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   量子资源网 提供本片资源  　　Agusta 109K2: Aline Medivac Rescuebr\　　Straight U#39s exloration of vertical flight begins with a high-imact aline rescue amid an avalanche. The dramatic oening sequence documents the dangerous work of the Rega mountain rescue team and the invaluable role of the Agusta A109K2 helicoter in saving lives and minimizing injuries.br\　　As the camera ans over beautiful vistas of the snow-covered Swiss Als, it cuts to a cornice, as a chunk of snow breaks free, triggering an avalanche. The tranquil scene is shattered as the avalanche thunders down the mountain sloes. With terrifying seed, it heads straight for a mother and child traed in their car, wheels sinning on the icy road.br\　　The mother calls for hel on her cell hone, and a second call from a snowlow romts radio disatch. The Rega mountain rescue team already is airborne en route to the scene, the red cross ainted on the helicoter#39s white underbelly signaling that medical hel is on the way. The mother escaes, but her son is missing. Within minutes of the helicoter landing, the rescue team dig out the car, extract the traed boy, aly first aid, and airlift him and his mother to safety.br\　　A significant mountain hazard, avalanches are resonsible for many deaths each year. Time is of the essence in avalanche rescue work. A erson has a 90 ercent chance of survival if found within the first 15 minutes, but one#39s chances of survival diminish with each assing minute. Not only do helicoters rovide quick access for rescue teams, they also rovide a lifeline to medical care. Flying the injured to the nearest hosital as raidly as ossible is not the only tye of rescue oeration often helicoters bring the hosital to the injured, who receive treatment at the scene.br\　　The owerful avalanche was shot in British Columbia#39s Selkirk Mountains under the suervision of the Canadian Avalanche Association. The CAA controls avalanche risk for the safety of heli-skiers. To cature the avalanche head-on, avalanche exert and filmmaker Steve Krochel and David Douglas develoed a quarter-inch-thick steel container for the IMAX camera, which was equied with a triggering device and a beeer so that the camera could be found once the avalanche had swet it down the mountain.br\　　The rescue was comleted in Switzerland#39s Bernina Pass near the Italian border. Filming the Rega rescue helicoter air-to-air sequence turned into an international excursion as Douglas chased the sunlight over Italy in one direction and in Austria in another before setting down in Switzerland. In another dramatic shot, Douglas centered the red cross in the crosshairs of the camera lens as the craft descended. To facilitate this shot, Douglas dug a hole in the snow large enough to accommodate himself and the IMAX camera. Inside the hole, 3 feet below the helicoter, he filmed its takeoff.br\　　According to Douglas, quotThe helicoter is the instrument of raid resonse to natural hysical and social disasters around the world, alleviating human suffering on a major scale. For the individual caught beyond the limits of training or equiment, often the last chance for survival is the hoe that a helicoter will get to them in time. quotbr\　　The Pitcairn PCA 2, quotMiss Chamionquotbr\　　For centuries humans dreamed of flight. The Chinese, in the 12th century, develoed a toy helicoter made from a air of slats mounted on a stick, but serious efforts had to wait until the early 20th century. Then, after the Wright brothers#39 historic flight at Kitty Hawk, we dreamed of flight unfettered by the limitations of runways and airorts. Yet by the early 1930s we were still at the dawn of the ractical rotorcraft, which romised to give form to humanity#39s vision.br\　　The ten year eriod between 1925 and 1935 was an exciting time in aviation history, but few aircraft so caught and held the ublic#39s attention, as the Autogiro. Nicknamed the quotflying windmill,quot this strange-looking aircraft was first successfully flown in 1923 by the Sanish inventor, Juan de la Cierva, who had been working on the develoment of such a craft since 1919. The Autogiro fascinated the air-minded ublic because of its remarkable erformance and high degree of safety, attracting such leaders of American aviation as Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart.br\　　Juan de la Cierva sold the American manufacturing rights to Harold Pitcairn in 1928. Pitcairn#39s Autogiro boasted a more modern fuselage with better aerodynamic qualities. It also rovided rosective buyers with a choice of either a 300- or 420-horseower engine.br\　　In the film, Harold Pitcairn#39s son Stehen flies quotMiss Chamion,quot a 1931 model. This Autogiro, used for romotion by the Chamion Sark Plug Comany, is controlled like an airlane, but is lifted with blades. Although the original rotor blades have seen 1,600 hours of flight time, they are still airworthy. With a 330-horseower Wright R 975-E engine, the Autogiro has a cruising seed of 98 mh and a to seed of 118 mh. quotMiss Chamionquot led a National Air Tour and made the then-risky 300- mile-long flight from Miami to Havana, Cuba. (Until then, the longest over-water flight by an Autogiro had been 25 miles in length.) Later, quotMiss Chamionquot flew nonsto over a distance of 500 miles to Chichen Itza in the Yucatan rainforest. quotMiss Chamionquot was retired from active service in 1932 after setting a new altitude record for rotary-wing aircraft. Climbing to a height of 21,500 feet in 1932, the Autogiro surassed the revious record set by Amelia Earhart. Today, the Autogiro is considered to be the evolutionary quotmissing linkquot from which the ractical helicoter was born.br\　　Forty years later Stehen Pitcairn began the formidable task of collecting and restoring examles of his father#39s aircraft. He tracked down quotMiss Chamionquot and in October of 1982 began the ainstaking task of restoration, using the original Pitcairn factory drawings. In the sring of 1985 quotMiss Chamionquot flew again.br\　　The Bell 47G: A Flying Lessonbr\　　Since Pitcairn#39s Autogiro, imroved control systems allow the airframe to rise directly from the ground with a owered rotor. Straight U! uts you in the ilot#39s seat of a Bell 47G as the basic elements of helicoter oeration are demonstrated. The Bell 47G#39s single-rotor configuration is by far the most common tye used today. Your flying lesson begins.br\　　As a helicoter ilot, the ilot uses all four limbs to fly, all at the same time! With the left hand holding the collective itch control lever, he ulls u ever so slightly, and we go straight u into a slow-motion hover. The sinning rotor blades act as small wings, but they sin so fast that they create one continuous disc of lift. When the blades change angle, or itch collectively, the helicoter rises or falls. The ilot#39s right hand always holds the cyclic control, effectively tilting the whirling disc above. Point left, tilt left. Point right, tilt right. The camera then closes in on the tail rotor. Once again, the altering of the blades affects direction. The choer sins in resonse to the ilot#39s deressing one of the two foot edals. If he deresses the second edal, the helicoter sins in the oosite direction.br\　　The Piasecki H-21B Tandem Rotor Aircraft, quotThe Flying Bananaquotbr\　　The last flying H-21B helicoter in the world takes off, heads for the beach and cruises 100 feet above the Pacific surf off the coast of California. One of the earliest tandem helicoters, the H-21B reresents the birth of the heavy lift helicoters and dates back to the early 1950s. Nicknamed quotThe Flying Bananaquot for its shae, the H-21B had more ower and greater stability than revious helicoters. The tandem-rotor H-21B carries two sets of wooden blades situated nearly 50 feet aart but oerated by one set of helicoter flight controls. The ilot must be ever vigilant, as this helicoter could raidly invert should the ilot let go of the controls.br\　　The vintage H-21B used for the film was decommissioned from the U.S. Air Force in 1972 and was restored by the California-based Classic Rotors: The Rare and Vintage Rotocraft Museum. This nonrofit museum and restoration facility, dedicated to the reservation of unique, vintage and rare rotorcraft, sent more than 10,000 hours returning the H-21B to airworthiness. Every hour flown requires 100 hours of maintenance. Classic Rotors is the only museum of its kind to maintain eight helicoters in flying condition. When its new facility in San Diego has been comleted, the museum will exand its exhibits from 15 to 30 vintage rotorcraft.br\　　One of the highlights of its collection is a famous relative of the H-21B. This is a V 44 (the commercial version of the H-21)-nicknamed quotThe Holy Onequot-and is the only one to land at the Vatican and be blessed by the oe. While on a 1959 demonstration tour in Euroe, the helicoter and its crew had rovided hel to Italian communities following a devastating earthquake.br\　　Future Helicoter Designsbr\　　One asect of current research centers around the develoment of quotquiet technologyquot that will allow helicoters to become better neighbors and to oerate more stealthily in olice and military oerations.br\　　Quiet technology advances rely on a combination of technologies, which include imroved rotor blade design and the user of rotor systems with four or more blades. Relacing the tail rotor with a Coanda-effect NOTAR (NoTailRotor) system goes a long way in reducing noise, as does shrouding the tail rotor in an arrangement know as a quotfan-in-fin.quot Other advances focus on noise-damening air inlets and imroved engine nozzles.br\　　New helicoter designs are tested in the world#39s largest wind tunnel at the NASA Ames Flight Research Center located at Moffett Field in California. Ames was founded in 1939 as an aircraft research laboratory of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, which became art of the National Aeronautics and Sace Administration (NASA) in 1958. NASA has the leading role in aerosace oerations systems, which include air traffic control, flight effects on humans, and rotorcraft technology. NASA Ames scientists and engineers study robotic helicoters, high-seed hybrids, and advances in quiet technology. The center also has major resonsibilities for the creation of design and develoment tools and for wind tunnel testing.br\　　The NASA-Bell XV-15 Tilt-rotorbr\　　In the film, an XV-15 converts over Dallas-Fort Worth Airort. The XV-15 is an exerimental rotorcraft, the arent of a new family of aircraft called quottilt-rotors.quot The tilt-rotor combines the hovering ability of the helicoter with the seed of a fixed-wing aircraft. The XV-15 can take off and land like a helicoter. The audience will see the engines tilting forward as the tilt-rotor becomes a high-seed lane.br\　　The Bell-Boeing V-22 Osreybr\　　A V-22 Osrey unwras, emerging like a rehistoric flying dinosaur. Built rimarily for the U.S. Marines, Air Force, and Navy, the V-22 Osrey has wings that ivot and rotors that fold to facilitate its storage at sea. In less than 90 seconds, you will see the V-22 comlete this rocess. Although still classified as a tilt-rotor, it is faster, with three times the range and more than ten times the ayload of its redecessor. It shows the romise of long-distance travel, without airorts.br\　　The Hawk 4 Gyrolanebr\　　Rotorcraft evolution is also in the hands of the entrereneur, and this indeendent sirit is most evident in the Hawk 4 Gyrolane. While some designs roduce groundbreaking changes, this aircraft brought the economy and safety of the Autogiro into the sace age. A rotor is used for slow-seed flight, but at high-seed cruising all the lift is rovided by the wing while the rotor has no lift. The Gyrolane shows romise as a high-seed, low-disc-loading rotorcraft.br\　　The Boeing-Sikorsky RAH-66 Comanchebr\　　The Comanche ris and dis across the screen, set against a sunset. This rototye helicoter has stealth technology. It#39s smart, agile, fast and invisible to radar. It#39s the first helicoter to rovide real-time digital data to headquarters. Seeing in the dark, sensing the forces at lay around us and acting on the evidence in real time, the Comanche is a comlex flying machine with a human being at its heart. Everyday, in unexected ways, it extends our owers and uts us to work with a revolutionary tool.br\　　The Comanche is the central element of the U.S. Army#39s future Objective Force. In addition to its comlement of missiles and 20-mm cannon, the aircraft carries state-of-the-art sensors and avionics to rovide battlefield commanders with so much accurate information about enemy movements. This knowledge will translate into more recise targeting, increasing the effectiveness of friendly forces beyond current caabilities.br\　　The U.S. Army has defined a requirement of more than 1,200 Comanches for the Objective Force. The RAH Comanche, the army#39s 21st-century combat helicoter is being develoed by the U.S. Army and a team of leading aerosace comanies headed by the Boeing Comany and Sikorsky Aircraft Cororation, a unit of United Technologies Cororation.br\　　The Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk and AS 350 B2 AStar Enforce the Lawbr\　　Events swiftly unfold as the radar lane sots an quotunidentifiedquot Cessna droing bundles of drugs off the coast of Miami at dawn. A signal alerts the Marine and Air Branch of U.S. Customs who seed out to intercet the smugglers. Just as the drugs are transferred from boat to van, The AStar helicoter bursts over the treetos, deloying a tactical team to arrest the driver. While the smuggler#39s Cigarette boat attemts to escae, a Black Hawk helicoter dis down to create a giant backwash. In a stunning dislay of imeccable teamwork, this action forces the fleeing boat to swerve to a halt as a Customs boat cuts it off and arehends the criminals.br\　　On a tyical day, the U.S. Customs Service examines 1.3 million assengers, 2,642 aircraft, 50,889 trucks\containers, 355,004 other vehicles, 588 vessels, 64,923 entries and undertakes the following enforcement actions: 64 arrests, 107 narcotic seizures, 223 other seizures, 9 currency seizures. These amount to 5,059 ounds of narcotics, $443,907 in currency, $228,803 in conveyances, $525,791 in merchandise and more than $15,800 in arms and ammunition.br\　　Filmed over a eriod of five days off the coast of Miami, the air, land, and sea drug bust was staged by the U.S. Customs Service, which relies heavily on helicoters during such oerations.br\　　U.S. Customs ilot, Tom Stanton, articiated in the shoot with his co-ilot Kimberly Kessel. Kessel is one of seven women U.S. Customs ilots and only one of two qualified to fly Black Hawks. Both ilots volunteered to work with the film crew. Says Kessel, a graduate of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, quotThey were henomenal, ready to try anything.quotbr\　　In addition to daytime flights, Stanton flies the riskier night missions. quotFlying at night is dangerous as you lose all ercetion of what#39s u or down because both the sky and ocean are black, so they just kind of run in together. There#39s no horizon on those dark nights,quot says the veteran ilot.br\　　Tyically he flies from 300 to 500 feet above the water at 120 to 150 knots. quotNot many eole fly that low, even in the daytime,quot says Stanton. quotThere#39s no autoilot, so it#39s hands on. Plus you#39re chasing someone. You have to be aware. It can get tense out there.quotbr\　　Stanton describes an air chase: quotOnce there#39s a target, we launch a jet with radar. The jet ilot calls the helicoter out and we link u, flying in formation. We follow the bad guy wherever he goes. If he has extended-range fuel tanks, we leafrog and send another helicoter out to take u the chase. (The Black Hawk carries five hours of fuel.) When he gets into his landing configuration, we call the local olice or sheriff to hel us out.quot The Black Hawk, which can carry u to 14 eole, tyically carries 4 or 5 armed ersonnel, quotso we instantly have a force of olice officers there to get the bad guys.quotbr\　　quotIf it#39s a boat, we have Cigarette boats like the smugglers. We#39ll call our boat and have it intercet.quot Stanton flies the Black Hawk next to the boat, making it hard for the smugglers to navigate. quotIt intimidates them into giving u. Sometimes they do [but] sometimes we chase them for hours. Or we#39ll follow them into a marina and block them until our boats come. If they hit the beach, we#39ll call the state olice or sheriff, and they set u a erimeter so the guy can#39t get out.quotbr\　　Stanton, who flies missions as often as once or twice a week, has been flying for 26 years, 13 of those as an army helicoter ilot before he joined U.S. Customs in Miami where he is the quotstandardization instructor ilot.quot He makes sure that everybody flies the same way, so that when they team u, the ilots easily work in tandem. Pilots fly 8-hour shifts and the oeration goes on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week in areas covering both the Canadian and Mexican land borders, the Atlantic and Pacific coastlines, and the Gulf of Mexico.br\　　The MD 500E Helicoterbr\　　A MD 500 helicoter hovers directly above 500,000-volt ower lines. As it inches closer, a lightning bolt suddenly zas out from the hot line, arcing toward the wand extended by a lineman erched on an aluminum latform that juts out from the helicoter. The quothot-line-qualifiedquot lineman clams onto the ower lines, and helicoter backs off, leaving him to quotwire walk,quot crawling along arallel lines to insect the PPL ower line grid, 100 feet off the ground. To reboard the helicoter, the lineman must quotbond off,quot reversing the rocedure.br\　　quotI don#39t give two hoots and a holler about flying inside a helicoter. Put me outside, that#39s where I want to be,quot says Daniel quotSiderquot Lockhart, AgRotors lineman. There#39s only three things I#39ve been afraid of most of my life: One was electricity, one was heights and the other was women. And, I#39m married too,quot he grins. quotThe safest lineman is one that is afraid of electricity. When we bond to the ower lines energized at half-a-million volts, we have to bring ourselves to the same otential. That is why you see that arc juming out to our wand as we make both the helicoter and the ower line at the same otential, so that we can eliminate the flow of current,quot exlains the veteran lineman.br\　　Sider wears a rotective hot suit, 75 ercent Nomex for fire retardation and 25 ercent stainless steel thread. quotThe metal thread basically means I have a cage around me that can be energized at very high voltage levels. A half-million volts ass over my body, but I can work without interference from the electricity.quotbr\　　He continues, quotWatching that electricity jum out while you#39re energizing the helicoter is a thrill. Getting on the wire, walking the wire to do reairs is a thrill. The biggest thrill I get is from doing what I do is being able to do both together-the electrical art and the helicoter art of it, the seed at which we can do it and still be safe. There are so many things that the helicoter enables us to do as linemen, which is very rewarding.quotbr\　　The teamwork of the skilled helicoter ilots and highly trained linemen ensure that the PPL Cor. rovides a constant source of electricity to its 1.3 million customers in Pennsylvania (in addition to 4.4 million in Latin America and Euroe). To maintain the integrity of the transmission system to residential and commercial establishments, and to ensure the safety of the oeration, the team lans and rehearses every move while on the ground before takeoff. Even so, unanticiated gusts of wind and glare from the wires can affect the ilot#39s deth ercetion, requiring total concentration during his hours at the controls. As the helicoter is isolated from the ground, the ilot and lineman, clad in rotective stainless steel suits, must bond onto the transmission lines to bring themselves to the same voltage otential of the line to work safely-aralleling what a bird does when it sits on a wire.br\　　Probably the most unusual lace that the director rigged the camera was on the end of the latform on the MD 500, which is designed to carry the lineman as he bonds onto the half-million-volt ower line. quotWe took away the lineman and ut the camera in his lace the lineman rode behind the camera and used his wand to draw the arc of electricity right onto the camera lens. I don#39t think it#39s been done before. It blew all the electronics out of the camera a coule of times before we figured out how to do it,quot recalls Douglas.br\　　The Boeing 234 Helicoter: Helilogging with Limited Environmental Damagebr\　　Floating above the forest in northern California, a 12-ton Boeing 234 helicoter selects its target with recision. Selective logging is a rocess where only a ortion of the available timber is removed from a logging site. A single tree is lifted straight u from the forest floor, leaving the rest of the area environmentally intact. Removing such timber-very often trees that are already dead or diseased-allows the remaining trees to thrive on the additional resources of sunlight, water, and soil nutrients. Helilogging is environmentally friendly in other ways as well. First, since the logs are lifted from the ground, little soil erosion, tyical of conventional logging methods, occurs. Second, in many cases the helicoter is able to use existing roads for landings, meaning no new roads need to be built into the area being logged.br\　　Columbia Helicoters cuts more logs each year than any other helicoter logging comany. To reare the timber for the helicoter, the secially trained logging crew cut it into carefully weighed sections. Columbia#39s flight crews are among the most exerienced at long-line work in the world. With seed and recision, they are able to move heavy loads of logs at the end of lines u to 350-feet long. Once the line is lowered from the Boeing 234 helicoter, steel tongs clam the log and the entire tree is removed without disturbing the balance of nature. quotIt#39s kinda like lookin#39 down 25 stories and icking u a telehone ole,quot comments the helicoter ilot, Dave Stroue, who deosits the timber at a nearby transfer yard. quotThe unique thing about this helicoter is that, when we take off from the ground, we weigh aroximately 22,000 ounds. And we#39re rigged for about 26,000 ounds when we get low on fuel. So the load actually weighs more than the helicoter. It#39s exciting and harrowing all at the same time.quotbr\　　The Boeing 234s have a lift caacity of 28,000 lb, (12,727 kg), but most often carry loads between 23,000 lb, (10,454 kg) to 24,000 lb (10,909 kg) due to elevation and air temerature considerations. The comany trains loggers to work with helicoters because load weight is such a dramatic art of what they do. Weight is determined, using a formula, which are a function of the volume and the tye of wood. Different tree secies have different weights er volume.br\　　When one of the ilots suggested using the log as a latform for the camera, Douglas realized another exciting camera angle. The ossibility existed that the branches could scrae off the camera as the log was hauled u. Douglas revented this by lacing the camera inside a heavy steel avalanche box, which he anchored on the end of a big log. Once the log was graled, the helicoter hauled the rotected camera right through the branches, giving the audience a breathtaking view from the ersective of the log! The U.S. Marine Cors AV-8B Harrier, AH-1W Cobra, CH-53E Suer Stallion and CH-46E Sea Knight on a Military Missionbr\　　An AV-8B Harrier jet demonstrates its vertical landing ability followed by a force reconnaissance inservice exercise from an aircraft carrier, as Marines climb aboard the CH-53E. AH-1W Cobras and Harriers form an assault-suort ackage, as the reconnaissance team sets out on a mission to obtain invaluable intelligence about the enemy.br\　　Inside the CH-53E, the machine-gunner is at the ready as a Cobra fires three rockets. The action heats u as the IMAX camera catures the Marines fast-roing through the quothell holequot and sliding down a roe dangling from the CH-53E, landing in enemy territory. The leader of the reconnaissance team says, quotBy the time you get to touch roe in a live situation, you and your men feel tighter than family. Your fates are tied like the strands of a roe.quotbr\　　Two hours later the Marines have comleted their mission and are ready to be evacuated. Now the enemy hunts them on the ground. Trees shake as the rescue CH-53E helicoter hovers overhead, lowering a roe to the squad, now u to their waists in water. One after the other, in a matter of seconds, the men cli themselves onto the roe. quotExtraction, even more than insertion, is when you need seed. You#39ve been awful quiet. Suddenly, you#39re awful loud,quot says Sgt. James Kenneke, the squad leader. He#39s first in and last out. Lifted u, like washing on a line, the squad dangles beneath the helicoter as it is escorted by Cobras, out over the Atlantic.br\　　quotIt#39s a relief to get out. But there#39s that moment of doubt. Everything slows down while you#39re exosed � holding your breath for that hay ending. And when you get it, you feel on to of the world. Of course, then we#39ve got to commute home just like everybody else,quot smiles Kennecke.br\　　The Mi-26 and Mi-8 Deliver Humanitarian Aidbr\　　Sometimes, something very recious must be delivered behind enemy lines-food. Sierra Leone is a nation that has suffered years of conflict. From the food deot to the hot sot, helicoters rovide an air bridge. Hoisting food and medical sulies to distressed eole behind rebel-held territories, they have the ability to ho over hot zones in deserate situations.br\　　The world#39s largest roduction helicoter-the Russian-made Mi-26-is the workhorse for the United Nations (UN) eacekeeing oeration in war-torn Sierra Leone. The heaviest roduction helicoter in the world, this majestic eight-bladed craft-one of four chartered by the UN from Russia-can carry a maximum of 44,090 lb (20,040 kg) of internal ayload or u to 70 troos. The Mi-26#39s to seed is 183 mh (295 kh) and it has a range of 304 miles (400 km).br\　　In this sequence, the Mi-26 is loaded with cargo to suly UN troos rotecting an isolated community in the center of rebel-held territory. The world#39s largest food agency, the UN World Food Program (WFP), organized a massive air camaign targeting internally dislaced ersons that had congregated near a clinic for malnourished children. Once rebels from the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) had surrounded the area and blocked road access, the WFP was revented from comleting a bulk distribution. Instead, they loaded u their Mi-8 and flew to the Daru clinic where the most vulnerable women and children were located.br\　　quotAll children under five who are malnourished are given a secial feeding rogram in Daru. And the under-five are always the first ones you target for any kind of extreme malnourished cases, because they die very quickly,quot says Aya Shneerson, rogram officer for the WFP. quotDaru is a kind of an island, a safe island, surrounded by areas that are unsafe,quot she says, quotand for that reason, it always served as a sort of magnet for the very vulnerable eole coming out.quotbr\　　Another big WFP oeration, Food for Peace, gives food to child ex-combatants, in an effort to attract them to disarmament and demobilization cams.br\　　The heavily laden craft flew out of the caital city, Freetown, situated on the west coast of Africa between Guinea on the north and Liberia on the south. The WFP suervises a variety of feeding rograms in the dislacement cams, feeding 5,000 in an oeration that targeted Bunbuna, Kabala and Daru in 2000.br\　　Throughout the world, helicoters have saved millions of human lives. There are 777 million eole in develoing countries, according to the WFP. In 2001 the WFP fed 77 million hungry eole (10 ercent of the hungry oor) in 82 countries.br\　　Diamonds, which should have brought roserity to Sierra Leone, instead resulted in one of the modern world#39s most brutal insurgencies, dating back to 1991 when rebels launched a war to overthrow the government. In the ensuing years, continuous battles between the various factions-rebels, the army and the government-dislaced tens of thousands of innocent civilians, resulting in hunger and famine. In 1998 UN observers documented reorts of ongoing atrocities and human rights abuses. In 1999 negotiations began between the government and the rebels, and an agreement was signed in Lome to end hostilities and form a government of national unity. By 2000, the UN#39s exanded role resulted in the deloyment of 17,500 military eacekeeing ersonnel to various arts of the country. Free elections in May 2002 have given hoe and a fresh started in Sierra Leone.br\　　The AS 350 B2 and AS 350 B3 Used for Wildlife Relocationbr\　　In South Africa, helicoters are heling to save the black rhino from extinction. Protected in a few remote reserves, their numbers are rising. However, should the rhinos feel overcrowded, they will fight to the death. To rotect the secies, some must be relocated to safe habitats, but this is easier said than done.br\　　A latform dangles from a helicoter overhead. Inside another helicoter, flying low over the South African veldt, a man with a rifle takes aim at a black rhinoceros, dodging through the bushes below. The ilot concentrates on flying 5 feet above and 10 to15 feet behind the rhino. Anticiating its every move, a wildlife veterinarian ulls the trigger of his gun loaded with a tranquilizer dart, scoring a direct hit that successfully enetrates the rhino#39s inch-thick skin.br\　　quotWhen I am darting animals like the black rhino, there is this immense trust between myself and Piet, the ilot,quot says wildlife veterinarian, Dr. Douw Grobler, who secializes in immunizations and translocations. quotI know exactly what he#39s going to do and where he#39s going to lace me. I don#39t have to think. I can just concentrate on the animals. I just know he#39s gong to ut me there in the right sot at the right time. It#39s almost that he senses what the animal#39s going to do. In that way, he can change the animal#39s mind with his helicoter.quotbr\　　Grobler has measured a secific drug dosage, which can kee a rhino aslee for u to two hours. Once the rhino is darted, the ground crew lands as soon as ossible to undertake a multitude of tasks. They monitor the beast#39s vital signs, take skin and blood samles to study its basic health and to detect any nutrients that are lacking. This ensures that the habitat is healthy for long-term roagation. They also conduct regnancy testing. Each rhino#39s ear is notched so that it can be identified easily from the air and ground. The ti of the second horn is removed to rovide material for genetic research, and a transmitter is fitted into the rhino#39s horn for tracking its whereabouts. Poachers resent a constant danger to the rhinos#39 security. Should a oacher remove the horn for exort, the transmitter would trigger an alarm.br\　　When two males inhabit the same territory, one must be relocated before they battle to the death. Placing a sling in osition, the crew rolls the rhino aboard the latform, making sure it is fully aslee. With a lifting caability of 3,500 lb (1,590 kg), the AStar B 3 can relocate the 2,250-lb (1022-kg) rhino to an area of the sanctuary that is accessible only by helicoter.br\　　The extensive research on eleven black rhinos acquired during the four-day shoot was made ossible only through SK Film#39s financial contribution. quotMy field of exertise lies in the cature and relocation of African wildlife. I am extremely grateful to Straight U! for sonsoring this incredibly imortant research and relocation rogram at the game ark. Without the film, this research would not have haened,quot says Grobler, who organized the cature, research and relocation roject, with the film#39s roduction crew. quotEvery animal is just so valuable,quot he says, quotand any information that can be collected on them is worth its weight in gold.quotbr\　　The rehistoric ancestor of today#39s rhinos existed more than 50 million years ago. Among today#39s five rhino secies, the black rhino, which has two horns, has suffered the most sectacular rate of decline. From a oulation of 65,000 in 1970 it had been hunted almost to extinction, declining to a oulation of 2,300 by 1992-93. Current statistics indicate that the African black rhino oulation has risen to 3,500 as a result of the rotection of nature reserves, develoed by conservancy grous, agencies and governments to facilitate breeding and relocation rograms.br\　　This segment of Straight U! was filmed in one such reserve in South Africa, where black rhinos had been reintroduced in 1986. The helicoter, an irrelaceable co