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Old 26th September 2008 | 18:18
  #34 (permalink)  
Um... lifting...
 
Joined: Aug 2006
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From: Below Escape Velocity
There are a few nuts to be cracked here, but the cross-cockpit thingie is a fairly major one I should think. If you're headed to a fixed platform with significant structure (which would be most of 'em) and it's blowing substantially, at the current state of the art there's really only one seat who can safely land with sufficient cues and able to clear obstacles (regardless of pilot height... "Hello love, I'm not really this tall, I'm just sitting on my wallet..."), unless somebody starts redesigning offshore platforms. By the time the copilot is good enough at conning the captain in for a landing including closure rates and obstacles, the copilot is probably good enough to be making the landing.
As was pointed out above, with a runway in front, the captain pretty much has the choice of making the landing virtually always.
Instrumentation and approaches, the technology is certainly there, but what do you do if the captain doesn't trust the copilot to make the actual landing but yet due to conditions can't make it him or herself?

I fly offshore at night on the odd medevac, but not so much as once did in a previous life... but in that life, the ship took up the heading you wanted so the wind was where you wanted it.

For the sake of arguments, let's say that this is a nut that should be cracked (there are plenty who would go the other way... and I may be one of them). Regardless of any value judgment of should or shouldn't... it seems apparent to me simply by the existence of this thread that this nut WILL be cracked, so might as well get on with it.

I would think the next step would be to precisely define the problem and the flight regimes that need to be addressed. Once that's been done, then you look to the hows.

What you fellows need is a performance technologist... happily... somewhere around here is a piece of paper that probably says I are one. What a performance technologist will normally do is engage experts on the subject matter to precisely define the scope of the problem, then from there determine the needs that have shortfalls (it is not necessary that the technologist be a subject matter expert him or herself... often it's better if not, actually... keeps 'em out of the weeds...). From there develop objectives and potential solutions, be those solutions engineering solutions (hardware), job aids (checklists or other such), administrative (regulation or policy... "no cojos without X program offshore at night" or whatever), or training (development and implementation of new techniques and procedures). It's really not that difficult, but it is a structured way of viewing and solving complex operational problems. Pretty much most militaries and companies worth their salt use it these days.

As just one example, we can probably all say that cruising at altitude offshore isn't really much of an issue these days... but some point or points during the letdown/approach/transition/touchdown phases... is/are. Then start breaking the problem into manageable chunks... pretty soon it becomes fairly obvious where the weaknesses are that need to be addressed. Then it simply becomes a matter of how, selling it to the boss... and getting the money!
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