This is for a friend of mine, Weird Neil… He used to do this for a living for Air America out of Laos in an early Pilatus Porter. These takeoffs and landings are down in Sumatra and Indonesia, so a similar environment. Enjoy!!!
Simply amazing… And gives a whole new meaning to seat of the pants flying and being able to hit EVERY landing right on the stall warning… Neil said the biggest problem was having enough power to actually taxi UP some of the hills…
Exciting lifestyle. Looks fun!
Yikes! Lots of Beta Prop. Not even on my best day.
That would give Alaska bush pilots gray hair!
Skill driving for sure. But wouldn’t it be easier and faster to drop a pallet of stuff from a helicopter?
Would be much more expensive and most likely not as heavy of payloads without getting a seriously heavy lifter. In which case again operating costs will be considerably more.
There is also the issue of range and time in flight, both of which will have an effect on the costs for the payload.
Opus- DEFINITELY a bit of pucker factor… 🙂
WSF- Yep, LOTS of it!!!
Rev- Similar skill set, just different ‘altitude’… 😀
CP- Not at 6-7000 feet up, as barron said, you’d need a heavy lift (like an H-53) and huge costs…
Barron- you are correct!
Yee Ha!
I’ve only ridden in a Porter as a passenger, and only for takeoff and climb to altitude. Those are some impressive little one-way strips with some hair-raising approaches. Looks like great fun.
Yes sir, as long as the weather is good… Wouldn’t want to try that in bad weather though…
Yeah, bad weather would take that to a whole new level of suckage.
A bit of bad weather, with a little disorientation, and the mountains would be the end of a bad day.
Jess- Yep, that happens more that once in a while… sigh
4-legged Bacon on the strip…….Yeow, hit the TOGA!