12 year old Jesse's requested helicopter flight (September 7th, 2004)

Jesse, the daughter of a friend of mine, asked me for a ride in my Hughes OH6-A Viet Nam warbird helicopter. But she said she was a little scared. I told her I would start up and bring the helicopter to a hover 3 feet off the ground. Then, she could give me a thumbs up or down, when she determined what she wanted to happen next. At 1:47, 10 seconds after hovering, she gave the thumbs up (The thumbnail photo shows her giving the thumbs up from the left seat). In the background, you can hear the comments from parents and friends that is amusing. I was staying the night, but needed to fly the helicopter over to the nearby airport for safekeeping, so the flight lasted about 8 minutes, I think.
This trip was a bugout trip in the fall of 2004. I had flown the helicopter from my ranch in Florida to my sister's lake place in Minnesota to get away from the 4 Florida hurricanes that hit the state that year. I left it in Minnesota for a month. Two days after I left Florida, the hangar that I had the helicopter in (actually on my neighbor's fly in ranch) was destroyed. My mobile electric helipad was dented a bit, but still serviceable. The trip took two days each way. At one point, in Kentucky, I flew through a steep river valley only a couple of hundred feet wide. I was 200 feet above the river. in the two minutes I did this, 5 sets of wires passed under me about 100 feet below. That's when I decided this was too dangerous to continue, despite having wire cutters both under and above the cockpit canopy.

[@KarenThompsonMN]

Jessie is great! she is an art teacher, married with an adorable one year old!

[@PaulBCohen]

Wonder where Jesse is now in life - 32 years old.

[@LrrBrr-lb3iw]

Sick, how is Jesse doing now at 32?