Questions I have:
1. Why were they conducting live winching/hoisting TRAINING when they didn't have OEI hover performance?
2. Why were they descending to a 150' hover with the rescuer already deployed on 125' of cable?
Before deploying a rescuer on a hoist, you should be in a stable hover having conducted a power assessment and confirmed whether you are Safe OEI, Flyaway, or Committed so the winch/hoist operator knows exactly what his actions need to be in the event of an engine malfunction. You should always be Safe OEI for training.
Everyone thinks winching is easy and just posh hovering until something goes wrong.