DennisK,
Your mention of Graham Pryke's unfortunate accident reminded me that the day of the accident I was at home watching the Ceefax news on TV. I was due to be at the Clyde Helicopters base in a couple of days for an interview with Joe McGaghy for a Police line pilot job.
I was surprised to see a story 'Police helicopter crashes in Glasgow'. I picked up the phone and called Clyde and spoke with the lady in the office, said how sorry I was to hear of the accident and did they still want me to come up for interview in view of this?
She said 'What accident?'. It has apparently only just been reported by local media and even Clyde had not heard about it at that stage.
After the inquest into the death of the Police observer (who died from a head injury), the wearing of helmets and fireproof clothing was consequently made mandatory. You may see from the earlier photos that the Police observers are only wearing shirts and headsets.