SAR
A day in the life…..SAR….Part one
Here’s some basic nomenclature:
WO = Winch Operator
One = 1st Rear Crew deployed via winch
Two = 2nd Rear Crew deployed via winch
Standby position = position of the helicopter at the scene. Where the machine is not directly overhead the scene, thereby removing most if not all downwash, and some of the noise! The pilot can look down and to the right and use the scene as a hover reference point.
Move in = moving from the Standby position to the vertical or near vertical!
Move out = the opposite…
Winch out = self explanatory
Winch in = self explanatory
RC = non-specific rear crewmember….
FC = the pilots, normally used in derogatory terms only, if someone (usually me ;-) made a boo boo! Or forgot their turn to pay for coffee!
The WO is the senior guy in back, normally a Para-jumper or Paramedic and is in charge of the cabin and RC. And pretty much in charge of the operation once we’re on task
Standardization is pretty much the norm theses days! But the actual rescue, by nature, requires that you think on your feet. And some latitude is permitted.
In the scenario I’ll try to entertain you with. I’ll try to remember the verbal exchanges as close as possible to verbatim….
The scene:
It’s 11.00am one day last week. We’ve just returned from the coffee shop at the terminal.
All 5 of us were mesmerised in the terminal by the most beautiful woman anyone’s ever seen……wives and girlfriends excepted ;-))
The co-pilot and I are in the pilot’s room, resting on the genuine fake leather sofa’s, that replace the private bedrooms provided at all other company bases!
He’s rattling on about some aviation related issue, and I’m pretending to ‘care’ and secretly daydreaming about the woman in the coffee shop…I just got to the part where she was saying…????
Then the “bat phone” rings…!!!
Well! we haven’t quite reached the...” I don’t care “stage…
SAR duty days are divided into 3 periods.
Arrival... pre-flight- with engineer, after his daily inspection. Weather and Notams…
Followed by one or more visits to the coffee shop…
Followed by email check, proon…various helicopter job sites looking for a better job! Doesn’t matter if the one you have is ok…Old habits die-hard ;-))
This period lasts about 5-6 hours…and is followed by:
I don’t care anymore…this is when you’re sick of waiting for an interesting mission to come up, Now you can take it or leave it! This lasts about another 4-5 hours. Followed by!
They better not call now!
Machine is clean and tied down, all plugs are in, and any kind of mission now means we’ll be going into overtime tonight! Every mission means an engine wash and winch cable wash at the very least! (Highly salt laden atmosphere)
But…we haven’t reached …I don’t care anymore……… yet!
So the next thing is, the WO runs by shouting “We have a mission” followed by another rear crew calling by cell phone to say, “We have a mission” followed by the other RC running up the stairwell and saying, “we have a mission”…
Naturally! I walk out and shout: “Do we have a mission?”
Four voices shout in unison! “Yes”
I put my flight suit on and tie my boots. I’m still on the 2nd floor so
I shout down…Mountain or sea?…
I get 2 “mountains”, a “sea” and one “I don’t know”?
I can see things are moving along smoothly, or as smooth as it get´s around here ;-)
So I head for the helo!
The engineer has pulled the plugs and tiedowns...And is standing by!
I climb in and we have our usual discussion about GPU or no GPU…
It’s a huge prehistoric thing, and the guy gets a bad back every time he drags it around.
The airport authority won’t let us leave it co-located with the ship!
So I call for start clearance, and get number 2 flashed up, while P2 is finishing a last minute walk around with the engineer….Start number 1 while P2 is strapping in…
I finish the flow pattern and P2 reads the checklist. We do a challenge and response as a check list, not a do list…I’ve already done the doing, this is just confirmation!
We don’t get co-ordinates until the last minute, if at all…often it’s “ in the region of ” such and such a town. Mountain, beach etc… and we fine tune it on route to the scene!
In this case we got co-ordinates from RCC but they were wrong anyway…
We only operate up to 12nm out to sea on standard missions, with a standard fuel load. So PNR/CP issues are all standard figures. Outside this distance, we can take as much time as needed for FP purposes.
“Rescue 31 is ready on the south ramp” VFR to the west with Kilo”
“Rescue 31 is cleared via VFR 2, and then westbound, not above 1000… from present position… cleared for take-off ”…. We’re around 8-9 minutes after the call…
We launch from the ramp area, and hang a left at 300’..I have the a/c and victor radio, while P2 gets all the info he can from RCC…I head in a generally westward direction. Heading south of west to avoid the mountain at 12.00 o’clock…
P2 comes up with a rough heading, and throws it in the GPS…It’s about 20 minutes away.
Only thing we have heard from the scene, is its one or three victims’ no-ones sure?
And he/she or them, are either half way down a cliff face, or have fallen onto the rocks where it levels out into the ocean.
We hit the co-ordinates and find nothing, so cruise up the coast a little way. And see a bunch of rescue vehicles parked on a high road, winding down the ravine…
The on scene commander calls on FM, and warns us of power lines in the vicinity…
We do a high recon and see the power lines are running pretty close to the victim (one female) and then angle away… Behind the primary wires, is a SWER line maybe 100 metres back up the ravine…
We do a second recon and decide it’s too risky for a let down between the wires, so we’ll enter the ravine from seawards, low and slow, following the ravine bottom upwards, under the wires, and set down on a flat spot about 2-300’ below the scene!
In the event of a no landing possible due rough terrain…An RC will hover dismount, and mountain goat it up to the scene, and take control…possibly look for a place she can be stretchered to, away from the wires..
When we get to the flat spot, it’s ok for landing. And large enough for a second machine if needed, so we park to one side and shut down…This is not going to happen real quick.
We have 2 other machines co-located at our base.., plus another 2 within 60nm each direction. So in these circumstances, a shutdown is the ‘ Lesser of two evils!’
If we keep turning and burning for an hour, we might have to pull out for fuel, and delay the rescue. So the minimal risk of our well-maintained machines not starting is justified.
The RC are all fit enough for Olympic tryout, and after 3 minutes, 2 of them are on scene…I’m talking nearly vertical rock face…I estimated about 30 minutes if I had to do it myself! ;-))
The senior RC called on portable FM, and explained the situation from the scene.
We have a woman who fell asleep at the wheel. While driving down a canyon road during the previous night! … One of the very rare scenarios where not wearing a seatbelt saved her life! She’s been ejected from the car, and the car was now small enough to fit in a u-haul trailer…
We don’t get too much into injury extent, as any decision has to be made on a basis of sound airmanship…not because someone who’s already a victim, might suffer more due to time factors….
It’s tough sometimes, especially when the injuries are self-evident. But as aircrew, we have to put the safety of our crew and the machine first…Nothing’s to be gained by adding five more to the accident tally…
The RC on site explained that the wires are actually around 30 meters from the overhead position. And then angle away fairly quickly. And the RC’s agree it’s tight, but do-able from their point of view…
We have a basic rule, that if anyone in the crew says’s no-go! It’s a no-go…If this happened, we’d ask attending ground crew to go for option B…Whatever that might be!
As there was no viable Option B in this case, it was good to hear that the guys thought it was do-able…
To be continued:
Last edited by 170'; 1st September 2006 at 19:43.