Spanish - there is a reasonably even spread through the night and whilst some do occur before 2100, lots come after that and well before 0900. What you gain by operating up to 2100, especially for the 'cut off by the tide' as it gets dark in Autumn and Spring, you lose by not being able to react to the first light search.
As it happens our busiest period for all jobs is the Summer months where it's not dark until 2100 plus o'clock - our ratio of day to night jobs might go to 80/20 but that is still 20% of jobs that will get done late or not at all. Fine if you are compiling stats but bad if you are getting hypothermic in the Brecons or Dartmoor.
A lack of local knowledge will also be a factor - that helps enormously at night because you know what the area looks like during the day, where the nearest assets, fuel and hospitals are, what the HLSs are like, liaison with the local agencies etc etc.
When Valley and Culdrose have to cover Chiv's patch at night, what will happen to the medtransfers that often get done then? Will the ARCCK task Valley or Culdrose to do a Cardiff to London job or an ECMO to Leicester which will leave either the whole of the SW or nearly the whole of the W coast (including Snowdonia) devoid of cover? I don't think so - which leaves us with another hole in the capability.
If you want to civilianise us and give us new helicopters then crack on but just don't do it for profit - the need to make money out of the SARH contract is what has already compromised much of the credibility of the process because neither of the remaining bidders would be able to deliver what was originally promised and make a profit.
Torcher's words of experience will be what people are saying about SARH in a few year's time
Leopold - yes I gather some of the keynote speeches were rather dreary - it just shows how little the big MCA really know about helicopter SAR and big business
