People tend to duck when they are running to or from helicopters. And on the HH-43 that was indeed a requirement and for some angles of approach it was quite dangerous.
But Kaman used the exact same rotor system for their K-Max UAV supply chopper, which was actually employed by the USMC in Afghanahole, so it must have worked pretty good.
One day at the Pentagon the phone rang and it was some guy from Kaman. I said, "Kaman? As in HH-43 Huskie? You're kidding! I did not even know you people were still around!" They wanted some advice about their idea to propose a small space booster based on surplus Posidon missiles. I told them that was a bad idea. The use of surplus missiles was a controversial subject around DC at the time, with some companies lobbying hard to prevent it. He sounded disappointed but Lockheed tried the same idea and got disqualified.