Super Puma in Karratha 2007.
I had not flown out of Karratha before so I was doing a couple of flights as cojo to pick up the score. I landed it on the Goodwin and the Captain got out to do the necessary on the deck. He came back into my view and signalled me to shut down. This I did and apparently we had an oil leak. I knew what it was at first glance, a No1 input seal weeping, and it looked exactly the same as the first one I had seen in 1971 with every bit of a teaspoonful of oil down the side of the aircraft..
I ventured my opinion and advice that we just wipe it off and fly the last leg (45 mins) to Karratha. The captain was unwilling to do this, as was his privilege, so to reassure him I climbed up the side, pulled back the doghouse and lowered the engine panels so could now see the source of the weep. With this knowledge he went down to telephone the engineers for advice. Ten minutes later he came back with the instructions to fire it up and fly it back to Karratha.
I was just about to shin up and panel up when I was stopped by somebody who was not deck crew. It was Elfin Safety. I was not going on top of the aircraft without a harness on, he insisted. I protested that there were steps on the aircraft for that purpose and the engine panels were designed as work platforms. On top of that I had been doing it for thirty six years which was probably before he was born. This last statement did not go down very well so to keep the peace I agreed to use a harness.
The harness they brought looked as if was made for a gorilla who did scaffolding on the side. Three inch webbing with 2 inch chain attached to a metal hook. I got the harness on, struggled onto the starboard sponson and put the chain hook on the aircraft tie down hook. I had a loop of webbing which enabled me to ‘secure’ myself to the rotor head. With extreme difficulty I managed to get up and close the starboard engine panel and at that the Elfinsafety was happy and went down the stairs. As soon as he was out of earshot I took the harness off so that I would not break my neck and I completed closing up.
Talking to the engineers about the weep back at Karratha. They had known about it, for weeks.