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Mountain flying can be demanding on aircrew and helicopters. Yet helicopters are incredibly useful in this environment.
In this episode of the Rotary Wing Show, Mick talks with Pieter Koster of NHZ Topflight, a helicopter mountain flying school operated by Canadian Helicopters.
The school operates out of Penticton, British Columbia, Canada with a number of Bell 407, EC120B, Bell 206B and AS350 BA/B2 machines.
The full mountain flying course runs for 3 weeks where pilots complete ground school and practical flying components.
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[tweet “Fly accurately, get the helicopter slowed down, 60kts, level, assess your TQ vs baseline TQ http://rotarywingshow.com/1-mountainflying/”]
[tweet “Shallow approach minimises RoD, power change required to level & risk of vortex ring state http://rotarywingshow.com/1-mountainflying/”]
[tweet “When you fly towards rising terrain you will subconsciously climb and lose airspeed http://rotarywingshow.com/1-mountainflying/”]
Pieter talks about how he got started as a helicopter pilot and some of his early jobs. We then get into some of the techniques that help pilots operating efficiently and safely when operating around mountains.
Visit HNZ Topflight website – Click Here
You can see where Pieter flies from on this map.
This is a video by a HNZ Topflight student capturing some of the terrain that the course operates over and through.
Have you done the course with HNZ Topflight? Would you like to one day? Leave a comment below.