MD500 Tuna Boat Landing and Shutdown 

Those MD500's are the sports cars of the sky for sure! This one looks like an older model. The ones I've seen the mast base that extends into the cockpit are much larger.

500’s are the best. I have hundreds of flights in a Bell 206B on a Tuna boat. Good job. I only question bare feet. Also I used to land downwind becouse it limits turbulence on landing.

no music is the big one

Those elements would have ruined the majesty

Oh yeah, they take real good care of the ship. They're always cleaning and painting the thing

Thanks! I definitely struggled a lot in the beginning and honestly still had those off days in the end. But I definitely grew a lot as a pilot out here

Yeah it's definitely a pretty fun adventure. I've been enjoying it so far. I'll probably extend my contract a little while

You should see the Taiwanese boats that a lot of my coworkers are on. I've got a floating Ritz Carlton compared to a lot of them lol. It was pretty strange at first, especially with flat light in those more overcast hazy days. But you start to learn new reference points. Like you can see differences in the water from currents, or the position of the sun helps keep your bearings

Transmitter on frequency and an adf.

⁠@@petesmith9472Peanut butter jelly with a baseball bat.

​@@sinfulldoubtwhat a lovely flying where are you from

​@@sinfulldoubtis it hard to become a helicopter pilot in usa

I see what you did there 🤣 it is a very Japanese thing to have an anime character painted on it though

No problem, glad you enjoyed it

Glad you enjoyed it! I need to get back into DCS. I used to play it back when it was only the black shark. Those aren't easy helicopters to learn on either. The mi-8 is pretty well known for being ready to get into VRS.

@@sinfulldoubt Hey =] Yeah I got the Hind a year ago and have only JUST started to get it sorted. Got the Mi-8 a month or 2 back and its been awesome for learning. You should check DCS out in current form, I'd say its hugely improved, theres a good free blackhawk uh60 mod if you get keen to DL DCS again, though if you do it on steam go for the openbeta version. Thanks for the reply!

@@bm4n1 oh yeah! There's so many modules I want now lol. I need to build a solid desktop with VR and then get the Apache and the F14 then basically every other module 🤣 I'll just never leave the house at that point

You know, this is the first I'm hearing about this but would explain a few things I've seen/experienced out there.

@@sinfulldoubt check the Operating Manual (-10), it has a caution against entering slow right turns when low to the ground. The Hughes Tailspin, as explained to me by none other than a Vietnam war Army pilot who trained pilots on the recovery drill, is caused by the rotor downwash interacting with the stabiliser when it is banked to the right creating lift and pitching the nose down. As you can imagine these pilots operated very close to the ground so they didn't really have much time to react sadly. Quote from a very old PPRUNE post: "In the OH6a, (500C) the V tail can develop lift and force the nose of the helicopter down and to the right when you have a right quartering tail wind. This is not loss of tail rotor authority. It is the wind exerting a force on the LARGE stablizers. If you do not have enough altitude you may not be able to correct the attitude without ground contact."

@@andrewbergman9315 "ground contact" is a disconcertingly neutral way of putting it.

Glad I can convince you to come to the fun side 😉

@@sinfulldoubt This looks way more fun than flying tubeliners lol

Oh you got this! It just takes practice

Well good thing you're still here to talk about it. I don't think I'll ever top that job. As boring as the flights could be at times, it was such a fun adventure

@@sinfulldoubt we had 25 boats in our code group (Portuguese captains who regardless of what companies we worked for shared daily spotting and catch totals) Out of our 25 boats we had 7 crashes which was not considered crazy. Mexican maintenance was……sub optimal lol. Still it was so much fun

Yeah I think they might, but I'd rather not try to swim with shoes on if I had to.

Sneakers (trainers) would be light enough for flying in the tropics, especially ‘doors off.’ They would also offer some level of protection from fire, torn metal or shards of Plexiglas, in the event of an emergency. Additionally, they would give you better grip on a potentially slippery surface, when evacuating.

Thanks!

Oh yeah, I'm gonna miss it a lot

Glad you enjoyed it

It was certainly an awesome adventure

Thanks! It was definitely a fun adventure out there

Lol that would be pretty awesome

Thank you! Yeah I'm hoping to get into the heavy lift and firefighting world in the next few years.

Thanks! Yeah we are the fish spotters. Our job is to fly around and help the boat find fish quicker, since we can cover much more area than the ship can. Most of the time we fly point to point and the fish master directs us to where he wants us. But sometimes they just have us fly I giant kinda box pattern in front of the ship. That's what I fly barefoot though, no need for shoes out in the water if that's where I end up.

Oh wow that's an interesting way to do it

Yeah if we didn't flip it around, the wind coming off the bow would feather the tail rotor blades a lot.

Oh yeah, it's nice when you shut down that loud engine 🤣

😂 yeah that's the best way to do it lol. Gonna have to start wearing shoes again at my next job though

@@sinfulldoubt Ahh interesting! Hope to see videos of that in the future. :) I'm in the middle of my CPL course.

Thanks, appreciate it! Yeah I didn't want to have to try to swim with shoes on if it happened. Plus it was nice getting more feedback from the pedals without the shoes

Oh yeah, I definitely miss it at times

Oh yeah, I'm definitely going to miss it

Oh yeah, I wanna try out one of those 530s eventually

Lol it took me so long to realize that's what it was

Oh yeah it was the adventure of a lifetime. I definitely miss it

@@sinfulldoubt miss it? You dont do this no more?

@@13skills65 yeah I definitely miss it. It was simpler times and a sweet adventure. But I do like being home as well

@@sinfulldoubt well i hope you have a great time in your new adventures!

@@13skills65 thanks!

no one will get the last tuna, youre being a prick for no reason, eat a salad if you dont want to eat animals.

Thanks!

Thanks! I really didn't have much of a background before this. I did one season of cherry drying before this. Then I did a bit of time with an AG company before I finally got hired on for tuna with about 200 hours. So you don't really need a ton of hours. You just have to show them that you can fly and handle life on a boat really

@@sinfulldoubt Nice! keep up the videos!

I’ll be finished with my commercial license and instrument rating in December but man I would love life on a boat and flying like this! Where are you based out of??

@@Hug_life my ship is based out of Japan. I got nice and lucky

@@sinfulldoubt how's the pay on a scale of 1-10? Sorry for the personal inquiry.

Thanks! Yeah it's a really nice ship. I won the lottery with this boat. As far as turning the blades backwards, it helps evacuate some of the hot exhaust stuck in the engine and also helps prevent oil from coking on the bearings immediately after shutdown

@@sinfulldoubt How much do you rotate the blades in order for it to be effective?

@@VictoryAviation Typically, one reverse rotation is sufficient for the Allison turbine, used in the Hughes 500.

It's the best way to go. I love that it's an option out here

Hope you keep all your toes.

@@dimitri9959 don't see why I wouldn't

@MarkInSavannah I was kind of thinking that, but hey, why not I bet you get WAY better feedback that way and can be even more precise.

Yeah it definitely was a challenge at first. Usually they were doing 11-13 knots which is much easier than when the boat stops

Lol nobody was ready for the toes 😂

Oh yeah, I needed to get myself a pair as well lol

I'd say we're still in pretty high demand. I haven't had any trouble getting jobs so far

I'm not entirely sure how they had it setup but they used a Garmin GPS designed for a boat and had another beacon on the ship. My GPS always showed home on my screen so I knew where the boat was. But also depending on the visibility I could see the boat from 30+ miles away a lot of the time

Almost like real life 😉

Oh yeah, it's very nice

@@sinfulldoubt They'd love me. I'm viscously clean. I oughta do that.

Thanks! I usually flew two or three times a day. When I wasn't flying I would be reading, or in my room playing video games or watching TV/movies

@@sinfulldoubt Amazing! What are the 2 to 3 flights per day actually for? Is this for delivering employees or looking at fish movements?

Lol thanks! I was born with them

Oh yeah I'll definitely always remember those landings when you were racing a storm back to the ship

The manual requires a 2 minute cool down for basically every helicopter before shutdown to stabilize temps and help cool everything down with the airflow. The turbine outlet temps can pretty easily reach 1100+⁰F on landing depending on how much power you have to pull in

That's the best way to fly 🤣

I miss flying that way 🤣

Yeah it's pretty crazy how much fish we snag. But there's a lot of people that get fed by it.

Because there are no controls on the right side?

@@Hjerte_Verke Quite obvious... But my question had to do with the fact that, usually, European heli pilots fly on the right seat.

Lol works for me 😂

Thank you! Glad you enjoyed the video

Yup! They're connected through the main rotor transmission

Yeah on a turbine engine is does disconnect but when you turn the rotors backyards, it's about the same thing as making it think that the engine is turning faster than the rotors so it will engage. You can hear the wheels turning inside the engine as we move the blades backwards.

Eh I'll put shoes on at my next job lol

Yeah they did a great job taking care of the ship

It definitely is, I'm gonna miss it when I move on

@@sinfulldoubt come to hawaii, tons of jobs opening

Good observation. There's actually no pedals on his side, just a welded foot rest so no danger to me. In other helicopters I would be much more concerned

😂 will do lol. He got a handful of those from the fish master and wears them all the time.

We do a fresh water compressor wash at the end of each day and also spray a lot of corrosion inhibitors on it every day as well. A complete fresh water bath probably happens about once I week, more if the seas are rough though

Oh yeah there's some long time pilots out there that are very good. Always made you question your skill after watching them 🤣

Thanks! It definitely didn't feel like it 😂 unfortunately we were always battling corrosion out there though

Well if you've got your heli certificate, we're always hiring. But it's a 12 month commitment for the contract

Thanks!

Oh I'm basically royalty lol. I only fly the heli. If I'm not flying, I'm down playing video games or something in my room lol. Even the captain of the ship is out working the net and cleaning the shop. It must be what it's like being a warrant officer.

I wouldn't be able to land one of those either I bet 🤣

Yeah I like having more feedback from them. But also just don't wanna have to try swimming with shoes on if it comes to it

Well I fully support that decision lol. I got my fixed wing private before I decided it was too boring and I wanted to fly helicopters. I was 27 when I got hired on here

That would be Andy. He's my full time mechanic

That would be a good way to drop off the spotter when he needs to get on his speed boat lol

Not really anything worth grabbing.

😂 almost like real life

@@sinfulldoubt fr it's crazy

There's no pedals over there so it's a non issue

Because he put up with me for a year? 😂

There's no pedals at all over there so no worries luckily