Yes, this is my first post, glad to read you since about 1 year !
I'm a EC725 pilot for French Air Force, with many Puma background, and some Fennec...
2 precisions :
On the 725 (similar to 225 in a lot of systems) we often start without any GPU/APU using the battery. The only thing to survey is the tension and if we intend to stay power ON waiting to start, we switch off several screens leaving only the 2 VMS on. we can stay easily 10 minutes there. But in an alert take off we often put BATT ON, external lighting, Fuel pumps and engine selector ON. So, no time to loose starting the APU and ready to taxi in less than 3 minutes !
Secondly, we are operating Air Force 725 in Brittany as a SAR helicopter under Navy responsability. The crews are mixed, Air Force and Navy Pilots, Flight engineers, Divers in the same helo : trust me it goes very well !! (most of the problems come from HQ's...). Starting this cooperation most of the Super Frelon operators were very critical about the height of the cabin... But it has been very quickly admitted that most of the time they were not standing in the cabin, even during winch operation, and that the central door compared to the Super Frelon front one was really a great advantage, allowing to keep a dry area (front) and a possibly wet one in the rear. Very often people first refers to these good old days... or when thinking about changing their habits seems so hard they prefer to stay with the same way of action...
Voilą, this is just my experience, but who has the truth... every one !!
Next post next year.
PS : last month French Navy has ordered 2 EC 225 for SAR in Brittany