My last posting was miles back, but I was asked why a single engine failure would mean disaster. When a buck goes garden hopping in somewhere like Anfield/Bootle/Kensington/City Centre and you are over an area with no open spaces in the hover, you are only going straight down in a single engined helicopter. Bringing up the Wales incident shows your ignorance. If you fly high enough you can just about get away with a tail rotor fail in an EC135. It is practiced in the simulator and involves getting into autorotation VV quickly and getting the nose down. I managed it from 800ft in the sim (only just). The aerofoil design of the 135 tail allows it to fly (only just) if you maintain fwd speed and allows you to position for an EOL in a safe area. I guess thats ANOTHER reason why we use these expensive helicopters. Playing devils advocate is ok when you accept answers that disprove your theory. I accept that we COULD do things with these simpler aircraft, but we would also have to accept that we would just have to let people go if they went into built up areas. The criminals would NEVER soon catch on to that one!!
Cutting numbers is going to happen, the country is skint. The problem is one that some career bosses are saying that service will not suffer. Circles have been drawn on a map in the NW, the bosses didn't notice that at night we go around liverpool bay, not over it. As mentioned earlier, the country is not flat, hills mean weather and we have to go around, not over. The service WILL suffer, if the management admit that and then ACCEPT it, then fair enough. Decisions should be made with facts not projections. Sadly, these days you can only prove some ideas as bad by letting the idiots implement them first and noting the results.
Final answer to another question, would I prefer to have no job than to use an inferior helicopter? At night in a february snow storm heading into the hills......... Actually I would prefer no job
