Australian Contract

[Gimble Stop]

Dear Sirs,
I am preparing tender documents.
Would someone be kind enough to explain to me how many Pilots I will require to crew a single pilot IFR helicopter on a 24/7 roster. The subject helicopter is expected to fly 750 hours each year.
As helicopter crewman is not subject to the same flight and duty time restrictions as pilots, how many crewmen would I require?

[Disguise Delimit]

Sounds like Rex Hunt on a fishing expedition!

To do it properly, hire a consultant because they understand tenders, which you apparently do not.

[Big Splash]

How many Crewmen does it take to change a light bulb?

One, Dependent on duty time considerations.

[talklimited]

DD is exactly correct.

Hire an aviation consultant. New CASR's coming out in Australia that will require crewmen/lassies to conform to training and duty requirements. (Not before time, seen many a crewy had to work too long a shift.)

It's a mine field full of traps if you are not experienced at aviation tendering. You will save money in the long run and get the correct service provider you need.

[Gimble Stop]

On the strength of what the new rules might say, surely you are not contending that I should employ five crewmen when two could reasonably do the job. We are expecting to fly 2.05 hours per day only. That is not going to tax anybody too much. If I have more than two crew, they will forget what their job is. They will hardly ever fly.
I am profusely aware that pilots have flight and duty time all sewed up. But what’s this crew stuff all about. And oddly enough the pilots seem to support it.

I have a couple of young guys that are very keen to crew for me. But crewmen like fruit pickers are getting hard to come by. Where would I get all these staff?

Is it that the pilots do not want the crew to be seen to be doing more than they are?

Would it cause friction if the crewmen worked a reasonable roster and the pilots did their leisurely hours? It dumbfounds me that on one hand I have pilots working for food ( Good Food) doing as many hours as I can provide, and on the other, nobody seems to want to fly much at all. The pilots seem to want the IFR indorsement and then do as little as possible.

DD you are clearly right. I need a consultant. You guys have disappointed me with your responses.

Can somebody point me in the direction of a good consultant? One that has an eye on economy with a commerce background. I need someone that can interpret the aviation law and not get confused buy how they think it should be done or what they think the law might change too one day.

[FD2]

I was all set to take the bait 'til I realised you were just taking the piss.

Well done - good wind up!

[Gimble Stop]

Well I can see that I am not going to get much help here.
And you call your selves professional.

[Big Splash]

Gimble Stop
The crewman has to be 75kgs. This is to prevent climbing right hand turns.
There are no CASA requirements for flight and duty time restrictions for crewmen.
There are no CASA requirements for educational standards for crewmen.
Even the 75kgs is optional. But it makes the math easy.
Your fruit pickers should do ok provided they don’t touch anything.

Boy! Are you in for a world of hurt. Good luck. I’d be sticking with the light singles if I were you.

[200psi]

After all the tension on the Life Flight thread this one is welcolme relief;)

[Oogle]

Mr Gimble Stop

Obviously the Lifeflight management upset a few chaps with how much flying they have been doing so get them to help you with it.

They would no doubt know the ins and outs.

;)

[Big Splash]

Gimble Stop
Are you going to use EH101s or are you going to go in on the cheep with AB139s? I can help you with some prices.
In either case you are going to need at least a 75kg crewman.
Are you going for the dual hoist option?

[Hippolite]

Now look you guys, you are giving Gimble Stop a hard time when he is asking a perfectly reasonable and sensible question.

Gimble Stop

I would suggest using a Robinson R 44 Float equipped with a dual hoist and autohover as a minimum.

Your crew and equipment list should be:

R 44 (the twin engined one)
Floats (contained in the undercarriage doors)
Dual Hoist (2 different types otherwise they could both fail due to the same problem)
HUMS
HOMP
Additional PFD screen with TCAS overlay
Autohover (Honeywell SPZ 7600 should be ok)
2 Crewmen should be in the aircraft at any one time (one for each hoist)
EGPWS would be useful as well
Crashworthy seating for all crew and passengers (in case you do joy flights when not rescuing people)
Sponson fuel tanks with long range aux fuel would be useful as well.

Now, if you can put the aircraft on the USA (N) register, there is no monthly flight hour limit so your crews can fly up to 8 hours (single pilot) and 10 hours (2 pilot). However, Single pilot ops would probably keep your costs down.

Maintenance costs are minimal on the twin engined R44 because it only has to be overhauled avery 2000 hours or so.

Please PM me and I will give you the details of my brilliant consulting company who can put all of this together for you.

HH

I hope this helps:cool:

[Gibbo]

Gimble Stop,

Send me a PM if you are serious. I can help you.

Gibbo

[Gimble Stop]

I can’t put them on the N register because they have too many non STCed mods. This is why these brilliant aircraft can only be sold in Australia after QLD Gov is finished with them. We (the consortium) have secured these aircraft at a rate that will have us competitively placed.
Fitting these aircraft out is not a problem. They are already fitted out and ready to go.
I am however determined to do better than the current over manning situation that exists with the current operators. (Duty time for crewmen nonsense).
We will be seeking expressions of interest shortly. I am not interested in any of the current staff. Too many fixed ideas and inefficient practices.
Go ahead and take the piss fellows. It is not hard to work out who you are.

Gibbo, I will need assistance with an operations manual. I will contact you directly once QES has a date for their 139s.

[Hippolite]

Sorry Gimble

But at least the N register was a good idea even if its not possible with your aircraft.

Forgiven?

HH:cool:

[Letsby Avenue]

Gimble Stop - you have just reminded me why, after 20 years', I need to get out of this business before someone like you kills me.....:(

[spinwing]

Gimble Stop.... old darling...

If your serious then its obvious to the professionals on this forum that you ..

a. Have not a clue about what you would like to try to get into, nor understand the skills and abilities of the people you will need to make it work!

b. Have no idea about crew rescource management!

c. No idea about regulations or the concept of "Duty of Care"!


It will end in tears.....

:eek: :eek: :eek: :*

[Gimble Stop]

Letsby Avenue
Thankyou for retiring. As the industry cleanses its self of you Bristow style Pilots we will all be better off. It is the inefficient practices that stem from your part in history that draged the top end of the industry down.

Thankyou all for your private massages. Please, we will not be recruiting until June.

A big thanks to all that have provided private massages on the role of crewmen. On the basis of your response we have decided not to employ any air crewmen. We are going to use co-pilots instead. As you collectively made clear, an air crewman’s role is that of a co-pilot with the addition of hoist operation. The pay (food) is the same for both. So we figure we may as well use people with real aviation qualifications.

Spinwing
We figure aviation knowledge in the cockpit is more valuables than surf savvy. We feel this will improve CRM and show an enhanced duty of care over the current operators.

Letsby Avenue
Please explain your perception and the correlation between high pilot/crew pay and safety. Are you thinking clearly? Or is your own ambition getting in the way?

Another question for all.
What is a reasonable period to bond a pilot after a 412 endorsement?
Please consider in your responses that we will be using low time pilots and endorsements may take up to five hours. Very expensive!

[Nigel Osborn]

Hi Gimble

Basically in Oz there is no bonding requirement. A pilot can quit the day after he has been endorsed, in fact I know a few who have done that.
A 412 command endorsement is 10 hours plus icus for vfr or ifr charter. The co-pilot gets a 5 hour endorsement.
I'm a bit out of touch but I believe those are still the requirements.
Good luck.:O

[ppheli]

Gimbo,

You seem to be on the right lines now.

A) "aviation knowledge in the cockpit is valuable" - yep, can't argue with that

B) "Crew/Co-pilots - The pay (food) is the same for both" - are you not going to give them some cash recognition, or is it really just food they are working for? Pay peanuts => get monkeys.

C) "bonding with pilots" - go careful here. Many countries have laws against having a question about sexuality on an application form. Unless of course you only plan to recruit from the San Francisco area?

D) "we will be using low time pilots" - good tactic. This is also known as "your true colors"

E) "We are expecting to fly 2.05 hours per day". maths lesson coming up. That's an average, right? So there will be some days you fly more than 2.05, and some days you fliy less. Some days you may fly 5 or 6 hours even. Now, you don't mention air-to-air refuelling, so you need to make sure these hours are only being flown near airports (for filling up...).

You are on the right lines. It's clear that you will need a new pilot for each mission due to the previous one falling out with the management.

Good luck - an remember "safety is no accident".

[Oogle]

Yet someone else ready to take on the world and show everyone how it's done.

From what I know from my mates in Oz, QLD Rescue haven't even picked a new machine yet!

Shows how much aviation knowledge you don't have if you are thinking of using co-pilots as hoist operators. :yuk:

[winchop]

Gimble stop,

Have you actually won the contract, or are you preparing to tender for one?

Recently when the WA government setup the new Bell 412 helicopter EMS service over there, they tried to go down the track of co-pilots being trained up as winch operators, but it failed dismally.
Who had you in mind to train your co-joes as winch operators? From the WA experience, it's easier to train a crewman to carry out non flying cockpit duties than it is to train a low hour co-pilot to be a winch operator, who would be in the back with no experience and no supervision from anyone, not a good situation when winching a sailor off a yacht that's tossing on the oggin...:ouch:

[Gimble Stop]

winchop
We are sending one of our boys over to HAI to the hoist operator seminar. After that he will be carrying out all of our hoist training. Up / Down. How hard do you think it is?

I wish to take issue with you on the subject of a co-pilots ability to be trained as a hoist operator.

What qualities are present in an air crewman that is not transferable to a co-pilot?

Nigel
I did some ringing around and you are correct. It is not lawful to bond pilots in Australiaj. I will have to ask them to pay for their endorsement up front.

Yes we have secured the aircraft. The tender is still to be finalized. We have been given the nod.

Thankyou Peter for your fantastic input via your private messages. You clearly have grate insight into the local helicopter industry.

[200psi]

Pay for their endorsement mmmmm lookout here come the Jetstar/Virgin Blue of the Heli world.

Low time pilots, careful the client may have different ideas.

IFR/VFR?

This has to be a wind up

[Hippolite]

Gimble

A few thoughts for your brilliant business plan:

Your insurance company will have a different idea about low time pilots.

There is a lot more than up and down to being a hoist operator

You will find it hard to find low time SAR pilots.

HH:cool:

[wishtobflying]

Could you pass on the name of your therapist, I think he forgot to tell your carer to take away your internet access. :p

Define "secured the aircraft". Do you actually mean you or some financial backer has the money to do this and you have signed a purchase deal on a multimillion dollar aircraft, or do you mean that you've spoken to someone who has a contact in Zambia who might know someone in Bombay who has seen a temporarily unallocated aircraft that may or may not be suitable for what you want to do but you could get it real cheap?

I'm actually more frightened at the thought that this ISN'T a wind-up, especially as it seems to be a Queensland-oriented operation. :ooh: :sad: Please tell us where this will be based so I can avoid visiting the area.

[Disguise Delimit]

Lets just have a look at what Gimble Stop has said so far:

1. Aircraft is a SPIFR B412, ex QES, kitted up with all the goodies and the flight manual full of annexes for the STCs.

(So far, so good - the machines are showing their age, but at least he isn't trying to do it with a NVFR single.)

2. It will fly around 2 hours a day on average, and as Gimble says "They will hardly ever fly."

(Hmm.. staying current will be a problem.)

3. He wants low-time pilots and expects a 5-hour endorsement.

(Oops, we just crossed the line between Great Operator and Great Pretender.)

4. Not interested in the current staff, they have too many fixed ideas and inefficient practices.

(So there goes the pool of knowledge and experience with those particular aircraft, which, if I recall correctly, have a really strange mod to the collective trim which makes it work in reverse. Does "inefficient practices" include staying alive?)

5. Crewmen are not required, and anyway, they are too expensive and want to have shifts which take crew duty into account. Surf knowledge is not required, and this will somehow improve CRM.

(See note to point 3.)

6. The aircraft have been secured, and he has "Been given the nod" for the tender.

(The Nodder is a bigger ******** than GS)

7. Pilots and copilots will pay for their own endorsement.

(Add this to the "low time" bit, mix it with the "hardly ever fly" bit and you get some wonderfully experienced crews.)

8. Copilots will run the hoist. "Up, down, how hard can that be?"

(Hoo, boy.... And if the copilot is ever allowed back into the front seat, will he remember what to do?)

9. One pilot will be attending a seminar, and he will then be the chief trainer for the crewpilotpersons.

(What a great plan. And Gimble Stop will be doing a correspondence course from Nigeria University to pass his Chief Pilot and Managing Directors MBA.)

Marvellous wind-up, GS.

Gibbo, don't waste your valuable time with this one. But it makes amusing reading.

:ok:

[Gimble Stop]

Flungdung
The aircraft have been secured. The 412s will be delivered as the 139s become available. First in July 2005. I have a guarantee that the current operators will extend at no additional cost until then. The other 412s will follow at a rate that Agusta/Bell can supply the139s to QES. This is expected to be mid 2006.
Those of you in the know will be able to check this out because there are many at Hawkers across this deal. The aircraft are being delivered directly to us at Bankstown.
As you have surmised, I have made my money outside of this part of the industry. I will not be deterred by detractors. I am serious about bringing new blood into the seen.

Hippolite
Our insurance company is one of the consortium partners. We prefer to return to our supporters a higher premium than to through un-necessarily high wages at pilots and crew from the Jurassic period.

Thanks for all private massages from you Kiwis with an interest in a co-pilot position with us. But unfortunately, after repeated incidences of unpaid phone bills we now have a policy of no Kiwis ever. You lot made your bed. Sorry!

Wishtobflying
My therapist is highly supportive of me beginning again in a new part of this industry. Specially one like this in desperate need of reform.

Jeff
The boy that is going to HAI next week is not a pilot, he is our cook. I did not intent to imply he was pilot. My apologies. And thankyou but I will not need help from you or Gibbo.

I have not received any tangible, reasonable or logical arguments why a co-pilot could not be trained as a hoist operator. Are you really suggesting that these two disciplines are mutually exclusive? Why? How?

This is the problem as I see it. You old school guys often cry wolf! You sell your industrial position as Law and fact, when it is nothing more than the way you like it, or the way that has come to be accepted as normal.

If the same people that are telling me this crap are telling me I need to give a pilot a ten hour 412 indorsement instead of five, how am I too differentiate between what is bull**** and what is required for a reasonable safe operation.

You tell me. How am I supposed to work out what is fact and what is industrial fiction? I have spoken with consultants. They also are inclined to offer their preferences rather than legal requirements. This sector of the industry is crippled with incest and nepotism as demonstrated by the relationship between Disguise Delimit and Gibbo

Safety is no accident. Come on! Who are you going to blame when your crewman acting as an untrained co-pilot drives you into a rock in an IFR environment?

[What Red Line?]

A few years back we were able to buy bull-sh*t repellant in aerosol cans. Can of that would be kinda handy right about now.

If I recall correctly, the same shop had the odd dictionary for sale too.

WRL

[Disguise Delimit]

Gimble (anybody else think it is spelt gimbal? But that is SOP for this one) Stop says:

"If the same people that are telling me this crap are telling me I need to give a pilot a ten hour 412 indorsement instead of five, how am I too differentiate between what is bull**** and what is required for a reasonable safe operation.

You tell me. How am I supposed to work out what is fact and what is industrial fiction?"

Gimble, WE ARE TELLING YOU!

Look in CAO 40.3.0, App II, para 3 and it tells you that for an aircraft in the transport category, the endorsement is 10 hours, unless your "low-time" pilot applicants already have 200 hours PIC or Cojo on 204, 205 or 222.

For somebody who decries fixed ideas, you seem to have some fixed ideas about Kiwis and their desire to pay your phone bill.

Incest? Nepotism? Last time I checked, Gibbo and I were not related.

The helicopter industry would love you to bring some fresh money into it - we certainly need some good injections. But do it in a sensible way. If you are fair dinkum, then use a consultant. He will prevent you from making the mistakes that others have already made.

The suggestions made (before you came out with guns blazing) were to give you some clues. Plenty of people have cried out "What would YOU know? I have a better way." and gone down the tubes because there were a million things that they didn't allow for.

But look at me - I have bitten on a bait that I knew was trolling. It was too much temptation.:ok:

[Oogle]

Doesn't this chap sound like a piece of work.

He is the type of employer who would really appreciate the hard work you would do for him (NOT).

All the Kiwis: He didn't mean the crack about the phone bills. I think he may be showing stress from QES not even having made a decision on a new aircraft let alone giving up their current ones. It will certainly push your plans back Mr. Stop.

:bored:

[200psi]

I just can't see the QLD gov't shelling out 10's of millions of dollars for new aircraft. Will they be leasing? Surely it would be cheaper to transfer the cost and risk to a third party and have them do the job. :confused:

[Gimble Stop]

Dear all,
The person that normally resides ate this work station will be back off annual leave on Monday.
Maybe next time he will log off PPRUNE before he goes on leave.
I had fun. How about you?

[Gibbo]

Gimble Stop,

I didn't have a go at you mate, Disguise Delimit did; you Dill! Maybe I am the dill though for offerring some support.

Although, in my experience as a consultant it is fundamental that the client doesn't just hear what you are saying, but listens.

I don't think I can help you.

Gibbo

[200psi]

Excellent wind up dude I am sure the real Gimble Stop will be appropriately chastised on his return :uhoh:

[Big Splash]

That has got to be illegal.

[belly tank]

Great Wind up "Gimble Stop" (In Disguise!) Maybe you can reveal your real PPRUNE NAME!.

Made for an interesting read anyway!

[Gibbo]

Yep, I am a dill! good wind up!

Gibbo

[PO dust devil]

GS or whoever.

I reckon put up or shut up. The old someone else' workstation trick.........what BS.

Tell us your real identity so that we know what sort of goose would either slag someone else, the way you have or be so dumb as to make up a stolen identity story like you have.

I would be so embarassed asking the dumb questions you did and would probably make up a weird story about someone else' work station. etc. etc. Either way YOU are exposed as a self styled gonzo.

The best way to save face is to keep the lower half shut.

DD

[206av8]

This guy sounds like just the sort of clown the Australian aviation doesn't need. Especially in management.
But it shouldn't matter too much as the whole operation will probably go down the gurgler soon enough by the sounds of it.
Hope he doesn't take too many low time, non kiwi pilots/ winch operators with him.

[Seagull Revisited]

OK Mr Stop is taking the piss! That’s fine.
But can some one tell me just what the role of a Helicopter Crewman is in Australia?
Don’t you call somebody that sits in the other seat and helps the Captain a “Co-pilot”?
Is it safe to have unqualified people doing this job? Or is it just cheaper?

[Mr Stop]

Seagull
You have to understand the dynamics of the Australianj HEMS cockpit.
There is simply insufficient space in the front for two pilot sized heads.
For a working CRM model we need an EX-military officer type in the stb seat, an underling of some description in the other, and who in reality cares what in the back.
We must have a chain of command. (pecking order).
All manner of complications would result if there was somebody else in the front that knew something about aviation. Ask Helmet Fire.

[helmet fire]

:} :} :}

Gee, ANOTHER 1 st time poster hiding. Must be an Oz EMS thread.

Why on earth would you need ANYONE up front with any knowledge of aviation Mr Stop? If they really knew what they were doing up there, would they need you???

[imabell]

the new 135,

http://www.bluetonguehelicopters.com.au/pprune/p135.jpg

:ok:

[Texdoc]

I was having a closer look at it the other day. The Blades are an absolute work of art.

IMABELL Please check your PM's I am chasing a copy of your Mustering DVD :ok:

[Bomber ARIS]

What an awful, outdated paint scheme :yuk:

[tolipZO]

Ok so how do i get to fly that, PM me when i need to attend for my endorsement.

:D