Originally Posted by Nigel Bullas
I was looking with interest in the newspaper of the winch-cam picture of this rescue with two survivors on the winch at the same time, doing a hyperthermic lift, with the tag line obviously being guided by the rescue crewman on the deck of the boat.
Q: To CQ rescue aircrew: How did you find the outcome to this type of procedure? What are the benefits, pitfalls?
Q: To EMQ Townsville aircrew: Did you use a similar technique?
It would be interesting to ask all the professional aircrew out there on pprune, what winch techniques work best in differant situations as there seems to be quite a variety if techniques.
Nigel - sending 2 survivors up together is certainly quicker when there are a lot of them and it enables the hi-line to be controlled properly by the winchman at the bottom.
The only real problem is for the winch operator getting 2 people on board at the same time - we select the winch control to pilot and the winch op calls 'winch out' as he pulls the survivors aboard.
You can also get the pilot to start winching out whilst the winchop secures the surviviors in the cabin so that the hook and strops are already on their way back down to the winchman.
We use a double strop lift for hypothermic casualties with one strop under the arms and the other under the knees - we also do this for those who have been in the water for a while to prevent the loss of 'hydrostatic squeeze' causing their blood pressure to drop quickly.