Have to admit – first helicopter flight. Great, fantastic, exhilarating, scary but not to be missed.
Well I did miss it, kind of. I only had a mere few minutes high over Aviemore for the Aviemore Highland Resort to take shots during the Harley Davidson Thunder in the Glens gathering. Taking two cameras on a first flight and I have to say until you get up there and the going and the coming down you have little idea of how to prepare.
First and foremost are the flight ‘rules’ … umm can’t remember any of them. Then I was warned not to stick a lens and camera too far out of the tiny window. Yea, I thought. Soon found out why. On top of the helicopter are long things called rotor blades. These tend to go round quite fast, you know, to create downdraft so that the thing flies. So the newbie here decides to try to get a better shot with camera out of the window. Big mistake – just about lost the whole thing in the downdraft. Only did it once.
Anyway a great thrill but concentrating so much on getting the shots and looking through a lens, I pretty well missed the experience.