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Strange Deaths

a) The helipad is surrounded by high stone walls.

b) There are signs on those walls warning of downdraft and objects being blown about.

c) The report says that the victim was on a footpath, it doesn’t specify “public footpath”.

As a result of this one, fluke incident, Coastguard helicopters have now been forbidden from using this helipad. l wonder what the consequences of that will be, considering that helos usually only lift for (time)-critical cases.

Edited to add:

Screen-Hunter-345-Mar-07-09-49.jpg


Screen grab of actual sign from the wall:

Screen-Hunter-346-Mar-07-09-51.jpg


maximus otter

Perhaps a higher wall is needed to keep trespassing OAPs out? Seriously though if an OAP was blown over and killed the same could happen to children. There's a problem here and the helipad shouldn't be used until a solution is found.
 
Maybe they should make OAPs always wear lead boots just in case of helicopters landing nearby.
 
100 yards it is then.

Assuming a 100 yard circle as the potential landing area, plus a 100 yard safety buffer, it's going to be a challenge to find:

1. A 300 yard diameter circle (almost 71,000 square yards), that;

2. ... Doesn't include a road/building/path/trees etc. etc.

3. ...Yet is still within striking distance of a critical-care hospital.

Air Ambulances in the UK are called out over eighty times per day.

"Hard cases make bad laws."

maximus otter
 
The QEII hospital here uses an adjacent cricket pitch.
The Lister Hospital in Stevenage has an arrangement with a local landowner to use an adjacent field which is also used by a sports club (but not at the same time I hope)
 
When I worked at the school they had arranged for the 'air ambulance' to visit one day for educational purposes.
They were preceded by a team of 3 or 4 people, about an hour or two beforehand, to inspect the school playing fields and to ensure that a thorough litter-pick had been done, and erect an exclusion zone with metal stakes driven into the ground and one of those red/white plastic tapes strung between them.
When the helicopter arrived it circled twice , descending, before actually landing, and the downdraft was quite significant.
We were standing probably about 100 yards away but nobody got blown over.
Remember 'treasure Hunt' the original series when Annika Rice was sometimes sent miles off the route due to wrong directions and the pilot (Keith?) used to have to do an impromtu landing in a convenient field- I always thought that was a bit risky. You could always tell it was the wrong place though as he would circle a few times before landing. On another note -I remember watching her run straight into a horse at a show jumping event at Hickstead I think.
 
The air ambulance helicopters at least the ones round here have a take off weight of about 2.8 tons
the coastguard ones over 12 tones they need a lot more wind to keep them up so to speak.
 
Remember 'treasure Hunt' the original series when Annika Rice was sometimes sent miles off the route due to wrong directions and the pilot (Keith?) used to have to do an impromtu landing in a convenient field- I always thought that was a bit risky. You could always tell it was the wrong place though as he would circle a few times before landing. On another note -I remember watching her run straight into a horse at a show jumping event at Hickstead I think.
Rice was presenting Loose Ends on R4 this morning. I like her style. She has a keen and often self-deprecatory sense of humour. :)
 
Helicopters - dangerous all round.

Soldier Son was often transported in them on active service and said that in a military situation, there's no circling in case they get shot down.
The pilot locates the landing spot and drops like a stone onto it. Someone usually throws up. :puke2:
Similar with taking off.

You also have to beware the blades as they tilt downwards as they slow down so you can catch your head in them.
A British father famously lifted up his small daughter near one some years ago with fatal results.
 
Helicopters - dangerous all round.


You also have to beware the blades as they tilt downwards as they slow down so you can catch your head in them.
My Dad was in the Fleet Air Arm and almost walked into the tail rotor when he was walking to get into a helicopter. Luckily someone nearby, who was shouting at him but couldn't be heard due to the noise, had the presence of mind to hurl a box he was carrying at my Dad and knocked him away from it. My Dad told me that there is so much noise and turbulence that it is easy to forget if you are rushing to get in.
 
There are two types of helicopter pilots,
those that have had a accident and those that are going to.
:omr:
 
Helicopters - dangerous all round.

Soldier Son was often transported in them on active service and said that in a military situation, there's no circling in case they get shot down.
The pilot locates the landing spot and drops like a stone onto it. Someone usually throws up. :puke2:
Similar with taking off.

You also have to beware the blades as they tilt downwards as they slow down so you can catch your head in them.
A British father famously lifted up his small daughter near one some years ago with fatal results.
My Dad was in the Fleet Air Arm and almost walked into the tail rotor when he was walking to get into a helicopter. Luckily someone nearby, who was shouting at him but couldn't be heard due to the noise, had the presence of mind to hurl a box he was carrying at my Dad and knocked him away from it. My Dad told me that there is so much noise and turbulence that it is easy to forget if you are rushing to get in.
There are two types of helicopter pilots,
those that have had a accident and those that are going to.
:omr:
They should be banned by the sounds of it. I have heard many aeroplane pilots say they would never get in one.
 
18 years seems a long time to live with that though. It seems that it was more to do with his company's problems and/or ill health imho.
The impression I had (not from the Daily Heil :chuckle:) is that after his daughter's death his baseline of depression was lower. Problems would seem worse to him than they might to anyone else.
Plus, he had at least one more child to live for. That counts for a lot.
All very sad.
 
A Florida woman walking her bicycle across a large drawbridge died when the bridge began opening, she dropped through a gap in the road surface, and she fell circa 50 feet into the water below after another pedestrian couldn't maintain a grip on her.
FULL STORY (With Photos): https://www.palmbeachpost.com/story...ffic-after-bicyclists-deadly-fall/6685145001/

Update: The bridgetender on duty when this happened has been arrested and charged with manslaughter.
Drawbridge operator charged with manslaughter for death of woman who fell when bridge opened

The bridgetender controlling a Florida drawbridge when a woman walking across fell to her death was arrested Thursday and charged with one count of manslaughter by culpable negligence, West Palm Beach police said in a release.

Artissua Lafaye Paulk, 43, was on duty February 6 when 79-year-old Carol Wright fell to her death ...

In Paulk's statement to police outlined in a probable cause affidavit, she described the measures she took to ensure that no one was on the bridge, including visually checking several times from the balcony, turning the traffic lights red, closing the pedestrian gate, and making announcements that the bridge was going to open.

Paulk said she didn't see any people or bicycles inside the gates when she checked before opening the bridge.

"Based on the above investigation, video evidence contradicts Artissua Paulk's statement that she walked out onto the balcony and visually checked the bridge for vehicles or pedestrians prior to opening the bridge," a police officer says in the affidavit.

"Artissua Paulk's actions showed reckless disregard of human life and the safety of a person, specifically Carol Wright," the officer writes.

Paulk was charged with one count of manslaughter by culpable negligence, police said in their release. ...
FULL STORY: https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/18/us/florida-bridgetender-manslaughter-charge/index.html
 

Woman died after hobby horse costume hit her in Cornwall, inquest hears​

Coroner seeks to establish if injuries Laura Smallwood sustained from an ‘obby oss’ caused her death
From (yeah, you guessed it) The Guardian.
 
From (yeah, you guessed it) The Guardian.
Reading between the lines there, something was going on that might have contributed to the accident.

The senior Cornwall coroner Andrew Cox said the inquest would look at whether Smallwood died as a consequence of injuries sustained in her clash with the oss.

He said another explanation was that she suffered from injuries caused during an altercation earlier that evening outside one of the celebrity chef Rick Stein’s businesses in the town.

The coroner said Smallwood may have sustained injuries caused by an unidentified event about 10 days earlier, or a fourth possibility was that she sustained some injuries in “some other way”.


This description sounds like a stroke -

Another witness, Charlotte Stupple, said that after the incident with the oss, Smallwood felt dizzy. She said: “Thirty seconds later Laura grabbed my arm and said: ‘Charlotte, my face.’ I could see the right side of her face by her mouth had dropped.” He breathing became laboured and she was taken to hospital.”
 
Some further info on the 'obby 'oss death in Padstow..

Woman’s death from horse costume in Cornwall prompts call for tighter rules​

Coroner says May Day event should be better managed after Laura Smallwood, 34, died in accident involving ‘obby oss’
From The Guardian here.
 
Helicopters - dangerous all round.

Soldier Son was often transported in them on active service and said that in a military situation, there's no circling in case they get shot down.
The pilot locates the landing spot and drops like a stone onto it. Someone usually throws up. :puke2:
Similar with taking off.

You also have to beware the blades as they tilt downwards as they slow down so you can catch your head in them.
A British father famously lifted up his small daughter near one some years ago with fatal results.
I don't know if it's a myth perpetrated through the archery community, but apparently you can bring down a low-flying helicopter with an arrow through the rotor blades - the arrow is moving so slowly relative to the blades it's bound to be hit by one.

Personally I'd have thought it would simply chop up the arrow but I don't know enough about the physics - the blades are presumably subject to a lot of intense forces and maybe would shatter?
 
Depends on the blades.
A lot of modern helicopters have blades that are made ultra-light from a foam material covered in a thin layer of polymer, molded over a central strengthening spar.
So I would expect that anything more solid than (eg) a large-ish bird hitting one would cause significant damage.
(You would hope that they are designed to cope with, at least, the likely event of a bird-strike).
 
I don't know if it's a myth perpetrated through the archery community, but apparently you can bring down a low-flying helicopter with an arrow through the rotor blades - the arrow is moving so slowly relative to the blades it's bound to be hit by one.

Personally I'd have thought it would simply chop up the arrow but I don't know enough about the physics - the blades are presumably subject to a lot of intense forces and maybe would shatter?
We need an archer to try this out.
Step forward @titch.
 
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