RWS 97 – A Possible Helicopter Career Plan B with Jerry Grayson

Rotary Wing Show - Interviews from the Helicopter Industry

Jerry Grayson AFC progressed from SAR ops with the Royal Navy to aerial filming around the world and is now helping other aviators leverage their skills and knowledge in the operation of drones.

Jerry Grayson returns to the Rotary Wing Show with an update on his next adventure following a packed career in the cockpit as a SAR and film pilot. Now-a-days he keeps his feet on the ground but leverages his experience in the operation of drones – and he thinks it might be a good time for other helicopter aircrew to take another look at this space.

Flying a helicopter is an expensive and hard earned skillset. It is also pretty specialised and not something that you can do from anywhere. It is hard to ‘work-from-home’ during COVID, the work hours aren’t always family friendly, the job market can be very cyclic and a lot rests on your continued aviation medical passes.

So what do you do if you find yourself as a skilled aircrew member and find yourself out of work? In this episode we look at a possible Plan B where you can transfer a large amount of your existing knowledge and experience.

Jerry (right) spends part of his time now mentoring drone pilots on film techniques. A large part of what Jerry does is the post-production of captured imagery and data to produce different survey products.

Jerry Grayson had a distinguished career in the UK Royal Navy – he graduated pilot training at age 17, operated from carriers and was a SAR pilot. Jerry was recognised with the Air Force Cross (AFC) for his role in a number of dramatic rescues during the 1979 Fastnet yacht race in horrendous conditions. Post Navy career he then found himself travelling the world as a film pilot including gigs at NASA, Formula 1 and the Olympics.

You can find out a lot more about Jerry’s other stories in Episode 29 including a pretty challenging emergency situation in a A109 at night.

This time around we focusing on flying drones and leveraging their capabilities for different product outputs. Jerry lays out some compelling considerations for growth in this part of aviation and how it stacks up against the traditional helicopter design.

Manor House by jerryg on Sketchfab

Above is an example of the type of product that can be generated for clients. Specialised software is used to use stitch imagery from a drone to generate these 3D models. Jerry runs periodic courses which walk people how to do this. Links to courses are below.

Jerry’s first book ‘Rescue Pilot’ was covered in detail in Episode 29. Since then he has released another book ‘Film Pilot’ which we touch on in this interview.

Jerry’s second book – this time covering his film flying after moving on from the Royal Navy and SAR operations. Download a chapter of the book below in the blog post.

In our conversation we touch on one filming project that Jerry flew in Kuwait covering the deliberate lighting of oil wells by withdrawing Iraqi forces. Lessons of Darkness was the documentary made and the full film can be found on YouTube. The clip below shows some of the flying scenes that Jerry and his team captured.

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Links from this week’s episode:
Support the podcast on Patreon
Jerry’s 2nd Book – Film Pilot: From James Bond to Hurricane Katrina
Jerry’s personal website
Introduction to Drone Mapping – online delivered class covering the basics of data processing to creating mapping products for clients

Jerry’s cockpit view of the 2010 Soccer World Cup in South Africa.

Filming for James Bond – View to a Kill

As at Jan 2020 – showing progress with drones moving into what was previously a manned application. If you were an Ag pilot and found yourself unable to continue in the cockpit (medical etc) then much of your industry knowledge could also be leveraged in this role. A possible Plan B to consider before you need it.

Be part of the conversation! What was your biggest takeaway from this episode?

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