Hi TomBola,
well, I'm lucky, we fly in a more moderate climazone :-)
4 to 5 hrs - not always, but sometimes.
Last year i.e. the soccer world championchip and on tactical training weeks, our birds had more hours than that on a day - but not on a regular basis.
Beeing parked outside - sometimes even at minus degrees with rime all over the birds.
All that went without any problems.
But sometimes ours stay for weeks - from 15hrs/7day check to 15hrs/7day check only with ground runs or powerchecks. Reason is not the helicopter, but pairing of pilots on duty and the normal flying job - which is normally done with BK117s.
If no special tactical task are due or called for - only currency training is done on the EC.
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Shell - wasn't that the company, with the Brent Spar, which they wanted to dump in the sea, without cleaning the platform first?
There are lots of news from nigeria, where money saving from part of the big companies seems more important than safety an enviromental conditions.
I guess, it's important to keep the plattforms running - but if I read, that you don't have clima on your birds - they don't seem to think much their pilots - and passengers.
I bet, it would be much more comfy and less stressing having a clima - I see that in summer flying BK without or EC with.....
I was very sceptic about the 155 - until I got the rating.
O.K., there are some shortcomings, but show me an helicopter without.
I'm quite happy by now flying the EC 155. Very smooth flying and reduced workload, once you have understood all the systems to use.
And we're lucky, mostly we don't have to operate at MTOW :-)
A littte bit more to think about doing outside landings so that you won't hit the ground with the belly or the tail, than with skidded helicopters,
more feel needed, when heavy, because the bird has the tendency to descend, when starting to accelerate - while our BK's start to accelerate and climb at that point - but knowing about that helps avoinding to hit things in the path ;-)
Greetings Flying Bull