with refrigeration, camping by some secluded lake.

Not sure anyone will believe me, but I think it
was in the late 1980's I saw eleven (?) Chinooks
fly by, one after another.  I suspect the government
was junking them, for reasons that only they could
understand.

Not junked... back in 1991, the Mulroney government sold the CH-147 Chinook helicopter fleet to the Dutch.