Total 19,500 Offshore 16,000 S76(A & C) 11,500
Least anyone thinks that the above experience level endows me with any particular wisdom I wish them to think otherwise. The number of hours are not necessarily an indication of an aviators ability or knowledge. It has been said before “Does he have a thousand hours experience, or one hours experience repeated a thousand times”. I have to say I probably fall into the latter category as all my offshore time has been gained flying out of the same geographical point for the same operator. I read the postings on these pages with some envy at times at the professional lives some of you lead (the grass is always greener).
If I were to have a wish list it would be for more power, both dual and OEI, a boot double its current size, means to avoid CFIT, and the ability to make a zero/zero landing. The 76 is a great helo in the temperate climate in which I fly, but the performance bleeds too quickly once the OAT starts to get up. To have OEI hover would be outstanding, as I would be able to use all those rigs I fly over as an alternate, instead of having to carry the emergency to the beach (which may well be clamped, as we don’t bother with planning to have an alternate in our operation). Our individual personal history and experiences is what colours our thinking and having had two catastrophic engine failures with the Turbomeca in the C model (only engine failures I’ve had in my career – one at CDP on a rig takeoff, the other in the hover prior to departing a runway) you can guess where my sympathies lie. I recognise all that Nick says re the engineering trade offs required as relevant, and there is no such thing as being able to make the business risk free, even by regulation. The Concorde, for example, was only required by regulation to be able to handle a single (as are all multi airline transports), not a double engine failure on one side, but we all saw in graphic detail what happens when it happens. Likewise the DC-10 at Sioux City landing with no hydraulics – what chance that, finding yourself with no hydraulics and having to control the aircraft purely by manipulation of the throttles? I’m reminded also of a young lad making his first night solo IFR trip in a S-2 Tracker in my navy days. He had a total electrical failure due to a compounding series of mechanical problems in each engine. He got down OK but the investigators write up asked the question “Twin reliability or double trouble?” At times the dog of fate simply lifts its leg and pisses on the pillar of science.
I detect a level of frustration in some postings that the author is not getting his message across. Once again we look at things based on our past experiences, training (or lack of) and it can be quite difficult at times to see the light. Those of you with an instructing background (which I do not) would be able to tell some stories. Our operation has a Cat A takeoff procedure to use from our home base which has 2,000 feet of runway. The only trouble is that the procedure makes no allowance for the accelerate distance required for when the failure is after CDP. Ten years of trying to get management to see the light has been for nought, so it says nothing for my abilities as an educator. An old saying has it that the only stupid question is the one not asked. Similarly the only stupid opinion is the one not given. Every one is entitled to an opinion, but he is not entitled to be wrong in his facts. The following philosophers say it all.
John Stuart Mill in Utilitarianism. Liberty. Representative Government. London 1960 says:
The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error…….We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavouring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still.
Von Hayek
To deprecate the value of intellectual freedom because it will never mean for everybody the same possibility of independent thought is completely to miss the reasons which give intellectual freedom its value. What is essential to make it serve its function as the prime mover of intellectual progress is not that everybody may be able to think or write anything, but that any cause or idea may be argued by somebody. So long as dissent is not suppressed, there will always be some who will query the ideas ruling their contemporaries and put new ideas to the test of argument and propaganda.
This interaction of individuals, possessing different knowledge and different views, is what constitutes the life of thought. The growth of reason is a social process based on the existence of such differences
A rambling old man with too much time on his hands best go.
Blue Skies to all,
Brian.