An Cosantóir

27 'CHICKENHAWK' AN INTERVIEW WITH ROBERT MASON I consider myself very privileged to interview Mr. Mason (via Zoom call) recently. Here is the recollection of our chat. Lukasz Gancarz: Mr. Mason, first things first: You have been a private pilot before you started flying helicopters. How have you found switching from fixed wing to rotary? Robert Mason: I started flying when I was in high school. I had odd jobs back then and I even started working at an airport. I was learning to fly when I was 16 and got my license when I was 17. Soon after that, I joined the army specifically for the Helicopter Training Programme. The advantage I had going into it, was that I had the 'air sense' from flying the fixed wing. Of course cruise flight is pretty much the same in helicopters as in flying the fixed wing. I think it was very helpful having this experience. LG: When you got into the helicopter for the first time, I remember that you had some issues, especially with the hover. When did you have that moment, when it just 'clicked in' and you knew that this is what you wanted to do for the rest of your life? RM: Probably the very first time I tried to control this contraption, the H-23 Hiller, I knew I loved it. Even though I couldn't control it very well, going all over the place and what not, this was still exactly what I wanted. It didn't take me long to learn how to hover and so on but I enjoyed it from the very beginning! LG: Let's go back to Hiller and the H-19 Chickasaw. They are two very different machines. What are your most vivid memories from flying both? What's the thing that stuck in your mind from the training? RM: Well, the H-23 Hiller is a contraption by today's standards. Vibrating all the time, it had the tendency that when you pulled on the collective on a H-23 Hiller it would keep pushing up. So, we had that thing called 'popping the collective'. You yank it to shake out the ballast to the balancing elements that were supposed to stabilise it. So, you had to actually jerk the helicopter to stop it from climbing further. It was heavy for its size, so when I became an instructor pilot I enjoyed it, because it was virtually indestructible. In the army training that we did back then, we did the auto-rotations to the ground. For the new students we would set them up on the stage fields in Texas and as an IP I was at my students' command. My hands were near the cyclic and the collective, but I wanted them to experience all the things that they were doing. So, we would come down for these auto-rotations and as it flares for the initial slowing down it would just cock over itself… I mean I had students doing 90 degree turns on me - on 10 feet - and I was like "what are you thinking!?" and I calmed myself. With the Hiller I could bring it back around (recover), but I wouldn't bring it all the way around and just let it hit kind of cocked in sideways just to scare the crap out of everybody. It was a good training device and the Hiller could take it - it was an amazing machine. Now the H-19, when I got to fly it, was a completely different aircraft. It's a heavy cargo aircraft and so underpowered, that it can't really carry more than a couple of people on a good day. But it was great training for handling an overloaded Huey. The first time I got on a flightline with H-19 in Alabama the IP said "go ahead, pick it up to a hover – you know how to fly helicopters. I said "sure" and I started this huge radial engine that's in the front…it sounds like a bomber when you pick it up! So, I pull up the collective, I'm doing just fine and pick it up to just 3 feet and it starts to settle back out and I'm wondering what's going on. Then the pitch and the RPM started to drop, v One of the many flights Robert would have undertaken, dropping troops off in a paddy field v Robert pictured here in Preacher Camp in Vietnam

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