I received a few neat comments on my first posting of
Hell-icopters, so I’ve rewritten it to incorporate them. It starts the same
way:
Here’s a first – someone (my neighbour and good friend) has asked me to write a blog on a specific topic. Yep, I’m now taking requests – how cool is that! Except the topic that has been requested is helicopter noise (probably prompted by my previous blog inspired by Bea’s wedding). Sorry. Bit technical. Bit dry. I’ll start typing and see if the muse strikes. If it doesn’t then that’s another post collecting dust in my drafts’ folder.
And I was indeed struggling. Totally uninspired, until one of the buggers buzzed me when I was out walking last week, on a sunny day, lost in my own thoughts, enjoying the birdsong, the bees, the rustling leaves, the snorting of cattle … and then pulse pulse pulse, chop chop chop, grate grate grate.
Helicopter noise is different from the likes of SleasyJet and SwizzAir, because choppers generally fly lower, much lower, can hang around (I believe the technical term is ‘hover’), and I’m always suspicious who’s been flown where. If it’s an air ambulance, coastguard, police or military (especially Chinooks; I lurve Chinooks; so distinctive, so solid, so sexy) then fine. But if it’s the brash and tasteless nouveau riche heading to Silverstone or Pinewood Studios, then the finger it is. Some people make socialism a very attractive proposition.
Back to Chinooks. Did you know, and I didn’t until an ex-RAF pilot enlightened me, that the Chinook is known affectionately in the military as a “Wokka, apparently after the sound its rotas make. I don’t think so. More like a “Chukka” to my ear, with a northern ‘u’ of course. And “Wocka Wocka” was the catchphrase of Fozzie Bear – not so sexy all of a sudden.
Whether a Wokka or a Chukka, the Chinook’s rotor blade frequency, apparently, resonates with the body cavities of large mammals, including humans, and some find it unpleasant. Daft brushes, I say. The ex-RAF pilot illustrated this phenomenon with one of his Biggles’ Yarns. In the Falklands the farmers said that a fighter jet could rush over the land – the normal operating height was 100 feet above ground level – without the sheep showing any interest, but the minute a Wokka showed up, they’d be off.
Another nickname vested on helicopters – all helicopters this time – was “Heliopics”, by my friend’s son when he was a toddler. But that doesn’t mean he has a soft spot for them. He recently complained to the Civil Aviation Authority about frequent low choppers skimming over his pretty Bucks village. The response was laborious, technical, arse-covering, and so badly worded that I had visions of helicopters flying below ground.
I mean, what do you make of, “[Helicopters] must not fly below 500ft from any person, vehicle, vessel or structure”. Surely they mean: Helicopters must fly at least 500ft above any person, vehicle or structure; at least I hope they do.
Then there was the eyebrow-raising statement of the bleedin’ obvious: “… helicopters making an approach to land, or taking off … are permitted to fly lower than 500ft.”
The Government’s position on General Aviation (GA), which includes helicopters, as well as biz jets, gliders and microlights, etc., is to be protective and supportive, no matter how annoying the machine or fatuous the operators.
The above-mentioned father of the cute toddler told me, “I was in mid-back-swing on the tee yesterday when I had to stop as we were being subjected to about 90dB from two powered gliders flying in tandem, not very high. Incredibly noisy for such small planes. Surely these could be made to go electric?”
I agree – plug ’em in and hope they fry.
Despite acknowledging that “Helicopter activity can also be particularly intrusive,” the Government’s solution to reassure the public is “… that the GA sector should: develop and review its codes of practice and [it] would be interested to know how useful and effective these codes of practice have been.”
They couldn’t have mandated anything more meaningless had they copied from a Hilary Mantel novel. We all know about killing an idea by subjecting it to committee; well the Government kills promises of public protection by subjecting the harm to a code of practice, conflicted of course by their friends’, lobbyists and party donors’ interests.
Not surprising really, given that the Secretary of State for Transport, Grant Shapps, holds a pilot’s licence and has reportedly confused his profession with his passion more than once. In other words, politicians share a moral compass with the nouveau riche who use helicopters like e-scooters. Whaddya know.
But I’ll let a fellow-agitator have the last word: she said, “I guess if James Bond were to leap out of a helicopter, I'd probably overlook the noise impact.”
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