6 months not 9
Al-bert,
Fear not, the OCU is not planned to take 9 months, only 6. This may still seem a lot but things have changed a great deal since your day. The front line requirement is now for a new crew member to arrive with an LCR cat and the training to achieve this was increased to include exercises that used to form part of Sqn acceptance. Couple this with a full procedural course for pilots and medical exercises for rear crew as well as work with external agencies and you easily get to 6 months. The upside is that the front line receive a product pretty much ready for duty on day 1. If a course over-runs, as has been known, it is usually down to a lack of assets, aircraft and personnel, which are used to bolster the 2 Sqns, and the difficulty in maintaining an aging fleet with a limited supply chain.
I will agree that the SAR Force is a much bigger affair than the good old SAR Wing that we knew and loved, but that is the price of progress and it has at least allowed some of our brighter guys to get noticed without having to move to the SH Force.
On a slightly different topic and hoping for some reasoned debate, can anyone flying S92/AW 139 etc explain why it could take 250 hours or more to get used to a glass cockpit? My understanding was that modern helicopters were more user friendly and MFDs made life easier, so why so long to adapt?