Originally Posted by
ExGrunt
I have to say as an end user of the services of City Flight AAC in Belfast, there were advantages of a single over multi-engined aircraft.
Each aircraft has a different blade/engine noise signature and the Gaz was less intrusive. On one occasion when we had Puma as top cover it was so noisy that it made ground based communication very difficult, which actually interfered with the operation we were trying to conduct.
Always considered the runt of the rotary wing litter, over the years the Gaz did pretty much what was asked of it.
EG
EG, sometimes you were merely given whichever aircraft type was available at the time. The Puma was noisier, it was able to be covert, depending on the job requirements. Where possible to offer a choice, I always used to ask the user, if they wanted the aircraft to be covert or not and sometimes they most definitely didn't.
However, as you found, sometimes circumstances meant that it wasn't able to be operated covertly. It was relatively noisy not because it was a twin engined type, but because it weighed much more than the Gazelle (almost four times as much) and naturally had a much bigger noise signature.