Word: copter
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...largely undeveloped 4,038-sq.- mi. island -- the gizzards of an active volcano, for instance, or thousand- foot cliffs of the Kohala coast -- is virtually inaccessible to all but island birds and their kin, which includes the Bell JetRanger III helicopter. For a mere $1,380, the copter will take four people on a tour, complete with a champagne picnic on windswept Lauhala Point and a view right into the maw of the active volcano Kilauea. This jaunt is not for the faint of heart or weak of knee. When the tree line below suddenly drops away, leaving the swaying...
...scene, Honduran soldiers of the 6th Centaur battalion told TIME Mexico City Bureau Chief David DeVoss that Schwab's copter had strayed out of Honduran airspace. "It came straight at us from inside Nicaragua," said Juan Carlos Torres, 20. "The Sandinistas were shooting at the helicopter, and it was being hit. It was in trouble and just made it across to Honduras." Another witness, Santo Andre Valledares, 24, recalled: "When the gringos arrived, they fell out of the chopper and one looked to be dead. The Sandinistas kept up their fire for a full five minutes after the crash...
...news, the helicopter rivals the minicam as the novelty of the moment. Choppers can cost $300,000 or more, but they give some 250 TV station news crews speed and mobility, and serve as remote transmitters for pictures ranging from traffic to catastrophes. But the ratings race can tempt copter reporters to chase sensation, making aerial derring-do part of the story, and to take needless risks...
...attempting to match that misguided mission, Karen Key, 28, of Denver's NBC affiliate, KOA-TV, was not so lucky. When word came that a Pioneer Airlines commuter plane was missing in treacherous icy weather, a copter crew from one station refused to take off and another crew turned back in midflight. But Key, the nation's first woman TV reporter-helicopter pilot, pressed on. Within 45 minutes, she and Mechanic Larry G. Zane, 28, slammed into a snowy stand of pine trees near Larkspur, Colo., and died almost instantly...
...band of bobbing heads in a grove of cedars. The men use their craft as an earthbound cowboy uses his horse at roundup time, circling and feinting and cutting off lines of escape. Biggs sets the rotor low and at the mustangs' tails. When they break again, the copter sets down, Crawford leaps out and waves them back on the trail...