Picture this: a bowl of uncooked oatmeal, covered with a saucer and placed on the dining room table to be prepared and eaten shortly. Envision that same bowl ten minutes later, relocated halfway across the table with the saucer resting askew to one side of the bowl and oatmeal strewn all over the floor like confetti. Also on the dining room floor, assorted bottles of spices and containers filled with rice, nuts, and seeds…in from the kitchen, and one apron literally hung-up in two rooms!
The rotor wash from a USCG HH60 Jayhawk helicopter is truly formidable, deconstructing a screen door, rearranging the keeper’s kitchen, even behind closed doors, and “harvesting” kale leaves and an entire nasturtium plant from our garden!
When this happened, we were outside watching the helicopter’s arrival on its second run from South Portland, and the front door to the house, the one that faces to the northeast and onto the porch, was open, as usual. We closed that door and stayed inside to “batten down the hatches” for their third and final run that day, and nothing happened, of course. We need to do some research to understand the physics of the rotor wash-driven air coursing through the otherwise closed up house that created oatmeal rain and sent our foodstuffs flying. It was amazing, and still…
all trifling inconveniences in light, and I mean light, of the reason it happened!
The USCG was delivering via helicopter, the crew and materials for the solar installation that three short days later, re-illuminated the Fresnel lens! The crew was safely deposited on the helicopter landing pad, but everything else was delivered in a net immediately adjacent to the keeper’s quarters; hence, the unintentional havoc wreaked. For those who’ve been here, that’s the mowed area that extends south towards the sunset bench overlook. If only we’d thought to check the wind speed read-out during the helicopter’s comings and goings!
On the ground installation:
In the tower installation:
Can you see the light?
LED light? Range of visibility?
Hi Tim
The light range of the new LED system is 14 miles and the light is only lit from up to sun down