Helicopters and Humans

When you fly all over the world, logging over 12,500 flight hours during several decades as a ‘chopper jockey’, you meet all kinds of people. As Francis ‘Moggy’ Meyrick puts it: ‘Some mothers do have ‘em!’ He has interacted with the fascinating cultural mixture aboard Taiwanese Tuna fishing boats and with the burly American crew of oil and gas rigs off the coast of Africa and in the Gulf of Mexico. He has flown patrol for cops in Mohave County, Arizona, chatted with good mechanics and been talked down to by certain EMS nurses. He has known leaders and fellow pilots who deserved his respect and others who seemed reminiscent of the Daleks (‘Ex-ter-mi-nate!’).
In these 44 short stories, ‘Moggy’ portrays the mischief, the many misunderstandings and the mishaps he has encountered. He describes the sheer joy of flying, mentally thanking the multi-million-dollar individuals and corporations ‘who pay him to play with their expensive toys’. And he honestly describes his own mistakes and muddles, right from his very first introductory lessons in ‘the art of rotary flight’. But the main theme is ‘humans’, as seen through the eyes of one thoughtful, gregarious Irish helicopter pilot.
This book is written for everybody, not just chopper jockeys. A brief section ‘How pilots fly helicopters’ explains the basics, as an aid to arm-chair enthusiasts.