Take off

As you all know (at least if you have been following my ramblings for a while) I’m a sucker for emergency vehicles. The quickest way for me to turn 6 years old again is a fire truck with blue lights and blaring sirens. Another thing that excites me are helicopters, and the majestic Sea King in particular. The Norwegian Air Force’ No. 330 Squadron flies the British Westland Sea King version and they are just massive.

NRK aired a documentary series about the No. 330 Squadron a few months ago and I watched every episode with great interest. It’s still possible to watch it on NRK’s web site and it comes highly recommended. You can even download high quality versions of each episode here.

Despite my childish fascination for the Sea King, I’ve never seen one up close - until two days ago. On my way home from work I bike by the UllevΓ₯l University Hospital here in Oslo. And what did I spot on the hospital landing pad? Yes, a real Sea King from the No. 330 Squadron. Yay! Despite my excitement, I was able to capture this video of the helicopter taking off.

You’ll notice some very funky rotor blade movements, it’s like they are not moving much. This is caused by the low FPS on the HTC Hero camera. You can see an even funkier version of the rotor blades RPM vs. camera FPS phenonmon in the video of the magic Russian helicopter.

Unfortunately, the video was recorded on medium settings because I didn’t think of checking the quality before I started recording. So it’s quite crappy. The same goes for the audio. Anyway, here you are: Look, ma! A helicopter!


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