The Dollar Days
1977 to 1994

Dollars First Logo

BEAS Helicopters was taken over by Bristows in 1977. They were getting worried about BEAS expansion into the North Sea oil market. They decided to close down the Coventry base in February 1978 and move all the oil servicing Bell 212s to Redhill. It was also decided to ditch the crop spraying aircraft but to keep the forestry on. Unfortunately for them none of the people who worked on forestry wanted to work for them. And even worse they discovered that all the equipment was leased. It was easy therefore for David Dollar to gather a group of people to start Dollar Helicopters as a crop spraying and forestry operator.

Dollar Helicopters Second Logo

We carried on using the Smallwood hopper for the first two years but it was a dreadful device, just so unreliable. In 1978 I spent a lot of time trying to figure out why it was so bad. By the end of 1978 I had figured out most of the problems and the next year was the most reliable we had ever had. They were so pleased they gave me a gold watch. I then pigeonholed David Dollar to let me build a new hopper. Hence the Mk III. Right from the start it was just so reliable!
Forestry continued apace for the next five years but gradually started to decrease in quantity. In the '80's we started to use electronic guidance rather than a man walking through the trees with a flag. This guidance had been used for a wile abroad but the idea of being able to show customers where their fertiliser was spread on his own map was a Dollar Helicopters innovation and we were the first to produce these spread maps (the green lines on this map being where it was spread)

Then in '87 disaster struck. We lost the contract! To a company called (CENSORED). Much could be said here about (CENSORED) but I don't want to be sued. But my favorite story about (CENSORED) was told to me by a Forester after we had to go back in and pick up the pieces when they could not finish the contract.
We turned up at the first forest to find a Forestry Commission crew of about ten men with vans, quads, radios, binoculars and a plethora of forms to fill in. We started work and were watched like a chain gang. Men on quads on the hill reporting back to the 'HQ' van that was watching us load the buckets and where they filled in forms nonstop. Eventually I wondered up the van and watched them. After a wile one of the foresters said 'Are you (CENSORED)?' I replied that 'No we were Dollar'. There was a noticeable relaxation of the whole team and the next day only two foresters turned up and the next only one. Eventually the reason for the over reaction on the first day came out. It seems that (CENSORED) would start work without there being a forester on site and when one did turn up they stopped work and the helicopter flew off to another site where there was no observer. And when the foresters caught up with them they would then stop work and move back the first site. All the time it was a cat and mouse game. It was quite funny after that when we turned up at a new forest there would be the full observer team and when they saw it was Dollar they would say 'Its all right its Dollar' and half would leave.
One problem about going back in to pick up the pieces was we had to use the guidance that (CENSORED) had been using. It seems that the Forestry Commission had been sold the fact that it was better that the one we had been using for the last three years. Here is an object lesson proving 'Bullshit baffles brains'. The guidance we had been using before used two beacons and the pilot set up a P1 and P2 line at the edge of the spread area then the guidance guided him in a straight line up it and then off to the side of that sequentially across the forest at however many meters he set it to. This new 'better' system was much the same in set up but it required the pilot to fly in a curve around one of the beacons. It could not guide in a straight line. They even got the system shown on Tomorrow's World on TV. Imagine the poor pilot trying the fly in a perfect curve up a Scottish hillside! It's hard enough going in a straight line. The funniest thing was that at the end of the year the guidance company was not able to produce a single plotted map. Needless to say the year after we went back to the original guidance system.

That takes us to the end of the eighties.

History 1990 to 2000

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