Nice tribute and admire your enthusiasm; but I believe your sources have the helicopter facts a lttle skewed. Don't let Dr. Bledsoe see this.....
Not trying to burst any bubbles but as a former flightnurse/paramedic I can assure you it is a business alike any other. Also they crash and they crash a lot. When helicopters crash they don't usually land "softly" or "float" to the ground as your sources described. People die in helicopter crashes in fact way too many. The reason there is Senate and Congressional studies being conducted because of the unsafe measures of many.
I love flight medicine, but anyone involved will also be the first to point out the dangers of it.
The other point is, many of the times the helicopter is over abused. It has not been shown to really save lives as thought of. It also costs millions of dollars to operate just one helicopter. As well patients are usually charged $6,000-15,000 for a simple flight in lieu of a ground transport for a few hundred bucks.
Again, I compliment your video as a feel good but mythical. I realize your dreams and that is excellent but a little realism needs to be thought of.
R/r 911
+1. As someone who has flown aeromedical mission in the past and now works doing aviation safety research, I think you really need to double check your sources when it comes to aeromedical utility and the safety thereof.
"Did you know helicopters are fundamentally safer than airplanes?"
Where exactly did you get that? They have no ability to glide and are inherently unstable unlike a fixed wing aircraft. Credibility of that statement: zero.
The ability to move sick/injured people to hospitals saves thousands of lives.
There is no evidence to support that. There is not even evidence to support that it has saved
hundreds of civilian lives in a given year
allowing the machine to slowly land, generally without crashing to the ground
Ever seen an autorotation (which is what you are trying to describe)? It's not a "slow landing" or anything else but a potentially survivable crash. Emphasis on "potentially".
Does this look like "without crashing to the ground"?
[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyhGZzxjiU8&feature=PlayList&p=389BE83160A9F515&index=0&playnext=1[/YOUTUBE]
Helicopters are safest to fly in bad weather because they can slow down, stop and/or fly backwards or sideways.
They are also unstable (unlike fixed wing aircraft) and helicopter pilots are more prone to the development of spatial disorientation. There is a very good reason why so many of our colleagues die in helicopter flights into bad weather. Single pilot intentional flight in helicopter into bad weather or over unlit terrain is one of the dumbest things one can do in aviation short of drinking before flying yet it is a common practice (the industry standard
de facto) in HEMS.
As for hovering or flying backwards or sideways in low to zero viz conditions, can you say "increased difficulty and increased risk"?
Modern day helicopters are no more difficult to fly than many types of fixed wing aircraft
That is arguable since it really does not give you an adequate yardstick to measure the claim by. Are we talking a Robinson R22 trainer helicopter or a BK117 medical helicopter compared to a Cessna 172, an ultralight or a Boeing 777? Even then it is often said that the washout rate for military rotorcraft training programs is higher than for their fixed wing counterparts and that is probably the best comparison to HEMS operations rather than someone tooling around in a Robinson R22, especially since many HEMS pilots are/were trained by the military. That and while you could teach most people to fly a helicopter, they are far
less forgiving and the learning curve is a
lot steeper.
Basically every claim you made is questionable at best, if not an outright falsification by the source you cite. Relying on the American Helicopter Society (or the Association for Air Medical Services, nothing more than the HEMS lobby) for a fair appraisal of the situation is about like asking Rush Limbaugh whether the Republican Party is on the right path: the answer you get is going to be so skewed and not grounded in fact that it is nothing but BS. Just be careful what sources you cite.