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Helicopters and Planes

"David, grab your camera!" I was focused on the install problems I was having with Red Hat http://www.thehoffmanfamily.com/ when I heard Bruce calling me. He'd never done that before, so I figured it must be serious. I reached down, grabbed my camera and quickly headed out onto the hangar floor. As soon as I got there I notice that almost every person who works at the hangar was outide, looking straight up! I soon saw what they were looking at. The Ecuadorian Army flies several Israeli-made Araba aircraft out of their base here in Shell. This one wasn't coming back under it's own power. Several of our pilots had seen it out on the military base runway at Taisha as it was being disassembled, but none of them knew any more than that. It must have somehow been involved in a mishap to the point that it wasn't airworthy. Both Oscar and Mateo, the Ecuadorian mechanics here, and John and I were out next to the runway watching them put the Araba fuselage down in front of their hangar. It was a half mile down the runway, but still, very interesting to watch the pilot of the French-made Super Puma helicopter gently set the load down. He had to wait quite a while until the fuselage stopped spinning and bucking. And then it was back to work. Actually, this is quite an interesting place to work!