Hi everyone, just joined this site, so go easy on me
.
How gutted am I - I came back from a trip to the US Coast Guard and totally missed the application date for the training by 3 days! I shall keep a sharp eye out for future developments. Best of luck to all those who are fortunate enough to get through!
FYI (a reply to a post by FlyBoy a while ago), the SAR activities in the UK will be undergoing a period of change in the near future (I've been privileged enough to be a part of the UK SAR force conferences). As you may know, SAR at the moment is done by RAF, RN and CHC. The CHC contract is called "interrim SAR", because it only lasts until 2012. The schedule is for a PFI called SAR-Harmonsation to come into effect from 2012. This is currently out to tender with the bid consortia - all the major players are there (CHC+Thales, Brisow+FBH, Bond+AugustaWestland).
This means that the intention is for SAR operations to be moved away from military ownership. Military aircrew WILL be part of SAR-H, but the exact proportion of civil-military is unknown (it'll vary from bid-team to bid-team) - it will be vastly reduced from that of the present. If you're ex-military, you'll be needed whoever wins the bid. If you're civvy, once the bids go through, there could be a big drive to suck aircrew into SAR from other areas (you may need 500hrs as aircraft captain I think, but don't quote me on that), depending on how the winner decides to staff and run the AirStations of course. Current plans (I think) are to keep all current SAR locations running, with these Civy owned, jointly manned aircraft running from there.
Just to keep everyone informed, and a little bit of speculation on my part in the last para there
.
good luck everyone
bigjim