The RFS is looking at bring in a mandatory 10% power margin on bucketing opp's. Ogsplash knows more ?
I think we will have to wait for Mr Ogsplach to tell us more. others who fly in these jobs won't be game to comment too much as the on site auditing, supposedly of technical profiency gets way too personal at times.
Shawn, your questions mirror the various photographs of bucketing. One minute working at ideal IGE height snorkelling from a stable 25 degrees C lake, the next in a mountain rocky crevice with brush destroying the rotor wash at maybe 40 degrees with a 120 foot line trying to dunk in a rockhole the size of a billiard table.
I mean how much of a senior pilot do you need to be to work out that the application of IGE data may not work from the end of a 120 foot line? Any strop takes you away from IGE, the longer the strop the further the torque tweaks.
And really, 10% of what? Total power or power avbl after OGE is established.
Where there is smoke there will be fire for sure and idiocy suggestions like this will be bubbling away in the RFS headquarters you can be sure. What they will need is a sharp watching brief and a severe bucketing from pro's like yourself when your brethren need protecting with common sense.
~
On the other issues of responsible fire prevention during the off seasons and park utilisation to prevent massive wildfire damage and risk to the surrounding farming areas, this will be my last word. The greatest tradegy of it all is that the lack of support for common sense in that area is contributing to a vast feeling of a lack of self worth in those farming communities to the extent that rural suicides are now running at about one per week in NSW alone. One poor fellow shot all of his cows first then himself.
And to Heliport I say that anyone who wants to complain about my comments on the issue, then they are welcome to put their credentials up and I'll try to arrange them an interview with any of the relevant senior farming organisation presidents to put their case. The criticisms won't come from drivers only RFS spies.
Rant over and over now to the throttle pro's