In September 75 we did a trial at Bishops Court, Northern Ireland using a 500ft strop from the Wessex 2 to position the detonating mechanism beside suspect car bombs. Having released the kit(weighing about 100lbs) we retired and let Felix remotely set a controlled explosion. Theory behind this exercise was that staking out a suspect car and neutralising it (especially down near the border) was man intensive, lengthy and risky so some bright spark at Lisburn said why not send a helicopter on its own to do Felixs job (they could be viewing the job from a safe distance). After 2 hours of being conned by the crewman and managing to correctly position the load a few times - the first attempt was by the drivers door but they wanted it moved to the boot! - it was decided that it was an impractical solution and trial abandoned. If Felix could see me and the target then so could the IRA, and a hovering helicopter would be a snipers delight. Deciding clincher was when I asked if the car was to be blown up whilst we were above it, how high would a Cortinas engine block fly and the cheerful Major replied how about a few hundred feet and I answered that there wasn't enough room in the cockpit for the two of us.