Eurocopter | The Blog by Javier

Tag Archives: Eurocopter

November 6, 2012 · 8:00 am

So much for composites…

Few weeks ago I was talking to a stress engineer from Eurocopter Spain about the different activities they performed. He was looking forward to the future work in relation to the latest EC 175, a helicopter built in cooperation with China for civilian and parapublic markets, mainly to support oil and gas exploration and search and rescue missions.

“At last we’re back to metal structures…”

He mentioned this in relation to apparent problems given by composites ones in their use in helicopters. This reminded me of a teacher (at engineering school) and former (very senior) colleague at Airbus Military, who was never seduced by the massive application of composites and he always called for their introduction following his mantra:

“Technology (in the context of application of science), is the most powerful means to increase the effectiveness-to-cost ratio.”

Which not always calls for the use of the latest technology available.

So much for the hype of composites…

Helicopter ride from Nice to Monaco (video)

About 2 months ago, Luca and I went to Monaco for the weekend. On the way there we first took a flight from Toulouse to Nice, and then a helicopter from Nice to Monaco heliport. This was our second ride in a helicopter after the first one in Brazil 2 years ago. In this post I just wanted to share the videos I filmed of the ride (find them below).

This time the helicopter was an Eurocopter EC 135 (Eurocopter is an EADS company, same as Airbus, where I work). As we took a picture before getting on it, we didn’t have the best seats to shoot a nice movie. There is another shortcoming: since the heliport in Monaco Western than Monaco Ville and in the ride from Nice you are coming from the West as well, you don’t get to see all the sea-line of Monaco in the helicopter ride (the main port, Monte Carlo and the beach).