A Couple of Weeks in Pictures

I am very busy these days with various work to get done, so I haven’t been able to post nearly as much as I want to. Today I’d like to share some random pictures taken by me or my loadmasters the last two weeks. My first day was spent doing an audit, so not much pictureworthy about that. The rest was much better though.

I really love flying the B2. Though not as powerful as the B3, it is a very smooth ride. And as far as internal load goes, it is sometimes better than the B3, seeing as some of them have a higher dry operating weight. This bird has more than 12 000hrs.

Later in the week I was given a B3 in order to carry out some heavier lifts and improve my range between refuelling. The most notable difference in the cockpit compared to the B2 is the inclusion of the VEMD screens. New B2s will have this as well, but none of ours do.

Stopped by my grandmother between jobs for some lunch. She was away, but she had put out enough food to last us a week. Her place probably contributed to me falling in love with helicopters. Two generations of pilots come from nearby, so I’ve seen everything from 350s to 214s and Dauphins from that window. The third generation pilot in that family has just started his career as a loadmaster with us.

Enroute Kinsarvik, my home base. The cyclic buttons are mapped as follows, the red “trigger” switch is the radio key switch, the black button above my thumb is for the windshield wipers, the hat-switch moves the mirror, and the top red one is for the bellly-hook release, normally only used for emergency jettison of the load. The rest are not mapped. We have the same config throughout the fleet, but the mapping can vary between companies. Shot by Joakim