Guns

World War II German 8.8 cm Flak 18/36/37 anti-aircraft and anti-tank gun

Italian Army personnel recovery operation using Agusta A129 Mangusta attack helicopter

Nose Gun

Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk

10th Cav trooper with Apache Scouts, 1885

Chinook

Boeing CH-47 Chinook (D483)

Getting power from the turbine engines to the rotors is a complicated business:

Driveshafts and Transmissions

CH-47D Drive Train Schematic

The reduction in gear ratio between the engine and the rotary wing blades is 66.96:1.

KAWASAKI EC-145

KAWASAKI EC-145 (N263MH)

Also known as a Eurocopter. France and Germany also make them. Buggy looking thing.

Sikorsky Helibus

Sikorsky Helibus

Sikorsky has built 300 of these since 1998.

The Translator by Harriet Crawley, Notes from first four chapters

The Translator by Harriet Crawley. I picked this book up at Broadway Books on Northeast Broadway. As I started reading it, I started making notes.

AgustaWestland AW109

Clive Franklin, the British translator, is picked up by a helicopter from a village in Scotland.

York Minster

They fly over York.

Rioja

He has a glass of Rioja at the airport.

Royal Air Force Voyager Vespina

They fly to Moscow.

The Caipirinha is Brazil's national drink, made with fresh lime juice, sugar, and cachaça, which is distilled from sugar cane juice p. 32

The Russian translator, Marina Volina has drinks with her son at a bar while watching the Russian Victory Parade.

Newton Running Shoes p. 32

Marina is a marathon runner.

Jaguar XJ Stretched Limousine p. 33

Clive catches a ride in Land Rover, the big shots ride in a limo.

Now we have a few places in Moscow:

Karl Marx Monument
Google - Workers of All Countries Unite
Wikipedia - Proletarians of All Countries, Unite!
Harriet - Workers of the world, unite!

British Ambassador Residence in Moscow p. 42

The Moscow Times reports:

The mansion at 14 Sofiiskaya naberezhnaya across the Moscow River from the Kremlin was built in 1893 for the “sugar king” Pavel Kharitonenko and his family.

After the 1917 Revolution, the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs claimed the mansion — and saved the interiors. At first it housed the families of important Soviet diplomats and visitors such as H.G. Wells and Isadora Duncan.

In 1929 the mansion was transferred to the embassy of Great Britain, the first major country to establish diplomatic relations with the U.S.S.R.

They also has some fine photos of the interior of this place.

Zaryadye Concert Hall p. 44

Zaryadye Concert Hall Interior

At the Russian President's villa, the gang admires the paintings. These two get special mention.

Girl with Peaches by Valentin Serov (1887) p. 46

The Monarch of the Glen by Sir Edwin Landseer (1851) p. 47

Airliner - Helicopter Disaster

Gold-topped VH-60M versions of the Black Hawk are used to transport high-ranking military and defense officials around Washington

As you may have heard, an American Airlines airliner collided with military helicopter near Ronald Reagan Airport in Washington D. C. ZeroHedge has the story. I didn't know they had special helicopters for transporting VIPs. 

Blue Angel and Sea Dragon

CH-53K King Stallion and a Blue Angels F/A-18E Super Hornet - Ed Jones

Kangilinnguit

Sikorsky Sea King (OY-HAG)

Big helicopter in a far away place: Kangilinnguit, Greenland.

Southern Greenland Airports

Kangilinnguit is the second placemark from the left.

Skycrane

Sikorsky CH-54 Tarhe

Skycranes are kind of odd ducks - really big, funny looking, capable of carrying big loads, they are basically a stick with a couple of jet engines connected to a giant truck transmission connected to a giant fan. They were originally produced for the Army and were extensively used in the Vietnam War. They fell out of favor and were supplanted by the Chinook and the Sea Stallion. Some of them, like this one, are in use in the civilian sector.

Early on, the type had demonstrated itself to possess unrivaled performance in some aspects. As of 2014, it continues to hold the helicopter record for highest altitude in level flight at 36,000 ft, which it set in 1971, as well at the fastest climb to 10,000, 20,000, and 30,000 ft. - per Wikipedia

This one has been busy. In the last two weeks it flew from Sacramento way up north to middle-of-nowhere Canada, spent a week there, and then flew down to Missoula, Montana.

Skycrane Flightpath

Total distance is 2,000 miles. The Skycrane cruises at 100 MPH, so it would have taken 20 hours of flying time to make the entire trip.

Cave Tech

Eurocopter AS-350 AStar (PR-TNG)

The AStar is a popular helicopter, over 10,000 have been produced since 1975. They can carry five people and fly about 150 MPH. New they cost pert near two million, used ones can be picked up for about half that. All in, they cost about a thousand dollars an hour to operate. You must really want to get somewhere to pay that kind of money.

The airport code attached to this picture is SSPF. Mouse over the code and we get a popup that says Fly Village (Altos/PL). There is a Fly Village in northeast Brazil. However, SSPF is the code for an airport closer to Sao Paulo, way farther south.

Teresina, Fly Village & Natal, Brazil

Fly village is not far from Teresina, and we got another photo of a military plane in Teresina. Alexandro Dias took both photos, so we're probably in Teresina. Natal used to be the jumping off point for planes flying across the Atlantic to Africa.

Rock art at Serra da Capivara National Park in Piauí state, one of the largest and oldest concentrations of prehistoric sites in the Americas

Fly Village is located in the Brazil state Piaui. Looking at Piaui I find this cool photo of ancient rock art. The rock art might be 20,000 years old. They figured that out using optically stimulated luminescence. Wait, what? Optically stimulated luminescence? Never heard of it.

I looked. Optically Stimulated Luminescence is some real Star Trek shit. It sounds like complete bullshit, but evidently it works. Not only are they using to date cave paintings they use it with dosimeters. It sounds insane.

Mi-17 Helicopter

Soldiers boarding an Mi-17 Helicopter
144 piece jigsaw puzzle

Mi-17 Helicopter - Veronica Aguila

The USA is providing Soviet Mi-17 helicopters to Ukraine. This strikes me as just a trifle absurd. I am not sure how we got them, probably something to do with Afghanistan. 

I'm still waiting for an explanation of why our exit from Afghanistan appeared to be such debacle. I mean, the news reports I read about that event made it sound like our exit was done with little to no planning and even worse execution. But that's just what the media reports, and we know we can't trust anything that comes from the internet. Maybe for the people in charge it went exactly according to plan. Or maybe it was just done out of budgetary considerations. 'We've spent too much money on this project, it's time to cut our losses.'  That seems unlikely since we had already spent a trillion dollars on that misadventure. What happened? Did we suddenly hit some magic number like a trillion and one dollars? 

In any case, from where I sit, relatively safe and secure in my basement hidey-hole, it certainly made the US military look like a bunch of incompetent fools. Of course, that's been pretty much the way it's been ever since Eisenhower left office. Oh, for the glorious fifties when our news was sanitized for our protection and all our elected officials were paragons of virtue and competence.

Wikipedia has a page about the Mi-17. The Mi-8, predecessor to the Mi-17 has appeared here before.

Blackhawk Helicopter Crash

Two Black Hawk helicopters crash at Snowbird resort
BYU Universe
Two Black Hawk helicopters from the Utah Army National Guard crashed at Snowbird’s Mineral Basin. No serious injuries were reported.

One of the crashed helicopters

Video via FlightAware and Unofficial Networks

Update January 2026 replaced missing video. Aviation Safety Network has the results of the investigation.

Kamov

Kamov Ka-32A11BC C-N 9712

This might have been taken in 2019 on the Canary Islands when they had some severe wildfires. You can see cables hanging from an attachment point underneath the fuselage, for carrying water bags.

New War Chopper

DEFIANT Executes U.S. Army Air Assault Mission Profile

Team DEFIANT

I put up at another post about this chopper seven years ago. Back then is was called the Sikorsky S-97 Raider.

Via ZeroHedge

Richard H. Geoghegan

Small Twin Turboprop Airliner on Akun Island

My niece in her work as a general factotum for Trident Seafoods, is in Anchorage this week coordinating transportation for 200 workers from their arrival in Anchorage to Trident's processing plant on Akutan in the Aleutian Islands. 

Akutan Airport on Akun Island

The Trident Seafoods plant on the remote island of Akutan is one
of the largest fish and crab processing facilities in North America

Workers arrive in Anchorage from the four corners of the globe on modern jetliners, but getting to Akutan requires first taking a 16 passenger prop plane 700 odd miles to Akun and then a short helicopter flight to the town on Akutan.

Maritime Helicopters Bell 412 HP
The Bell 412 HP can carry 12 passengers

One couple have been doing this for umpteen years. Originally from Africa they now live in Austin Texas.

CoastView has a page about Akutan Airport wherein I found this lovely little bit:

Akun Island is relatively flat and uninhabited, except for airport workers and a few people controlling a herd of feral cattle. The island historically had three small villages or seasonal camps. The Alutiiq Unangan name was recorded in 1768 by Captain Lieutenant P.K. Krenitzin of the Imperial Russian Navy. According to the linguist R.H. Geoghegan, the name Akun means “that, over there”. Neighboring Akutan Island is mountainous and the topography is dominated by Mount Akutan, a stratovolcano with an elevation of 4,275 feet (1,303 m) that last erupted in 1992. The name Akutan may be from the Alutiiq word “hakuta” which, according to R.H. Geoghegan, means “I made a mistake”.

Naturally I have to look up this R.H. Geoghegan where I find this:

Despite the rigorous climate and rough gold mining environment, the informal Alaskan lifestyle and the opportunity to study firsthand Aleut and other native languages of the region appealed to Geoghegan. Except for the year 1905, which he spent in Seattle (where the Seattle Esperanto Society was founded primarily under his influence and that of his friend, William G. Adams), and 1914, when he traveled through the western United States and Japan, Geoghegan remained a resident of Alaska until his death on 27 October 1943. Because of his physical handicaps, Geoghegan was of a retiring nature and remained single until 1916. In that year, infatuated with Ella Joseph-de-Saccrist, he married her, but only secretly, under the advice of friends, because of racial prejudices that existed at that time: Ella, who came from Martinique, was known as a black. She died in 1936. (This explains why in many biographies one reads that he never married.)

Geoghegan lived simply, often in primitive log cabins, at various addresses in the city of Fairbanks. He always remained faithful to Esperanto, to whose Lingva Komitato (Language Committee) he was elected immediately upon its formation in 1905. For him, however, Esperanto was mainly a written language. The first person with whom he actually spoke it was Wilhelm Heinrich Trompeter, who visited him in Eastsound in the 1890s. His valuable book collection, including many original letters from Zamenhof and other pioneers, as well as other rare artifacts about little known—mainly oriental—languages, were destroyed when the family home in Eastsound burned down in 1906. Probably Geoghegan's most noteworthy linguistic contribution was the compilation of a dictionary and grammar for the Aleut language of the Alaskan islands, on which he labored from the time of his arrival in Valdez, Alaska, en 1903. It was finally published only after his death, in 1944, and remains even today the principal English language work on the subject.

Akutan (lower left) to Anchorage (upper right) 756 miles

Bell Soap Bubble Helicopter

Bell H-13 Sioux Helicopter, 1954, Korea

Made famous by the TV series Mash. The Sioux was the military version, the civilian version was called the Bell 47. First started flying in 1946. Over 7,000 were built, there are several dozen on display. There might be a couple still flying.

Deja Vu All Over Again

American Chinook Helicopter landing at U. S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan

Nothing has changed. Ever since the end of WW2, American foreign policy has been like a rampaging bull in a China shop. Now that I think about it, that was our policy during WW2 as well. It worked so well that we won the war. It worked so well, we just kept on doing the same thing. Have we learned anything? Nah, I expect we'll be up to our ears in another quagmire in short order.

P. S. Title history.

Via Liberal Guy

Helicopter Crash in Kamchatka Lake

Kurile Lake, Kamchatka

IBT reports: 

[An Mi-8] helicopter carrying 16 tourists and crew on a volcano sightseeing trip in Russia's far east crashed into [Kuril] lake on Thursday, leaving eight people feared dead and two others in serious condition, local officials said.

What makes this special is this line: 

Earlier this week, Redkin [owner of the tour company] made headlines in Russia when he admitted to killing a man he mistook for a bear.

 

Russian Military Mi-8 Helicopter

The Russian Military flew in some submersibles to help search for the wreckage. Evidently the lake is pretty deep. Coincidentally, they used the same model of helicopter as the one that crashed.

Vityaz-Aero Mi-8 Helicopter

Four years ago another helicopter from the same company crashed, injuring three of their passengers.

Kamchatka has appeared here before.

Via FlightAware

Firefighting with a Bell 205A

Bell 205A works Cottonwood Valley Fire on BLM land June 14, 2021

Looks like wildfire season is getting an early start this year. The Cottonwood Valley Fire is in the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area (map), which is just west of Las Vegas, Nevada.

The Bell 205A is the civilian version of the Vietnam War era Huey.

Osprey

USAF Boeing/Bell CV-22B Osprey 10-0053 blowing up Addenbrooke's Hospital Helipad
Trailspotter
I've seen numerous videos of the Osprey in action, but I never heard the rotors so clearly as in this video.

Via daily timewaster