Helicopter

As the election-year debate over illegal immigration heats up, Maryland National Guard members are preparing to deploy to Texas to help monitor the U.S.-Mexican border. Two crews from the 29th Combat Aviation Brigade will take high-tech helicopters to the southern tip of Texas in June to provide aerial surveillance to U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents on the ground, Guard officials said Wednesday. They will watch for illegal immigrants and drug smugglers — "basically, people crossing the border without authorization," said Lt. Col. Michael Whelan, commander of the 1-224th Aviation Security and Support Battalion.

Severely injured patients are more likely to survive if they are transported to a hospital by helicopter than by ambulance, new Johns Hopkins research has found. The use of  helicopters has been scrutinized because they may crash and end up killing people. They are also expensive to operate. But the study found that patients transported by helicopter are 16 percent more likely to survive than those who travel by land.  “We know helicopter trips are costly and carry some risks, but this research shows they do save lives,”  study senior author Dr. Adil Haider, an associate professor of surgery, anesthesiology and critical care medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, said in a statement.

Severely injured patients are more likely to survive if transported by helicopter rather than ambulance, according to new research by the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine that adds fuel to the debate over flying patients to receive care. The study, unveiled Tuesday, is the latest in a body of often conflicting research into whether medevac helicopters get patients to hospitals faster, provide better care and increase the chances of saving lives. The use of helicopters has been scrutinized because of the risk of crashes that could kill the very people paramedics are helping.

A man who robbed a PNC Bank in the 2300 block of Rock Spring Road in Forest Hill about 4:40 p.m. Thursday was taken into police custody after fleeing the area, according to the Harford County Sheriff's Office. After leaving the bank, the man drove several miles south to Fallston, where he "bailed out" of his car near the Walmart on Bel Air Road, said Monica Worrell, a sheriff's office spokesman. A Baltimore County Police helicopter unit had been tracking him, and assisted Harford deputies in locating the man in the Walmart parking lot, where he was caught, Worrell said.

A 2006 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy was killed in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan on Thursday, the Marine Corps has confirmed. The 27-year-old was one of six Marines who died in the accident. The Pentagon identified him as Marine Corps Capt. Daniel B. Bartle of Ferndale, Wash. A brief biography provided by officials at his base in Kaneohe, Hawaii, lists him as a pilot for the squadron called the "Red Lions," but it was unclear whether he was at the controls when the Vietnam-era CH-53 Sea Stallion went down in Helmand province.

An Army officer recommended Thursday that Pfc. Bradley Manning, the former intelligence analyst accused of giving hundreds of thousands of classified documents to the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, be court-martialed on charges of violating the Espionage Act and aiding the enemy. Manning, 24, is accused of sending raw field reports from Iraq and Afghanistan, diplomatic cables from U.S. embassies around the world and a video of a U.S. helicopter attack in Baghdad to be published online.

If you're going down to Ocean City on Friday to enjoy a quiet off-season stay, you may notice something overhead. And it's not the steel beams of the Bay Bridge or the beautiful blue skies. Instead, it's likely to be a U.S. Coast Guard helicopter airlifting a new tower to the jetty at the Ocean City inlet, replacing the old tower that was destroyed by last summer's Hurricane Irene. The new tower will be used for marine navigational purposes. On Friday morning, construction of the new tower will begin. A Coast Guard helicopter will pick up the tower at the Ocean City Municipal Airport and transport it to the inlet that separates Ocean City from Assateague Island.

Christopher Tkacik, lost in the dark in a state park on Catoctin Mountain, had his dog, iPhone and a slowly draining battery. He could talk to the police trying to find him, but neither they nor the GPS on his smart phone could guide him out. So the 43-year-old attorney from Mount Airy turned on the device's flashlight and held it in the air. A trooper in a Maryland State Police helicopter, using night vision equipment, saw the "faint glow" from...

You know those banners towed by airplanes over beaches and stadiums? Old hat. Prepare yourself for airborne advertising 2.0. A Columbia startup is using a helicopter to hover over traffic and events in the Baltimore-Washington area and display a huge digital billboard that scrolls messages. At a time when advertising is ubiquitous, Bootcamp Lights' owners hope that glowing words and images in the sky will get the attention of jaded consumers — not to mention companies looking to promote themselves.

A human-powered helicopter in College Park holds the world title for longest flight of that kind. An international organization on Thursday certified an 11.4-second flight on a vehicle with four rotating blades that was designed, built and operated by a team from the University of Maryland's A. James Clark School of Engineering, according to a statement from the school. The pedal-powered flight took place on July 13 and was piloted by biology student Judy Wexler. The Fédération Aéronautique Internationale was the certifying agency.