part 2
We briefed the operation by radio…it took around 6 minutes, with everyone playing ‘Devils advocate’ and then finding a solution for each eventuality!
When everyone thought we had all the bases covered…we re-started with no problem. But with a solid plan for all the eventualities we could imagine…
We departed the LZ vertically, with the tail turned out from the hill to give the WO a clear view of the wire behind us...He monitored the distance from the rear SWER line while the P2 and I focussed on the major wires ahead…
Basically, we just climbed vertically up the hill and arrived at the standby position. More or less level with the major wire group. Level with the road, and about 30-50 meters out of the vertical…
When the WO was ready, he called….” move in”….
At this point, I still had visual contact with the victim/scene. And could use it to maintain position.
As we move sideways, I started to lose Visual contact and called…”Contact lost!”
The WO then takes over as my eyes, and gave me the following calls:
Forward 2… right 10….
These figures are not feet or meters, but figures that represent distance, and rates of closure…The speed at which I close with his chosen position, will determine the next call.
It should only need a few calls to get me in position. If it’s gusting etc. It might take a few more. The key here is it’s better to move too slowly, than to move too fast…Particularly when you have live bodies on the hook.
In the case in point, we have trained rescue personnel in position to receive the guideline. They’ve humped it up from the flat spot, to the ravine where the victim is lying.
Often the first ‘winch out’ is a RC with no guideline. But it’s more dangerous…if we can get a guideline into the hands of a responsible person, it’s safer.
In the following calls, imagine a pause between the numerical call-outs.
Long or short duration pauses, depending on how quickly/accurately I’m responding to his instructions…Basically I’m a kind of second-rate autopilot for the WO, but lack the circuitry to perform exactly the same under all conditions ;-)
WO calls….” Forward 20…10…5…. Forward 5…. 4…. 3…Forward 3….2…. steady…forward 2…forward 1…steady…. (Hold position)…right 1…steady…back 2…back 1...Steady!...Hold position!
We’re now in the vertical position, or the position the WO prefers for the next step!
WO Calls…” Guide line (aux line) going down”….”Guide line ½ way down”…
”back 1…steady!”
“Back1”…. “Steady” …”Guideline on the ground” (for static discharge).
“RC has the guideline…”
The WO continues his call outs!
If we were in a ‘normal’ rescue situation, where we have no-one on the ground yet… we’d have to put the guys down like this:
“One… (first rescue guy) leaving cabin”… “One’s…on the skid”..…!”winching out”….
“One’s ½ way down”…”One’s approaching the ground”…. “Steady!” …”One’s on the ground!”
“One’s unhooked”….”Guide line is attached!”
“Move out!”
During this procedure, the Pilot is trying to maintain a perfect hover…Sometimes it’s damned near perfect…other times it’s a battle…but you cannot under any circumstance lose the plot…If you have an inadvertent gust, swing etc…You have to put it out of your mind. And get immediately back in the game…
As I move out to standby position, I call “contact” when the scene comes into view.
As we are “Moving out”…The RC is feeding us more Guideline, and we have a loop of guideline from the ground to the ships winch hook…
The RC we just put down, will do his medical assessment, and decide on what he wants…If he has willing and capable hands available…He’ll tell us to standby, using hand signals. If he needs another RC to help him…He’ll signal his needs…In this case, we’d move back in and put another RC down …Then move out again…
Mountain rescues can be more dangerous than sea rescues. Because if a line breaks, or we suffer momentary control problems, etc, it means the RC on the line might be in real peril…the typical ravines we work in are real ‘tiger country’. Rocks and cross-gullies everywhere… So we try to limit the guys going down via winch to an absolute minimum…The RC normally will try to accomplish things on his own if possible, and avoid the exposure to his colleagues .
Ok…So here we are… We have crewmembers on the ground. We are attached to them via a guideline…. and we just wait…we have the option of recovering the Guideline if it’s appropriate for the situation, and departing for a kind of traffic pattern/circuit…
Which is exactly what we do, if hover power required, takes us into and beyond 5-minute power…If we are in 5 min power, the co-pilot calls out the minutes starting with 3 to go, two to go, etc…I relay to the WO so he can plan his operation appropriately, knowing we’re going to need to break off for a couple of minutes.
In the incident in question…we have 30-35 kts on the nose and Q is in the high seventies…So we hold position.
The RC and helpers stabilize the victim…then the RC signals for a litter…
Now while we were at the ‘Flat spot’ with the scene commander…I told the RC that once we get the victim on board. We’ll depart for the hospital and recover the RC later.
They can either wait at the flat spot, or return with the ground pounders to the hospital.
I asked them to call us after the operation was complete via cell phone, and tell us what they want to do? (We have cell phones installed in the machines, hooked thru the comms system to your helmet)
Again what we don’t want over this kind of terrain is to risk a RC if we don’t have to…
So ….The WO calls…”Move in”…I call “moving in”…”Contact lost”
He says! Right 20-forward 3…right 10…forward 2…. stop forward…right 3….right 2…steady… Hold position!
Now for the Litter/victim recovery, we don’t have to go to the true vertical…as we might have to do when we deploy the RC…. The winch limit for recovery is 30-degrees from the vertical, but we use a 20-degree maximum, to account for possible control error……
So if we’re within the 20-degree limit we’re ready to go…
He asks me if the hover is stable! (Remember we’re on the crest of a canyon with 30-35 kt winds)
I say yes…He calls “winching in” and the litter is recovered with the RC on the ground controlling any swing with the guide line, and the WO still giving me ‘steers’…right 1..steady…back 1…steady…etc…
WO calls “litter ½ way up”…”Litter approaching the skids”….”Litter at the door”….”litter coming in”…..”Litter in cabin”….
Wait a short time and he calls…”Cabin and victim secure”…”Door closing”….
At this point we can start to accelerate up to 60 kts in this particular machine….He then calls doors secure!…We check the door lights on the CWP and if lights are out, we fly away to the hospital, securing winch supply power as the doors are closed..
But in this particular rescue…We don’t fly away!
We back off the major power lines a few feet, and I start a left slide down the mountainside, back into the canyon floor and depart the way we came in…We get established in the climb and the co-pilot asked why we didn’t just take off straight ahead, climbing over the power lines…We already had some altitude… “We went down, only to climb up again!”
I was tired, so I said it was “secret captain !!!!! “
Once we got going back to the hospital I asked him to fly…….
Explanation of why we didn’t climb out straight ahead….
Which I passed on to P2 after I got my energy back...
It’s not hard work. But you get a little fried, maintaining the best no movement hover you can, mostly because you have a life on the line, literally and figuratively… and if you’re not a little tense in this situation, you’ve got a screw loose!. The biggest fear is that you may do something to make the situation worse…
Here we are, heavier now, as we recovered the litter with an ‘economy size’ victim.
Q is in the late seventies, early eighties and we can’t back up, and get a run at it, to get Vtoss plus, before we hit the ‘wire zone’…These wires are multi rack HV lines about 80-100’ from top to bottom…
As we can’t back up to get a run at them because of the SWER line behind us, it means both full power and a vertical climb…not a good scenario if you can avoid it!…
Or taking off towards power lines only 15 meters away…and hoping we don’t lose an engine…
Now it probably sounds incongruous to say that there’s a risk of engine failure, and possible ‘wire catastrophe’…considering we’ve just been hovering OGE in hostile terrain for the last 15 minutes. But this is the fine line in the wonderful world of helicopters…. We do what we have to do, when we have to do it, in the calculated risk sense!
But we never take a single risk we don’t have to…
In this operation, we’re far better descending within the HV diagram, low power applied etc, passing terrain we flew in over…Than heading out climbing and accelerating over heavy duty wires which may or may not be exactly where they appear to be…
To wind it up, we got the woman to hospital and the Doctors said the prognosis was fine and she’d make a full recovery!
A funny anecdote about this particular rescue…!
As we’re flying back to the hospital, P2 on the sticks…
I half turned in my seat and asked the WO how the victim was doing…
He said, “She’s cold”…
Well this is a euphemism for ‘she died’…
We’re not supposed to use words like death, died etc, in case a co-survivor can read lips …and the RC are not certified to call anyone dead…It has to be a doctor!
The fact that their head might be in a different bag to the body, doesn’t come into it. They’re alive until a doctor says their not!
So I’m thinking to myself, what a shame, she only looks to be 25 or so!
Then she opens her eyes and smiles at me..
I said…She’s not dead! You dopey bastards”
The WO looked at me and said, what do you mean?
I said “you said she’s cold”…
He said…” Oops “ I meant she’s cold, and can you close your window”
So when we did the de-brief after getting back to base…I asked the RC to load victims feet first in future…
I’m too old for dead people to look at me and smile! 
170’
Last edited by 170'; 2nd September 2006 at 07:03.