The Batcopter was the nickname for a
black and red or red and black – we
never figured which was more correct
– Hiller UH12E.
This poor
machine could have told many stories
about close calls (with the late
good guy Stan the Man - pictured above - in the hot seat) in the
OZ bush, such as the time in 1980,
that a Geiger counter inexplicitly
decided to jam itself between the
bubble and Tail Rotor control pedals on landing.
The
ensuing interesting landing caused
its skid uprights to get as bent as
the bumpers on a red "P" plater's
first car.
Stan the Man eventually left to join the TV
industry and the Batcopter had a new
driver.
When the phone
rang very late one night, I knew it
was the Batcopter’s new pilot on the
other end as I couldn’t hear
anything but a laboured breathing
sound over a crackling line - this
was in the days that a telephone had
a cable connecting it to a wall.
This guy was a
really nice, very quiet person – but
different.
Maybe it was nerves – who
knows as he had evidently always
been the same – however it always
took him about 90 seconds to get the
first syllable of his first word out
and only then was he OK to finish
off a sentence over a long period - if
he spoke slowly
This night the
first syllable took 2 minutes and
was extending so I figured that
something was up.
The
conversation went like this:
“I” (imagine an
“I” spread over 2 + minutes coming
from your telephone)
“Is that you
X……….”” I said.
“Y…..” – 1
minute later – “es” he completed
saying
After these
formalities X… advised that he was
still mustering North of Hughenden
in some hilly high country and that
he wanted an engineer to come up and
replace the Main rotor blade tips as
he had “a slight problem” that
afternoon.
The engineer
called me 3 days later after he had
found X…. and the Batcopter both
camped out on a flat in the middle
of nowhere enjoying the
quiet life of fishing by a Billabong
“Bloody hell” –
he said – “Did X…. tell you the
whole story?”
“Not a hope in
hell” I said – “I needed to get to
work by 0800 and there are only so
many words an hour which will follow
each other over an old phone line at
the speed X… talks”
And then it all
came out.
Seems that X…
was a good keen man and didn’t want
to ever run low on fuel as he has
strapped a 44 gallon (200 Litre) drum of AVGAS
on the external litter on each side
and had them each about half+ full
to balance each other off.
X… wasn’t a
little guy and the grazier he took
up with him that sweaty afternoon
was heavier still.
Put them both in
the machine, fill up the main fuel
tank, add the weight of the external
fuel drums and the Batcopter must have
been really struggling in the 35 oC
OAT and 2000 Ft AMSL altitude.
That’s probably
why it hit the dead tree in a ravine
which took about 12 inches off each
Main Rotor blade before a big branch
broke loose and smashed down through the
Perspex bubble, knocking the grazier
unconscious.
I
always knew that X…. was a good keen
company man who wanted to get the
job done, as the blood spattered
grazier tells the story of
being shaken roughly – while the
machine was still rattling and
shaking thru the air with bits of
Perspex waving in the breeze - to a
long winded “wake up – wake up – you
will have to get out here and wait
as the cows are getting away!”
The Batcopter
was never the same after this and
the other funny thing is that we
never used X…. again after that
either -
I’m not sure why
True Story
TC (T
