Bristow Photos

[Dave Ed]

Most Bristow avionic engineer's reckoned SFENA to stand for Such a F*ing Experience Never Again!
I was lucky enough to spend a couple of years at Warri where we had relatively trouble free Sperry Helipilots but when we ended up with a SFENA machine from PH (I think), I seemed to spend endless hours under the floor measuring gyro drift and trying to get pairs of gyros to match so we had a chance of operating in Duplex. Not very often

I did a SFENA course at Redhill taught by Alec Lugg I think. He said one of the biggest problems was trying to get the A n Cs to ensure all the flying control bearings had little play in them. All the A n Cs I've worked with would take a lot of convincing the autopilot problems were their fault!