I think its about time I piped up as I was initmately involved with this incident and am probably one of Pacos sources for the article.
You may want to get a pipe and slippers and settle down comfortably for this as we may be sometime.
The incident referred to is the one from this thread earlier in the year
http://www.pprune.org/rotorheads/325...eaps-a109.html
What Phil says in his article is as far as I can ascertain pretty close to the truth, the only points I would question are
The refusal of a landing clearance, I believe it was suggested to the pilot that he should goto Biggin if he wanted to deplane his passengers in the hover.
Whether or not Redhill was the only place to go is debatable but that decision lies purely with the captain, his maintenance base is Redhill and he did have contact with one very experienced engineer there by phone.
212man the rolls royce tyres isn't writers licence its the truth the engineers knew where to go to get some tyres and they were all that was available from a nearby source who had them and charged accordingly, they took no more than 5 minutes from getting on the truck to getting back with the tyres. The SATCO is still the man you are thinking of but he was elsewhere on the day.
I am the idiot referred to in Phils article who was running around trying to get the wheels down along with one of the engineers, and who offered to refuel the aircraft in the hover etc.
The airfield did refuse permission for the deplane and the passengers were deplaned anyway by another 109 pilot who is a friend of mine, this was all completed without incident.
A refuel was requested to buy some time and was refused on the grounds that the fuel crew were in the fire engines. I offered to do it and was turned down, if I could have got the bowser keys and started it I'd have done it anyway but at this point he was down to about 15 minutes of fuel remaining.
The engineers laid out the tyres and were told to move them (I assume, I was off the radio at that point) by the airfield as they had been laid out near to where the helicopter was hovering, and they were moved to the south side of the field away from all the onlookers, who had gathered to watch.
The landing itself was uneventful and the engineer who was with me tying to get the wheels down deserves a medal as he stood and watched the 109 down onto the tyres at very close range. I was at this point stuck in a car on the way around from the other side of the field with the DSATCO.
Even with the SATCOs prior heli experience the airfield had never considered the option of deplaning in the hover, and have learned a lession having had it pointed out to them in
CAP 475, a good thing to come out of this is that with the SATCOs contacts in the ATC world he has been instrumental in putting this message across to several other local airfields.
The SATCO and I discussed at length the idea of refuelling in the hover and we agree to to disagree (nicely) and can see each others point in the whole thing, I believe that if you might ever find yourself in the situation of needing to be fuelled in the hover you must be willing to help someone else out who might need it and do it yourself. I am aware of the risks involved to the fueller, the bowser, the aircraft and the pilot, I would suggest that if the people concerend are willing to try then sod the equipment. There are a lot of people who disagree with me and their opinion seems to be that at least the risk is confined to one aircraft and one person if you let him run out of fuel or land just before he does.
I don't beleive the controller on duty on the day deserves criticism, it must have been difficult trying to coordinate a group of people who are effectively not listening to you and speaking amongst themselves to sort out the problem. This is were Pacos argument for "There are some occasions when the rule book really needs to be thrown out of the window" comes in, you cannot train for every eventuality and some circumstances can be dealt with in non standard ways, thats what we get paid for as pilots surely !
It is worth noting that of the other two incidents involving 109 undercarriage problems that I know of the airfields concerned have refused fuel and assistance with the gear.
I can see the argument for the fire crew or fuellers not necessarily wanting to get intimately involved with 2.5 tonnes of helicopter hovering at 3 feet and trying to pull wheels down or put fuel in them, but if there are willing volunteers should they be prevented from doing so ?
It is my belief (I have no evidence for, but hearsay) that airfield management got involved in process at the controllers end and because of the prominence of the passengers, they were doing everything by the book when they should have been thinking outside it.
Some lessons have been learned, and important lesson to us all who fly thing s with retractable undercarriages seems to be that until you have actually crashed in the UK, you are on your own unless you have local contacts who are willing to try and help you.
I've tried to keep this as balanced as possible, I hope it comes across that way, we all know how bad I can be at thinking while typing !
Gary