The next town to me is Beerwah, today I went to the shops and saw a big chopper..... landing at Beerwah I knew where he must be going so I went to the football field and there was 4 (FOUR) full on choppers, 2 were those French twin engine jobs with the ducted fan tail rotor.....(Blue thunder?) and 2 were jet rangers..... I got pics and video of them all taking off 6 jet engines firing up at once.... I cracked a chubby

Here are some pics, I will get the video on youtube soon

One of the rangers tried to start about 3 times.... clouds of blue smoke, no rotor action, pilot got out and kicked the tires... back in, more smoke, get out... look again..... third time a charm.... lots of smoke, then she fired up

I think they were meeting/staging to go to Australia zoo... red star is me, yellow square is aus zoo, blue square was staging area?

Did you have to sit down and have a smoke after they took off?

Nearly..... no goat grazing on the side of the road was safe.... lucky there were none

The 2 on the right with the shrouded fan tail rotors are those Eurocopter Dauphines..... the pic in the link is one the pilot forgot to put the side stand down and it fell over They call them 'Tupper-Wolf' coz there is so much plastic (carbon fiber etc) They are one of the new heli's with auto hover a la GPS etc.... I dont think they have a collective or pedals? Fly by wire Evidently they have a 4 axis auto pilot and once set in the hover, the pilot can go down the back and help out

The video is uploading.... taking for ever should be finished by next year (your time)



air_station_humboldt_bay_helicopter_crashes_at_arcata_airport.htm

Here is the video of the 4 helicopters firing up and taking off. Notice the Ranger on the far left hass issues starting.... lots of smoke.... stunk of kero.... and also, the last Dauphine to go, the tail rotor/fan sounds awful I have seen a few helicopters fly past the house today, that one you can hear Due for a service soon.... I hope?

Cool, Thanks for sharing.

It was just freak good luck I saw them at all..... that red Dauphine we landing from about 500' .... over Beerwah township .... I thought I would see one chopper.... I got there, 2 minutes later the first one started.... the gyy walking between them had a set of com muffs on, so it was obvious he was the controller for the day.... there had been no publicity they would be there and nothing on the news?

I have seen them flying around today, I am on the edge of the north south helicopter corridor...... you can hear the sick tail fan Dauphine from miles away.... sounds awful

The Coast Guard along South Carolina have those noisy tail rotor choppers.

Yeah, the first white one that took off had the usual sound they make.... it is sort of their trademark howl or whine, but the red and white one had an exceptionally rough sounding sick one ... I am sure the next 100 hourly will catch it.... it would have vibration sensors for sure, if it were too bad one would hope

I believe the noise/shriek came from the ducted fan tail rotor. It is the only chopper I've ever encountered that had that shriek/noise.
The Huey had a distinctive tail rotor noise as well as a distinctive main rotor noise.

Yeah, like I said, the tail fans have a sound of their own..... I just noticed that the first one was very quiet, but with the fan sound.... but when the red one got about level with the goal posts, you could hear it sort of clattering and a bit rough, but still with the fan whirring noise..... I think it comes over on the vid.... Anyway, I enjoyed hearing all of the jets fire up at once .... love that sound