The Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Bowl will return to Dallas for the second-straight year as the ninth edition of the nationally televised postseason college football bowl game on ESPN will be played Friday, Dec. 30, at SMU’s Gerald J. Ford Stadium with an 11 a.m. CST kickoff.

United Rotorcraft Solutions (URS) recently delivered a customized Eurocopter EC135 to Land Sea Air Leasing Corporation. URS completed the EC135 with avionics and communications equipment consisting of the Garmin GNS530AW and GNS530W Comm/NAV/GPS, the Garmin GMX200 MFD, GTS820 Traffic System, GDL69A Data Link for XM Weather, a GMA347H Audio control with Marker Beacon to include iPod input, and a...

Company president, Jim Shirey, announced the launch of On Course Solutions, Inc. This new aviation consulting company is comprised of a network of proven aviation industry veterans who can provide aviation manufacturers, suppliers, dealers and aircraft operators with ready resources for winning new customers, building business with existing customers, and optimizing operational efficiency. This...

Contributing Editors – Patrick McNamara, David Honeywell, Doug Postal Often referred to as the city of angels, Los Angeles is the second most populous city in the U.S. It has a population of more than 3.8 million and covers more than 465 square miles Located in downtown Los Angeles and atop the Erwin C. Piper Technical Center sits the J. Stephen Hooper Memorial Heliport. “Hooper,”as it is known,...

Brad Nelson — Contributing Editor Talk to anyone about Phoenix, Ariz., and they will say that they either love it or hate it. There does not seem to be any middle ground. “Oh, its summers are way too hot,” some will say. “But it’s a dry heat” others chime in. (So is the inside of an oven). They may talk about the fantastic golf that can be played 365 days a year. They might even talk about the...

Dan Sweet — Contributing Editor Whoever coined the phrase “routine maintenance” for working on helicopters surely didn’t mean doing the same work over and over again. As most helicopter maintenance specialists will tell you, there is hardly anything “routine” about working on helicopters, except that there is almost always work to do. This is certainly the case for Columbia Helicopters, where the...

Ralph Hawkins | Contributing Author For many years, Paul Harvey had a syndicated radio spot where he spoke about a topic that everyone knew about, and then said “AND NOW FOR THE REST OF THE STORY!” With apologies to Mr. Harvey, this article is in a similar vein. This is part one of a two-part series. Gas turbine engine manufacturers make aircraft engines (i.e., turbo jet, turbo fan, turbo prop...

R. Fred Polak | Editor GPS: we hear that term used by someone, in some profession or occupation almost every day. More and more aircraft are using it for navigation. We may even use it ourselves! People driving their cars use GPS, people hiking use GPS, it even allows cell phones to work. It’s in my golf cart when I am on the course. Just what is GPS? Let’s take a closer look. The global...

We live in a great time in history. We can tweet, text and email to our hearts content and never have a meaningful conversation with anyone! We have big screen 3D televisions, DVD’s, iPads, iPhones and iPods galore. When we perform maintenance on our helicopters we have computers and laser beams and all sorts of the latest and greatest tools to work with. But, what happens if we have to do a...

Danny Green with Tim Hobgood — Contributing Authors I can’t figure out why people look at me so funny when they ask me what I do for a living and I tell them I’m a vibration analyst. When I explain (in laymen’s terms) exactly what it is that I do and why I do it, it tends to make sense. Either that or they’re just being polite or bored and trying to get away as quickly as possible. What is an...