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Old 18th Feb 2013, 12:27
  #1153 (permalink)  
jimf671
 
Join Date: Nov 2009
Location: Inverness-shire, Ross-shire
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Yes. The new Bristow aircraft for Sumburgh and Stornoway definitely have HF.

This is an improvement in the comms fit compared to the CHC aircraft on the current 2007 to 2012/13 contract. These current aircraft have Iridium sat phones but no HF. Since 1st April 2010, they have been tasked directly by ARCC who use principally HF for BLOS comms.

A few years ago there were murmurs about the CHC aircraft getting an HF fit before 2012 (when they were originally intended to move to Ireland). There was a suggestiion that HF was a requirement for the Irish CG contract (Is this true? Not in the Irish framework doc.). There was also talk of digital HF but the dust certainly hasn't settled on the question of which digital implementation for HF will be the future.

As Crab has pointed out there are a number of advantages to HF that are useful for long range sea jobs and for land jobs. That is on top of the resilience and capacity issues in relation trunked radio and satcoms.
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