Page 24 - Volume 16 Number 10

A VeteranHelicGerald Hail is a man with a mission or, as he figures the yen to do heavy-lift flying, picking up materialsit, he was given a mission. A Tulsa, Oklahoma,road-boring contractor, Hail got into flying helicopters as a business and personal endeavor, first with a three-place, piston-powered Enstrom and later with a Bell JetRanger turbine helicopter. But he had22 • TWIN & TURBINEand depositing them on points and peaks as sling loads. The obvious helicopter choice was the Sikorsky S-58, or military UH-34, a big, brawny mule of a helicopter with a 56-foot, four-blade rotor system and a 1,500-hp radial engine heartbeat.OCTOBER 2012o