LA County Sheriff replaces MD fleet with Eurocopter AS350B2s

[Heliport]

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, one of the largest Sheriff Departments in America has bought 12 AS350B2s to help with Homeland Security and tactical issues.
The final four were delivered to Captain Jim Di Giovanna at Eurocopter USA's facility at Grand Prairie TX on May 21, 2004.

http://img47.photobucket.com/albums/v144/Heliport/LA_Sheriff_3.jpg

The Sheriff’s Department replaced their previous fleet of McDonald Douglas with the Eurocopter AS350B2 to keep up with the growing needs of their department.
“We needed a larger aircraft that would provide greater flexibility for various mission needs,” said Captain Di Giovanna. “The AS350 was head and shoulders above the rest in capabilities.”

The airborne law enforcement of the LA County Sheriff’s Department is crucial to law enforcement efforts. This aircraft helps in various missions, including homeland security. The AS350B2 is also used to transport small teams across the county into critical areas quickly.

“The AS350 is the best single engine aircraft I have ever flown, the ease of flying is effortless, the cockpit is very spacious so you can work and maneuver,” Captain Di Giovanna said.
“American Eurocopter has been wonderful, they have met every one of our expectations, our pilots and crews are very happy with them, they have not let us down at all,” Captain Di Giovanna said.

[RDRickster]

I wonder if he was referring to the non-existant customer service provided by MD. Seems like they aren't doing very well in terms of responsiveness to customer's needs these days.

[Josh10524]

According to one of their pilots I talked to a while back, they were dissatisfied with the climb/OGL hover performance of the 520N, which they were replacing the older 500s with. By the way, the LASD paint scheme looks very nice on the Astars, much more in person than in photos. It also looks suprisingly good on their Air Rescue 5 Sea King.

[Heliport]

I agree, it does.
Welcome to the forum Josh.


http://www.code2high.com/LASD/air5_0.jpg

[Droopy]

I see they have a Nightsun 2 fitted; I hope they have a better serviceability record than we've had :(

[HeliEng]

What will be the fate of all those old MD's then???

[widgeon]

does the Sea King have the folding rotor head ?, I would have thought they would save a lot on maintnenance if they had a non folding one .

[Cyclic Hotline]

They still have the folding head, but it is "fixed", so the folding hardware is removed.

Weight didn't seem to be a concern so much as using all the existing parts - head, blades, etc.

[HeliMark]

Droopy, after about 6 months of hair pulling, the Nightsun II is working with almost no problems. Most of the problems were attributed to the hand controller/computer software. If you did not turn it on right on the early ones, you had to shut down the aircraft electrical system and start again. We can slave it to the FLIR and I must admit, coming from ships that had the good old nightsuns, when the observer turns the FLIR to the opposit side of the ship it gets your attention when you see the light whiz by in front of the ship to catch up with it!

The performance or lack of performance of the 520 has been beat to death already on this forum. One of the big reasons to leave the MD line was the need for a bigger ship to carry more equipment and still have the ability to carry more then just your observer, and the 600 in no way could cut it.

HeliEng, all the old ships are being sold. One 600 is now in England matter of fact. The maintenance on the birds have been excellant and they are having no problems selling them.