Glad that you chose to mention that fantastic tool - the FMS. Yep, great piece of kit - unless you are doing multi-sector shuttles.
The guys playing with their new 139 toy find it a pain to use. Taken from a fixed wing and transplanted directly into an offshore chopper - how much thought went into that I wonder? How much research?
If you think our nervousness is a sign of Luddite-tendancies then you're wrong. We've just been there before and been stitched up by well meaning (highly qualified) guys with no street-smarts. In the helicopter world we have grown so use to being promised the world and then left in the poo. Think Hamilton Standard (the only reason they didn't fit the cheaper alternative was because the cheaper AFCS was none at all), think Ferranti (Bo105) No matter what the lights said it made no difference to the stability of the machine), GNS 500 (a nav system to end all nav systems - if you lost one VLF ground station en route then that was you stuffed, back to DR).
The most embarassing piece of nav kit I have so far come across was the Garmin LCD Screen GPS fitted to our Daphne in Cameroun. When you fired it up it asked if you wanted to use the 'anchor monitoring facility'. Heap of sh*******e.
God save us from those ticking the boxes in the sales brouchure.
G
