This thread reminds me of when I first joined Bristow in 1980 as an S61 copilot straight from (Bristow's residential 9 month) flight school with CPL and no IR. Most of the captains were ex mil. Wow, the job was really complicated and these gods did it with such aplomb and style! How could I ever aspire to getting a command.
.... a year or two passed...
And I realised that the job was really pretty easy really, a bit of skill and experience, and a knowledge of the rules and client issues, and Bob's your uncle. So these self-elevated ex mil captains were making a huge meal of a relatively straightforward job and wallowing in their superiority.
Now my sole experience of SAR is doing drums (badly) a few times and once winching a live crewman down onto a ship on a nice day (well I think he was still alive) so I am no expert, and I found it "challenging", but I suspect doing SAR is like oil and gas - yes, really difficult if you don't have a bit of skill and experience in the role, but with some training its really not that hard, especially with the modern kit with rock steady auto-hover, fancy navaids, homers and FLIRs etc to at least be a cojo.
When I joined Bristow, nearly all the trainers were ex mil. Now virtually none of them are. Funny how we still manage to do training without the gracious benefit of ex mil trainers! It aint that hard unless you make a huge meal out of it!
ps there were of course exceptions and we had some great ex mil guys as well, but at the time they seemed to be in the minority!
Last edited by HeliComparator; 9th Apr 2013 at 21:06.