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Jerry Grayson returns to the Rotary Wing Show with an update on his next adventure following a packed career in the cockpit as a SAR and film pilot. Now-a-days he keeps his feet on the ground but leverages his experience in the operation of drones – and he thinks it might be a good time for other helicopter aircrew to take another look at this space.
Flying a helicopter is an expensive and hard earned skillset. It is also pretty specialised and not something that you can do from anywhere. It is hard to ‘work-from-home’ during COVID, the work hours aren’t always family friendly, the job market can be very cyclic and a lot rests on your continued aviation medical passes.
So what do you do if you find yourself as a skilled aircrew member and find yourself out of work? In this episode we look at a possible Plan B where you can transfer a large amount of your existing knowledge and experience.
Jerry Grayson had a distinguished career in the UK Royal Navy – he graduated pilot training at age 17, operated from carriers and was a SAR pilot. Jerry was recognised with the Air Force Cross (AFC) for his role in a number of dramatic rescues during the 1979 Fastnet yacht race in horrendous conditions. Post Navy career he then found himself travelling the world as a film pilot including gigs at NASA, Formula 1 and the Olympics.
You can find out a lot more about Jerry’s other stories in Episode 29 including a pretty challenging emergency situation in a A109 at night.
This time around we focusing on flying drones and leveraging their capabilities for different product outputs. Jerry lays out some compelling considerations for growth in this part of aviation and how it stacks up against the traditional helicopter design.
Above is an example of the type of product that can be generated for clients. Specialised software is used to use stitch imagery from a drone to generate these 3D models. Jerry runs periodic courses which walk people how to do this. Links to courses are below.
Jerry’s first book ‘Rescue Pilot’ was covered in detail in Episode 29. Since then he has released another book ‘Film Pilot’ which we touch on in this interview.
In our conversation we touch on one filming project that Jerry flew in Kuwait covering the deliberate lighting of oil wells by withdrawing Iraqi forces. Lessons of Darkness was the documentary made and the full film can be found on YouTube. The clip below shows some of the flying scenes that Jerry and his team captured.
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Links from this week’s episode:
Support the podcast on Patreon
Jerry’s 2nd Book – Film Pilot: From James Bond to Hurricane Katrina
Jerry’s personal website
Introduction to Drone Mapping – online delivered class covering the basics of data processing to creating mapping products for clients
Be part of the conversation! What was your biggest takeaway from this episode?