Ping

The phone rang at 3:30am, and Henry knew it would be the helicopter pilot wanting to know what the weather was doing. They actually expected him to be up, and the weather already checked, but bugger that, he had done so in the past and the call never came! He went outside, the sky was clear and he could see the outline of the Lombardy poplar, which was his indicator. The tree was about fifty feet tall and the slightest breeze bent its top. It was calm, just what was needed for aerial spraying.

They couldn’t spray the previous couple of days because it had rained, which made it tricky for Henry to negotiate the steep clay track up to the pond. He had three forty-four gallon drums of chemical on the back which helped with traction, so after a bit of slipping and sliding he made it before the allotted time of 4:30. But as usual the chopped didn’t arrive until 5:00.

Henry’s job was to dispense the chemical and take weather readings during the job. He was always critical of the tender process that awarded the work to the various helicopter companies. The lowest tender was usually accepted which meant that some of the choppers that turned up had been engaged in deer recovery and they were cowboys! Their mission in life was to do the job quickly and on the cheap, the only way they could make a profit! So Henry kept records, and if the wind came up, or conditions weren’t up to scratch, he would shut them down. The bickering was like water off a duck’s back!

They called it the ‘loader’, and the ‘loader driver’ was the pilot’s dog’s-body, but in fact the loader was an old petrol tanker with a rack on top where portable pumps, hoses and other gear were carried. The loader was parked beside the pond, had been since they arrived on the job. The helicopter was a Bell, one like you see on M.A.S.H. They weren’t using water from the loader, instead it was pumped from the pond, and the chopper landed on the bank that formed the pond. Helicopter crews like that, because once loaded, they can slip off the bank, the more forward movement, the more lift they have. It amounts to be being easier on the machine and the pilot – and they can carry more water per load.

This machine had a turbo, which gave it more power, but meant that before the machine could be shut down, it had to idle for half an hour to cool down. To allow the chopper to carry more water and chemical, they used to fly with a marginal amount of fuel in the tank. So Henry was conned into helping with reloading at fuel-up time. The loader driver tipped fuel in from a four gallon container and the tank seemed mighty close to the rotors for Henry’s liking! While the chopper was being refuelled, Henry filled the hopper using the tap attached to a three inch hose.

The pilot put the helicopter down in exactly the same spot each time he came in to reload, the skids made an indentation in the soil, the mark acting as his guide. When they were reloading, Henry and the loader driver didn’t hang back, they ran up when the chopper had barely landed. This saved engine running time. They relied on the accuracy of the pilot, but the boom was forward of the hopper and tank, so they had to stand out of the way before rushing in.

Ping! The pilot told Henry to say that. But it was a bloody explosion! Loud as a clap of thunder! The loader driver, vacated the scene, running, bent over like a half-open pocket knife carrying the fuel can with him! No time to think, Henry dropped flat on the ground as if being dive-bombed by a Stuka! The pilot shut the machine down without waiting for the turbo to cool down!

The rotors had clipped the rack on top of the loader, which blew out the tips of the blades! The pilot’s error wasn’t on this landing, but on his very first landing! He was fractionally too close to the loader, by a matter of inches and rotors just whirring above it. But because the ground had become wet and soft, with constant landing on exactly the same spot, each time the chopper deepening the depression slightly, so the rotor blades were getting unnoticeably closer and closer to the rack. Until…Ping!

The company used their own truck to transport new blades all the way down from Nelson, which took two days. Henry knew that the truck would be unable to negotiate the wet track up to the site, so he had Mick and the dozer ready to tow him up. They needed both Henry and Mick to help remove the damaged blades and attach the new blades to the chopper. There are only two bolts holding each blade on! The main one is about an inch in diameter and the other is about three eighths of an inch! That’s not much holding you up in the air! Made Henry feel uneasy!

But the fitting was the easy part. Along the blade were thin tabs, about three inches long and maybe an inch and a half wide. These control the trim, to make the machine fly and respond sweetly. They simply bent the tabs with a little gadget, tried it in the air, shut it down with half an hour’s cooling bent again and up in the air again and again. It took the rest of the day! Mick hadn’t been up in a chopper before, so they took him up during one of the trials. Cowboy pilots and an inexperienced passenger resulted in Mick getting the fright of his life when the machine shook because the trim was nowhere near sweet enough! Of course the pilot lied to him saying the fast shutdown had caused a miss in the engine! The really put the wind up poor old Mick!

Eventually, the spraying job was completed and Henry kept his word about the Helicopter only making a ping sound. The accident was never reported to the authorities, which was a bit naughty! Henry has kept the secret for forty four years – until now!