and just to confuse you even more......
I would agree that patrolling can have very good results. We do patrol, here when the hours are available. All of our pilots, and most of our observers would happily spend as much time in the air as possible. (Bladder limits of course would apply, we're all getting on a bit now!). But with high population density and small geographic area being airborne when the job cracks off can make the difference between a successful and unsuccessful result! For those with a large geographical area, being airborne but in the wrong place could be worse than being on the ground in a central location....
But we all seem to be agreed on the basics
If the CAA was made up of staff who had never been in the military or
The CAA wrote a different set of rules or
We were the 51st state of the USA
Then
We could have three times as many police helicopters flying over
the UK.
PS. some of the times we have been on patrol we have had no decent jobs at all!
