Some fun facts about the helicopter seen doing the heavy lifting above:

• The twin, intermeshing rotors (I don’t know what that means) mean it doesn’t need a tail rotor
• It’s small enough the pilot can just lean to the side to visually guide stuff into place
• The rotors are made of Sitka spruce wood with fiberglass blades
• Why wood? The guy behind it once said something to the effect of “trees stay out there for hundreds of years, and they twist and turn in the wind just fine”
• This helicopter is steered using little flaps on the rotor blades (like a plane) instead of the rotors themselves (like other choppers)
• A Sitka spruce board that could be used for this is currently about 28x more expensive per foot than commodity lumber (and that’s with commodity lumber currently being way high)

If this is your kind of rabbbit hole, check out the lengthy geek out in a recent issue of The Prepared. And then subscribe to it.