Check out the new Magnum PI Helicopter destined for the Hawaii Tour Industry.
From The Founder
A San Diego Sheriff MD530F patrol helicopter. The same helicopter that appears on the cover of Catch The Sky. Dan Megna photo.
Police Helicopter Pilot.com was founded in February of 2008 for the primary purpose of teaching others how to become a police or law enforcement helicopter pilot. Information on the web, at that time, was somewhat limited regarding the process of becoming a pilot for a Sheriff's Department, Police Department or even a federal agency such as the FBI. Back then, in the early part of 2008, I posted a series of articles titled How To Become A Police Helicopter Pilot. I received a lot of feedback at the time telling me that it was the best information anywhere on the topic. But, I have pretty much ignored them until now. I just finished re-organizing and updating these articles. Overall, the process of becoming a police pilot remains essentially the same but there were a handful of updates. I also added a section on researching police and sheriff departments for the purposes of career planning once you have determined that flying police helicopters is what you want to do as a career.
It's now 2013 and Police Helicopter Pilot has moved to a completely new platform. One that is much more flexible and dynamic. I hope that this move will allow me to present information in a much more logical and organized fashion, and builder a better overall product. I expect this re-organization to take six to eight months so please check back often for updates. Also, if you notice some broken links or some text that looks a little out of place, that is a result of the switch over and I am working on fixing them.
Catch The Sky
Book: Catch The Sky by Darryl Kimball & Allan Duffin
In 2011 something very exciting happened. Allan Duffin, a Los Angeles based author was looking for his next book project and stumbled across this site. Allan, an Air Force Veteran, already had two books under his belt not to mention a whole host of magazine articles. He had previously written a book about aviation; The 12 O'clock High Log Book, and a book about law enforcement; History In Blue, a look at the history of women in law enforcement.
I guess Allan decided that combining aviation and law enforcement together would make for a pretty exciting story. He tracked me down and proposed that we work on a book together about flying police helicopters. About 18 months later Catch The Sky: The Adventures and Misadventures of A Police Helicopter Pilot was launched on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Writing the book was a great experience and I feel very lucky that Allan chose me to work with him on the project.
Looking Ahead: The Future of Police Helicopter Pilot.com
For the past few years I have tended to focus fairly tightly on Police Aviation. But general aviation is a very broad and exciting topic, much of which touches or overlaps police aviation. Likewise, as a helicopter pilot my interests reach far beyond the rotor disc. Look for this site to branch out into other areas in the future.
About The Founder
Darryl J Kimball is the founder of Police Helicopter Pilot.com. Darryl obtained his commercial rotor-craft rating in December of 2007 and currently has over 1700 hours in helicopters with over 1500 hours of turbine engine time and 300+ hours flying on night vision goggles.