How do you see what helicopters and the people who fly them are made of? Get them to navigate obstacle courses and drop flour bombs. It's oddly compelling, writes Fionola Meredith
FIRST RULE when you’re attending helicopter games: take earplugs. The clattering of the rotor blades and the scream of the engines at Heli Challenge 2010, which took place at Enniskillen airport, in Co Fermanagh, over the weekend, were as shockingly loud as you’d expect.
Twenty-five teams from Ireland and Britain descended on the small airstrip to take part in a series of challenges designed to test their helicopters to the maximum – not to mention their own powers of communication, ingenuity and skill. The helis, as they’re affectionately known by aficionados, looked like unwieldy giant birds, wobbling less than 10m above the ground as they were put through their paces. It’s no easy task: pilot Kevin Toner says it gets very tense, both physically and mentally. “You feel it in your wrists and your elbows. Your concentration levels are through the roof.”
In one event a series of colour-coded buckets were lined up on the airfield, and each helicopter, hovering above at an altitude of about eight metres, tried to pick them up and place them on a target using a winch line and a grappling hook. This was wielded by the copilot, who leaned precariously out of the craft – from which the doors had been temporarily removed – shouting directions through a headset to the pilot.
The pilot’s job was to stare straight ahead and concentrate on manoeuvring the aircraft, guided only by the instructions of the navigator: left a bit, right a bit, up, no, down a bit. To make the whole thing even harder the loops on each bucket got progressively smaller. From the ground it was like watching someone particularly ham-fisted try to play one of those fiddly arcade games where you try to hook a teddy: frustrating but strangely compelling.
Another event involved the helicopter guiding a rubber buoy suspended on the end of the winch line around a maze: again, success depended on the clear instructions of the copilot as much as on the technical finesse of the pilot.
In the navigation exercise, the pilots took to the skies to search out 10 giant letters that had been left at strategic points around the countryside. Once they had collected them all, the challenge was to unscramble the conundrum, Countdownstyle, in the short time it took them to fly back to base. "We gave them a clue," says co-organiser Gary Devine, of Unique Helicopters, a flight training school. "We told them it was a word synonymous with aviation." And the answer? "Regulation."
In the grand finale the helicopter pilots were granted special permission by the Civil Aviation Authority to take part in a flour-bombing competition – with predictably messy results.
“Although there are competitive events for helicopters in every other country in Europe, there was nothing going on in Ireland, so that was the impetus behind starting up the challenge,” says Devine. After a successful trial run last year, Devine and his co-organiser Mark Corbett decided to go for it. “It’s designed for pilots, run by and for pilots, but we wanted it to be enjoyable for spectators, too. That’s why we held it here at Enniskillen rather than at a major international airport.” At the small airstrip, local enthusiasts can get close to the action; certainly, plenty of dads were enthusiastically wielding camcorders as their children romped on the bouncy castles.
But the biggest thrill is reserved for the pilots and copilots. “The adrenalin is really pumping,” says Fiona McAlpine, who navigates for Kevin Toner. “When you’re flying it gives you a completely different perspective. Inside the cockpit it’s so much fun – though I’m sure I deafen Kevin, squealing in his ear when we do manage to hit a target.”
In the world of aviation, it seems, you’re either a helicopter person or a fixed-wing person – you can’t be both – and McAlpine is glad that Ireland now has an event that celebrates the power of the rotary blade. “I’ve got a T-shirt that says ‘Wings Are for Fairies’,” she says. “It’s true. And, besides, we can fly backwards.”
