I flew the Wesseex 5 in the RN but flying the Wessex 60 with Bristow in the early 1970s was something of a revelation.
Southern North Sea during the Winter of discontent, 1971-72 and a very cold one too. 17 passengers over short sectors, 16 in the back, one up front, single pilot and PNR flights from Esbjerg and very occasionally up to the Ecofisk. The nav fit was pure luxury to an ex-naval pilot. We had a Mk8 Decca with rolling map display, a coffee grinder ADF, a stick on VOR/ILS, 2 VHFs and an HF radio with a trailing aerial. The Ferranti SAS was temporarily unavailable after an accident at Swansea. All this was great when the weather was good and the HF was quite good over the ranges involved, compared to the vastly more sophisticated unit in the Mk5 where it was quite possible to speak to Singapore or Aden from Culdrose whereas Exeter was incommunicado.
Unfortunately Westland seemed unable to make a nose door that didn't get clogged with snow or ice and the BS Gnomes hated ice. We experienced several incidents where one, or on one occasion both engines flamed out whilst flying in snow. Stan S and Ben B had to deal with serious situations trying to get into Bacton and on joining Esbjerg I was given a report to read prior to my first flight:
G-AZBY was outbound to the Britannia from Esbjerg. Cloudbase and vis were on the limits for a PNR flight. At PNR the pilot checked with the radio operator that the weather was still OK and once confirmed, he carried on. After a short while the aircraft ran into a continuous line of heavy snow. The HF radio was immediately swamped by static, the Decometers spun uncontrollably the moving map unrolled and the ADF needle pointed to the nearest Cb. He had no option but to carry on, using DR, in minimum visibility. Shortly after this one of the engines stalled and shutdown. On reaching his calculated ETA the pilot started a square search pattern and came upon the Britannia after about ten minutes. He landed on one engine.
Fortunately I never experienced these extremes whilst I was there but the flying was challenging, to say the least. As a result of the incident Bristow opened up or removed the valves restricting the airbleed to the nose door and cabin heater. This certainly did the trick although the additional heat in the cockpit was wont to cause the sticky tape joining the maps of the Decca to come unglued, causing the map to unroll into the cockpit.
I hasten to add that I do not harken back to these as the good times and am extremely glad that things have improved for the better. It was just that we were operating to the extremes of the technology and knowledge we had.