Not looking for a halo, but back in the day, circa late 1981 at 1 Sqn, 2 FTS, (Gazelles) my QHI day was something like this: 07:30 arrive at Sqn to see how many aircraft we had actually been allocated from our wish-list the evening before; haggle with Duty Flight Commander at CFS(H) to attempt to find some extra sorties and resurrect a moribund flypro. Brief, fly, debrief usually 4 sorties. Not time to write them all up. Cobble together programme for next day. Hopefully leave at 18:00, taking one or student folders to write up. Repeat....
Did we complain? Not at all.
Fast forward a few years. Working for a well-known civilian helicopter operator, jumping through rigorous hoops to have selected two aircraft types for DHFS. The H135 in its then guise was too new to consider, and in any case the first RW trainer was to be only Single-Engine. But noted during my evaluation of the 135 for said international company that there was restricted headroom in the back. As to the twin, the hands-down winner was the Bell 412 for the rear crew training role, as well as up front. The BK-117, as then was, had been deemed short of space even with the control runs cabinet behind the pilot seats removed: as was the then EC proposal...which morphed into the 145.
Fast forward even further. Imagine my surprise when the 135/145 combo was selected to replace the 350 and 412. Whatever happened to all the careful decisions that were made in 1996? What had changed in the training role? Oh, and now there was a 350-B3 and a 412 with FADEC, glass cockpit, and FastFin tailfin to improve yaw authority in the hover. The 135 and 145 are fine aircraft, but Role Relation should not just be the province of the tp......