Cig Helicopter
 

Saw this on youtube. Flying over Haulover

Hope they bring this up to LOTO for the Rendezvous, great platform to get video from the ramp out the back.
https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.off...a61dcd9833.jpg
https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.off...cdbe77c55e.jpg

Wonder if they let the CEO pilot it?

:food-smiley-007:

Funny............:D
https://flightaware.com/resources/registration/N948PH

You can see the flight it took last week, 3 hour flight and never got over 450 feet (click on flight tracking). Also shows pics of what it used to look like before the repaint.

Big helicopter !
19 seats.

Better than dragging a banner behind a cesna I suppose.

Interesting to see the sport grow from..... photos taken from other boats, of the start and maybe a checkpoint boat and the finish of races.

Then the daredevils used small bubble helicopters and small single engine overhead wing planes, to get really up close and personal photos, sadly some resulting in the loss of life of the photographers.

Post Vietnam, came the era of the helicopter with much more powerful engines and abilities to do much more based on the pilot's war experience.

These became working tools of both the photographers and the teams themselves as the courses were very far offshore and the speeds were growing every year. It was a lot of comfort to the families of the racers to actually see what was happening in real time as they rode along from start to finish. Many teams rented and many teams had their own choppers that grew to be big marketing tools for the companies the racers owned.....like Popeyes.

Soon a big area for the helicopters was needed as a 'Dry Pits" for them to land very close to the boats themselves.

My team used the Bell "Jet Ranger" of the era, included pilot, front seat and three people in the back seat if needed. The Jet Ranger was quickly replaced with the newer Bell "Long Ranger" that had the rear compartment holding facing bench seats adding three more people to the total