heli - feel free to gloat, this ear-seal is delicious! However, it's not relevant in the scheme of things - what is relevant is that the
law doesn't permit single engine machines at the moment and, as I've said before, the job we do (over 50% of the time) involves hovering over built up areas such that you remain VFR, and can also recover from a SEF before your MSD. Most of the time, especially at night, the weather only allows a
very small height band and would completely preclude these operations in a single engined machine, of any capability. I could certainly suggest a few locations in our area for your 600ld dustbin, however!
hughes500 - I did not say that everybody is efficient and would completely agree that, in your area, the placement, aircraft type, equipment, apparent tasking etc don't seem to make complete sense - and not just from your comments either. But it's not my area and I don't pay my Council taxes in that neck of the woods - but I
do care about my area, and how
my taxes are spent, and also do my best to ensure that the money we spend in operating our machine is used as efficiently & effectively as we can. Waste, of any sort, is completely unaccceptable, IMHO.
chopjock -
I still can't get my head around ASU's being classed as public transport. Just who are the fare paying pax? If they could change that bit a whole new rule book could be written and cheaper, wider coverage would be the result, in my opinion.
There are a number of reasons for this - with Police as Pax, they can still be policemen, be used to patrol the streets when the aircraft is down for maintenance, and be generally stuffed around with, as far as shift patterns go. If they were "Crew", they'd be stuck on a roster, minimum flexibility, especially to their employer, and would require expensive medicals etc. etc. The Police hierarchy already resent having to kow-tow to another organisation (don't we all?) but the CAA do, at least, protect our interests, whether you agree with their methods or not.
Flying lesser equiped aircraft with worse limitations
will reduce the effectiveness of aerial policing. How much cheaper it will be, when bases and salaries are unlikely to change significantly (unless, in your view, they're in the firing line too), I'm not sure, but I don't expect you'd see much "cost-benefit". And yes, you'd have a number of the current crop of Police pilots, some who have argued here because they know what they're talking about, pulling the plug; only to bring in some single-engine wanabees who, sure as eggs is eggs, will . . .
I'm not continuing this one, the results are too expensive to contemplate!
I know you started the (silly) question part of this thread, but the possilby valid suggestion/question you origially raised has been more than answered if you actually read the posts which have been made clearly by the many professionals on this thread, most of whom are, or have been, doing the job for some while. On the other hand, as has been hinted at by
40odd2, tigerfish, nodrama, morris, shytorque, non-PC et al, feel free to
pull your own plug from this thread 