Free Republic

Six people died on Wednesday when a tourist helicopter used in Hollywood movies crashed in West Virginia during a vintage helicopter show where guests without pilot licenses were allowed to fly the aircraft. The Vietnam-era helicopter, which had previously appeared in movies including Baywatch, Die Hard and Outbreak, was being flown during the 7th Annual Huey Reunion, an event for historical aviation enthusiasts. Guests at the event, hosted at the Marpat Aviation school in Logan county, could pay to fly the helicopter for $250 for a 30-minute session even without having a license, according to the event page. The helicopter,...

Ingenuity aced its "Wright Brothers moment" a year ago — and it's still going strong. One year ago today (April 19), an aircraft flew on a world beyond Earth for the first time ever. That history-making vehicle is NASA's Ingenuity Mars helicopter, which landed inside the Red Planet's Jezero Crater with the life-hunting, sample-caching Perseverance rover on Feb. 18, 2021. Just over two months later, the 4-pound (1.8 kilograms) Ingenuity made its first foray into the Martian skies, hovering about 10 feet (3 meters) above the red dirt of a site named, appropriately enough, Wright Brothers Field. With that 39-second...

Capt. James Bellew, an Army pilot at Fort Stewart-Hunter Airfield in Georgia, was killed last week in a helicopter crash that is currently under criminal investigation, Savannah Now reported. An official statement issued March 30 from Fort Stewart-Hunter Airfield's 3rd Infantry Division confirmed the incident that killed Bellew involved two UH-60 helicopters at Wright Army Airfield, but did not share further details. On Monday, an anonymous source familiar with the investigation told the Army Times that the incident, which occurred at approximately 2 a.m., was "not an accident."

The crash occurred near East Fork Road and State Route 39 at about 4:52 p.m.... LASD initially said the helicopter, LASD Air Rescue 5, might be carrying four people, Deputy Koerner later confirmed that five deputies were involved in the crash and all were transported to local hospitals.

This is the shocking moment a Russian helicopter appears to go down in flames as it is downed in Ukraine. Footage from the frontlines seems to show the aircraft soaring before it is targeted by Ukrainian weapons. In the clip, it can then be seen lighting up in flames as it pummels down, exploding in a fireball as it reaches the ground.

One police officer died and another is in critical condition after a law-enforcement helicopter crashed in Newport Beach Saturday night. The helicopter crashed near West Balboa Boulevard and 18th Street, according to Newport Beach Police Department spokeswoman Heather Rangel. Security footage from a nearby resident shows the helicopter spinning and losing altitude, and aerial footage from Sky5 showed the helicopter to be submerged in water a few yards offshore.

It is said that necessity is the mother of invention. This proverb could not be more true in the case of a mechanic in India’s north Bihar state who is being hailed as an ‘artist’. In order to cash in on the growing frenzy among grooms who seek to hire helicopters to make a grand entry to their wedding venues, Guddu Sharma turned his Tata Nano, a four-seater hatchback, into a chopper.

DARPA has managed to fly ‘smart’ black hawk helicopter without any pilot on board. The ALIAS technology has thus far cost $160 million.During an experimental project led by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and Lockheed Martin, the renowned Black Hawk helicopter flew totally unmanned for the very first moment.The initiative is known as ALIAS, which stands for “Aircrew Labor In-Cockpit Automation System,” and it was victorious after a UH-60 Alpha-model Black Hawk chopper made its maiden flight without a human operator on board a few days earlier.Image via Lockheed Martin: Sikorsky UH-60A Blackhawk Optionally Piloted Aircraft leaves the...

Just dropped the third single from my upcoming third album. This one's called "The Desert" and it's a spoken word piece about one of my experiences in Iraq while working there in 2006-7. Here's a link to it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfKTQe0LWLw The Desert

New Delhi -- India is set to finalise a long-conceived proposal to procure 30 multi-mission armed Predator drones from the US for the three services at an estimated cost of over USD 3 billion (around Rs 22,000 crore), official sources said on Tuesday. The proposal to acquire the MQ-9B long-endurance drones, armed with air-to-ground missiles, is likely to be cleared by the Defence Acquisition Council (DAC) in the next few weeks following which it will be placed before the PM-led Cabinet Committee on Security, they said. The sources said various key aspects of the procurement including the cost component and...

The Navy has recovered the wreckage of a fatal helicopter that crashed in August off the coast of San Diego, the Naval Air Forces Public Affairs office announced Tuesday. Five human remains were also recovered, and have been transferred to Dover Air Force Base for official identification. A team from the Naval Sea Systems Command's Supervisor of Salvage and Diving recovered the remains and wreckage on October 8 off the coast of San Diego, the Navy announced. On August 31, the MH-60S Seahawk helicopter crashed while it was "conducting routine flight operations" off the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln...

The move followed more than 72 hours of coordinated rescue efforts and nearly three dozen search and rescue flights to look for the wreckage, the Navy’s Pacific fleet said in a Saturday statement. The names of the sailors were being withheld until their next of kin have been notified. Also injured on Tuesday were five other sailors who were on board the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier where the MH-60S helicopter was operating on the deck before the crash. An investigation into what caused the crash about 70 miles (112 kilometers) off San Diego is ongoing, but the fact that...

A video which has been claimed to show a condemned man being hanged from a helicopter seized by the Taliban appears to have been misleadingly captioned. The 11-second clip - which has over 2m views and has been shared thousands of times on Twitter - is blurred and doesn’t give a clear indication of what is going on. Further footage and still photographs seen by the BBC show that the man flying over the city of Kandahar is very much alive. These images show him wearing the Blackhawk helicopter’s diver’s winch and waving the Taliban flag. Several Afghanistan experts, quoting...

VIDEO AT LINK............ The Mexican Navy helicopter was trying to reach areas affected by Hurricane Grace when safety officials were notified of a mechanical incident. On board were four officials including Veracruz State Government Secretary Eric Cisneros, who suffered only minor injuries.

Former President Donald Trump sent a statement to his followers calling on President Joe Biden to 'resign in disgrace' on Sunday amid the Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan after the withdrawal of US troops. 'It is time for Joe Biden to resign in disgrace for what he has allowed to happen to Afghanistan, along with the tremendous surge in COVID, the Border catastrophe, the destruction of energy independence, and our crippled economy,' Trump said in an email. He continued perpetuating his claim that Biden won the presidency via election fraud, concluding the email: 'It shouldn't be a big deal, because he...

A Saskatchewan man took his craving for ice cream to a whole new level on the weekend. According to the Tisdale RCMP, a man landed his helicopter in a high traffic parking lot at around 5 pm on July 31.The RCMP stepped in after realizing it was not an emergency landing, but rather the pilot simply wanted to go into Dairy Queen to pick up an ice cream cake.Source: RCMP "When it landed, the helicopter blew up dust and debris through the area, which includes schools, an aquatic centre and more," explained an RCMP release. "Officers determined the pilot, a...

Fishing out a P-51 Mustang model airplane with a Robinson R-22. https://youtu.be/ffEYqGGYXRk

NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter acquired this image on May 22, 2021 using its black and white navigation camera. This camera is mounted in the helicopter’s fuselage and pointed directly downward to track the ground during flight. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.The next flight of NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter will take place no earlier than this Sunday, June 6. Regardless of flight date, data will be returned to Earth over the subsequent three days.The flight profile will send Ingenuity to a location about 350 feet (106 meters) south of its current location, where it will touch down at its new base of operations. This...

It was attempting to refill its water bucket at a lake Four were killed Monday May 10 after a helicopter crashed in Erhai Lake in Dali, Southwest China’s Yunnan Province. The Z-8X helicopter operated by the People’s Liberation Army Air Force had been assisting firefighters on the ground by dropping water with an external bucket. It crashed while attempting to refill at the lake. Initially it was reported that the two pilots were killed and there were two missing crewmembers. After a search that involved 16 ships and more than 490 rescuers the crewmembers were found deceased about 16 hours...

NASA’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter is preparing to explore a new region of the Red Planet today on its fifth scheduled flight (3:26 p.m. EDT, or 12:26 p.m. PDT), with flight data coming in around 7:31 p.m. EDT (4:31 p.m. PDT).  Off to new places! The #MarsHelicopter is slated for its fifth flight on May 7, with data coming down at 4:31pm PT (7:31pm ET). The rotorcraft will take off at Wright Brothers Field and will land elsewhere this time, which is another first for Ingenuity. https://t.co/JxLNz7UADw pic.twitter.com/zOGo1j7srt — NASA JPL (@NASAJPL) May 6, 2021 If all goes well, the...