by Mark Sales

Hello everyone at KCOE. I am one of the 4 Helicopter Pilots, 4 Flight Nurses, 4 Flight Paramedics, 2 Mechanics, and the occasional Manager, or dog, representing Life Flight Network here at the airfield. We’re parked off of Delta 1, behind the Bird Museum. We operate with the call sign Life Flight 85. Our aircraft is a 1 ½ year old Bell 407 GXi, tail number N406LF. LFN picked it up in Tennessee in the spring of 2022. I first flew it when it had a mere 25 hours total time. It now has over 625. It has been a busy aircraft.

This aircraft is fully IFR certified as a single-engine helicopter, with a 3-axis autopilot (we do not currently fly any IFR but we maintain currency on approaches). We enjoy the power of a Rolls Royce 250 C47 E/4 engine, giving us 674 SHP, with dual FADEC, a great heater and air conditioner, a dual screen Garmin 1000 avionics suite, tinted windows, Bluetooth connectivity (for groovy tunes on long flights), 2.5 hours of cruise time (typically at a whopping 125 knots), and a beautiful blue paint scheme with relatively enormous white ID numbers. In other words: fancy, comfortable, reliable, and expensive.

The Medical crew in the back can accommodate nearly any Intensive Care Unit transfer patient. We have suction, oxygen, heart monitor, intravenous pumps, all sorts of medications, and many years of critical or trauma patient care experience.

Our Mechanics (shout out to Harry Craviatto from the previous LF85 base) are highly skilled in helicopter and fixed wing aircraft maintenance and do a fantastic job of keeping us from coming apart in the sky, getting stuck in a field somewhere undesirable, and maintain the cleanest hangar I have ever had the pleasure of working in.

The four of us Pilots at LF85 come from military and/or Coast Guard backgrounds. As for myself, the first thing I flew was an Army UH-1, back in 1991. I served on Active Duty from May 1991 until August of 2000, mostly flying Black Hawks with the 101st Airborne at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, the 5-158th Aviation Regiment, Giebelstadt, Germany and Akrotiri, Cyprus, and the 498th Medevac at Fort Benning, Georgia. I then separated and got into aerial firefighting, from Florida to Alaska, in the S-64 Sky Crane, Boeing Vertol (CH-46), UH-60 Black Hawk, and Bell 212. I also double-dipped for 4 ½ years with Era Helicopters in Alaska: fires in the summer and servicing oil rigs in Cook Inlet for rest of the year.

I am originally from Coeur d’Alene and moved back after military service in 2001. My wife and two daughters kept things together at home while I flew all over the country for the next 18 years, typically gone for 180+ days a year. After traveling extensively throughout my flying career, we are all quite happy to have me home now at some point nearly every day of the year. It has been a great career so far and I look forward to many more years servicing my hometown area. Oh, and I may finally get my fixed wing rating one day, for kicks. I have thousands of helicopter hours, and 3.1 of logged fixed wing time. All on floats. Half with Mike Kincaid.

If anyone is interested in having a look around the aircraft and meeting some of us, feel free to come on by the hangar: 2691 Cessna. Unless we are out working with a patient, someone is around 24/7/365. Late night visits not encouraged. LOL.

Mark Sales

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