Lost - OK I'll rise...I suspect that if you looked at the weather conditions at the time of that rescue, the RoA of any helicopter would have been reduced and they may have had to hold IFR div fuel as well. The fact is that the S92 couldn't have got there at that time since the aux tanks weren't fitted.
The Sea King 3/3a does have an RoA of 240nm, sometimes better, but as we have seen sometimes some of the role euipment has to come off to get full fuel in. To get more than 205nm, the S92 has to have aux fuel tanks fitted at the cost of greatly reduced cabin space - might not matter for 1 fisherman but a whole boatload would be a different matter (sinking trawler perhaps).
THe Sea King also has quite an acceptable icing clearance (down to -7 deg at 3000 DA) what is the S92s?
We have an emergency hoist (that has never been used in anger) and although moving maps are nice they are hardly essential items for SAR. FLIR repeater in the cockpit would be nice but you just load up the co-pilot with stuff which we give to the Radop when the co should be monitoring what the captain is doing (instrument cross checks, safety calls etc). We have a rad alt with audio and visual warnings instead of EGPWS, don't have TCAS and can't see a practical use for AIS (you have it because it is an MCA toy).
The radar has been dicussed at length and you don't understand the arguments.
We have full IFR kit and fully coupled IFR and SAR modes on the 3A and what is more we actually train to use them.
How did Bristows show us up? They didn't even have paramedic trained winchmen until the RAF set the standard.
When you are operating overland at night in poor weather on multi agency ops across the whole country you can claim to have reached parity with MilSAR but until then you are not ready to slag us off for lack of capability.
Hilife - I am genuinely concerned about the future for UK SAR which is why I
p8ss so many people off rather than just roll over and let the desire for profit erode the very high standards which exist at the moment.
I don't think the modified Sea King would be anything but a short term fix but at the moment we are being rushed headlong into a very expensive contract when all other avenues (COMO for instance) haven't been fully explored or costed.
Budget1 - how is declaring 2 crews out of 4 unsafe? Do you think the Chinook and Apache crews in the 'stan are compying with EUWTD? Nor do we.