Point Contact - Safari 1: Just Do It

Just Do It! by Kris McLean

So says the advertising slogan of a well known manufacturer of joggers. Not a phrase of which I'm particularly fond either, with its implication of impulsive action irrespective of the consequences. But maybe just once (or twice) in a lifetime......

I saw my first helicopter up close in 1969, a Bell 47 downed by magneto trouble in a suburban park. I was 19 at the time on a fifty two dollar a fortnight scholarship while the Bell hired for 60 bucks an hour.

A quarter century later, I woke up one morning dreaming about that day in the park when the chopper dropped in. It occurred to me that in another twenty five years I'd be rocking chair fodder. "What the hell I thought, just do it!" I re-prioritised and a few years later, just after my forty sixth birthday, I learned to fly a helicopter.

I though I knew it all the day I got the licence, but there was more to come. I'd learned to fly in NSW but I had family over the border in Victoria and 500 km is a long way by chopper. In fact, unless your favourite uncle is a bank manager & likes flying, 500 km is a VERY long way by chopper.

"No problems," I figured "I'll just hire one from the Mexicans down there for the local flying & save a bundle". Now I knew, from the day when I had over heard two Media machine pilots arguing over the circuit direction at a CTAF, that the helicopter industry could be a bit parochial. But nothing had really prepared me for what was to come. I used all my best people skills. I cajoled, I kidded, I pleaded. It was like talking to a brick wall! I soon learned that the only outfit to hire a machine to a sixty hour pilot is the one that taught you to fly.

I contented myself for a while with sorties, of ever increasing duration, from my home flying school. One day I flew from Bankstown to past Yass on business. Peering at the map I suddenly realised how far I'd come, almost half way to the old man's place near Wangaratta. Not long after this revelation, I got this urge. "What the hell", I thought for the second time in a life time, "just do it"!

Now people acting on impulse tend to make errors & I made mine. I elected to fly my old fixed wing scenic route, Bankstown-Moruya-Cooma-Corryong-Wangaratta. Big mistake. It was the wrong thing to do because I flew it like I was flying a plank. The inevitable bit of cloud inland from Moruya found me at 8500', perched well above the fluffy opaque stuff with 22" on the MP gauge and one middle aged Robinson R22 (complete with middle aged pilot) struggling to hold altitude. I felt ridiculous. Here I was trying to be high, fast & comfortable with my fixed wing mind set when there was probably heaps of room for a little two seat helicopter below between cloud & terrain. Clearly I was going to have to shake this 'world view' if this was to be more than a very expensive version of a PA28 run.

Eventually I arrived unannounced at the old mans' retirement shack in the foothills of the alpine country. I resisted the overwhelming urge to press on to the aerodrome & then ring for a pick up by road. I had to do this. I'd rehearsed the manoeuvre a hundred times in my head & now the time had come.

The old boys place is bounded on three sides by wires with a Chestnut grove separating him from a eucalypt forest on the fourth. I came in low over the gums, waited till I had tail rotor clearance then dropped down into the nut orchard. Sneaking along between the neat rows I was able to materialise without warning from behind a tree virtually at his doorstep. It was worth the effort! If I close my eyes now I can still see the open mouth expression on his face.

The next few days were magic, like some surreal dream really. We did the rounds the old man and me. We dropped in on sundry relatives, we flew ridge lines, we saw the world. And all of it from 500' AGL. At last I was a real helicopter jock, not some aeroplane pilot with a rotary wing endorsement. We stopped going everywhere in straight lines. From 500' the 'road sense' I had in my skull from driving around the local area started to over ride the 'aeronautical data base' of VORs & NDBs in my head. One afternoon I picked up the bitumen from Beechworth up to Dad's lair. I flew it! When the road when up & down, we went up & down. When it wound around a hill, we banked & went round too. What a buzz!

The whole thing was probably a once in a lifetime affair. Dad is not getting any younger & my bank balance still carries the scars of that trip to this day. But I know one thing for sure. Some times you should "Just do it"!