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First Posted: 11/5/2012

It’s a hot August day in Torrance, Calif., south of Los Angeles, and Richard Hammond is having a very good time. He’s busy shooting one of the episodes of Season 2 of his BBC America series Richard Hammond’s Crash Course, and he’s getting to pitch in on the construction of one of his favorite things: a helicopter.

Airing at 10 p.m. on Mondays, the one-hour show has sent the Top Gear host across the United States, trying out new professions. In Season 1, he drove a variety of very large machines. But this time, he’s vying for Dirty Jobs host Mike Rowe’s self-assigned title of perpetual apprentice, but without the proviso that he always get dirty.

But that doesn’t mean it’s all a dance through the daisies. In the episodes that have aired since the show’s Oct. 22 premiere, Hammond has been set on fire as a Hollywood stuntman, taken a turn behind the wheel of a New York cab and delivered a stand-up routine at the Gotham Comedy Club.

Hammond’s goal is to go in with just enough knowledge to be able to explain to viewers just how much more he doesn’t know.

I know enough about standing up in front of an audience, he says, because that’s my job, but not doing stand-up comedy. That was enough to get me to the position where I could then appreciate how good real stand-ups are, rather than being a gibbering wreck terrified at the prospect of facing a room full of people.

On this day, he’s at the Robinson Helicopter Company, the manufacturer of the secondhand copter Hammond bought in the U.K. He’s also getting ready to try his hand at the labor-intensive process of assembling one in a huge open factory floor open to the air and lit by skylights.

That’s the great thing about doing this show, he says during a break. You get to go to places you wouldn’t go as a tourist. I get to go to a lot of places most Americans don’t visit.