Another skilled pilot...
 

http://i9.tinypic.com/2rze8b8.jpg

Real?

D@mn!!!

Real.

http://www.snopes.com/photos/military/rooftop.asp

Cool.

I don't know...that tree in the foreground doesn't seem particularly disturbed by the rotor wash.

Looks like the rear wheels are sticking into the roof for some stability. Still, the pilot is 40 feet from the loading ramp and facing the other way!

Sixto
93 300SD

How tough can that actually be? I mean, if the guy does that for a living it should probably be a piece of cake to pull off. No?

No. :rolleyes:

Nope. Not a piece of cake for a complex task like the one performed by the helecopter. Hovering, from what I've been told, is a difficult skill to master when taking into account wind shifts, loading and unloading while hovering, etc.. Even if you do it for a living, it isn't easy.

I am a pilot but don't fly for a living and I don't fly helicopters, I fly a Mooney (mooney.com) . Proficiency is the key to performing any task in an aircraft. Flying is like playing a musical instrument...........requires concentration to know what you are doing and staying ahead of the airplane, however, flying is very unforgiving if you make a mistake.

The fellows who land commercial airliners in poor weather do it for a living and it's never a "piece of cake" to put a 125,000 lb. machine moving at 180 mph on a strip of pavement that's 150' wide.......no matter how easy they might make it look.

Flying a helicopter is much more difficult than a commercial airliner.

Makes me dizzy
 

It makes me dizzy just looking at the picture. Yeah, I know therre have to be a lot of variables to keep track of to pull off something like that!

Piece of cake. (Or pie? I like pie.)

(No.)

A Money Man!... Er, I mean Mooney. Hehe. Very neat, More info please! :)

I used to fly SAR out of CH-46 helos, the little brother of the CH-47 in the picture. We did landings like that pretty regularly practicing. Its called a 2-point, pilot keeps the collective up just enough to hover the front, but the weight of the engines and whatnot in the rear keeps it on the ground. Only helos with no tail rotor can do it like that, it would have been a real bear to do it with a Super Stallion. Hueys do it with one skid.

Like we used to say, :If its Boeing, its Going. Phrogs Phorever.

Very real and lots of fun, frankly it is a fairly easy and common (not everyday but we practiced it at least once a month) manuver. The only time we had a problem was on a sloped clay roof that felt apart as we exited the helicopter, nobody was injured but I am glad the was a cross section that we could grab on to.

What would you like to know?