Halfpenny Green 04 May 2011

Had a job interview in Dudley today, so made the short hop to Halfpenny Green for a quick look around. Armed with two digital cameras, I had free reign of the field and hangers (bar the police and Heliflight hangars), so these are the rotary delights to be seen here:

Robinson R.44 Raven II G-TGDL c/n R44-11746

 Back inside the hangers were:

Westland SA.341C Gazelle HT.2  G-SIVJ c/n 341-2012

Hughes 369D G-CCUO c/n 400711D

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A cheeky visit to the Heliflight maintainance hanger where I asked inside for permission, I was allowed to photograph, so the following lovely Robinsons' were inside the hanger whilst the Hughes was sitting pretty in the afternoon sunshine outside their doors. I didn't bother trying to photograph the two Jetrangers undergoing maint, due to their location (tightly packed in the middle of the hangar). I did go and ask for permission to view the "customers hanger", but was not allowed because "under no circumstances are any visitors allowed inside" but at least I tried!

Robinson R.22 Beta II G-OIIO c/n R22-2444

Robinson R.44 Raven II G-DAVV c/n R44-11079

Beautifully painted Hughes 369HS G-IDWR c/n 690101S
(pity the candy-red paint doesn't work on a flat computer image)

All in all a very enjoyable visit, with friendly and helpful officials, worth visiting more often. Many thanks to the control tower staff and owners / operators for allowing access to the spotter.

First Robinson R.66 in UK

19 Feb 2011, a selected 300 people (mainly the Helicopter Club of GB) were invited to see the UK debut of the Robinson R.66, demonstrated by Heli Air and showing that apart from the noise, will be almost impossible to identify from the R.44.

Robinson R.66 UK debut N66NN c/n 0016

Loss of Fotopic.net

Well it seems as though the well used Fotopic.net website has totally collapsed and gone forever, along with my photograph collections. There must be thousands of unsuspecting users that have lost their complete photo collections forever, luckily I have a back-up of mine, but not the comments or sorting that Fotopic allowed.

A Happy New Year

Hi, time for me to wish all my followers a peaceful and prosperous New Year.

I hope everything was quiet and that we all get what we wish for this new year.

regards

Coptercrazyyyy

HELP for HEROES FLY-IN

Just updated my pictures taken 26 Sept 2010 during the "HELP for HEROES" Fly-In at Coventry Airport


Click here for my HELP For HEROES 2010 collection


below are a few selected highlights:

The main reason for the vast number of visitors was the visit of the superb Vulcan G-VLCN / XH558:

She was in company with this RAF Tornado that made sure no-one was sleeping before the mighty Vulcan arrived.

In the visitors area, allowing a very close examination were a very good selection of aircraft including this lovingly restored Bell UH-1H:

The Army Air Corps Historic Flight also showed their wares, including the Alouette and Sioux shown here were also their Chipmunk, Beaver and Gazelle to be seen.

            

As my site was originally set-up for choppers, then these were amongst those noted on the airfield: 

G-BLGV - B206B-2 JetRanger II

G-BSBW - B206B-3 JetRanger III

G-BWZY - Hughes 269A

G-CCGE - Robinson R22 Beta II

G-LAIN - Robinson R22 Beta

G-RSCU - Agusta A109E Power

G-RULE - Robinson R44 Raven II

G-SCHI - AS.350B-2 Ecureuil

G-WLDN - Robinson R44 Raven I

G-ZAPY - Robinson R22 Beta

Hope you enjoy these pictures and have checked out the full gallery on picasaweb

The first!!!!!

This is the first post to this new internet BLOG, and although I wanted it to be something special, realized that it couldn't happen. So welcome to the new coptercrazy blog, where I hope that anyone who has anything interested to say or has a question regarding copters, will have the resources here, to answer all that is asked. I personally only have a few contacts, but hopefully those contacts have many many more throughout the aviation world, and so we should be able to 'self-answer' any query we have.