Operating the 505 in New Zealand

The great thing with the 505 in any helicopter, we've got some great opportunities to land in very remote areas of New Zealand, and we do that -- we can land in a three-to-four square meter spot. It can be way down the fields of New Zealand, and it can be over on the west coast of New Zealand. The agility for moving into some tight confined spaces, we can be up valleys, up big streams, rivers, coming into land on some of the rivers by the sea. Very small areas -- the 505's super agile, just maneuvers around tail rotor authority is outstanding. My name's Grant Silvester. I got into helicopters when I was 23, I'm 60 now, so I've loved flying, just had a passion for it. My first experience in a Bell aircraft was a good friend of mine, John -- he owned a 206. I did my training, I went straight to a 206 and flew that and got my rating in it, so I got that when I was 25 years old. So loved the Bell product then, love it. Now my favorite thing about the Bell 505 is beautiful cockpit, beautiful vision, great horsepower, great handling, great vision. I've got as a pilot, plus all my passengers, and if you wanna put some stuff, I've got heaps of luggage space -- the list goes on, but dear I, I love it. The time saving's huge because we live on one side of New Zealand, we fly across the west coast, we are there within an hour and a half. The backup support from Bell is outstanding, from basic servicing just to do the ADs, getting everything all spot on -- I can't speak more highly of how Bell have looked after us. Yeah, they've done a great job. Really have, um, we've had the guys from Bell come over from Australia within 24 hours and sorted, fixed, and we're back in the, again -- fishing, diving, hunting -- it's the perfect tool for that job. The 505 fills in all those gaps for us, and we fill it up with whitebait, with crayfish, fish, bring it home. That's what I love about the 505.