Low Flying
 

Now that the dust following the very sad cases of Melanie Dodds and Heather Bell has settled, I heard a very good buzz recently that the UKLFS is under threat. Do we need to use the UKLFS as much as we do? Why practice Low Flying over our green and pleasant land when the only time we seem to OLF is over sand? Is there a requirement to Low Fly in this country?

a tough subject that has been flogged endlessly

Unfortunate accidents do happen, and I think we all know that H&S has really gone too far

These are tragic cases, for sure, but they are just as unavoidable as people being killed by 'blue light' police cars and ambulances, and, though it seems hugely callous to say so, it's a price worth paying.

Let's not forget that horse riding is an inherently dangerous activity, and people ride in that knowledge.

It would be a different matter if it had been shown that the helicopter crews were acting irresponsibly, or were operating outside their authorisation. They weren't.

Accidents happen, and we don't always need to apportion blame and obtain compensation.

Is Mil low flying necessary at all? Yes a very serious question. I dislike the effect it has on many of us BUT am quite willing to accept the need if someone will care to explain the need. On other threads it has been made clear the low flying (at least FJ low flying) was not done in Iraq because of obstacles; it was, it seems, abandoned in Gulf 1, so where and when is it used and useful? The last 2 conflicts seem to suggest it cannot be used in action. So please tell us the NEED for it then we may rest assured it is not just for keeping crews in practise for some manoeuvre that will not be used (except for practise of course).

WH

Low flying may not have been used in the last 2 conflicts but the problem is it may have to be used in the next conflict - wherever it may be! Low flying is not a skill that can be turned on and off at the flick of a switch.

Pie

Low flying WAS used in Gulf 2, and at night, and on goggles. It CANNOT just be turned off and then back on again. I'm fed up with people writing things on this forum without knowing the facts. It would be a grave mistake to kiss off this role just because the current threat (as some perceive it) doesn't warrant its use.

Sky News broadcast a live action very early on during GW2 with Challenger tanks and Harriers supporting a US Marine unit. The Harrier attack looked exactly the same as they practise every day on the ranges.

It is also rather difficult to deliver cannon and CRV7 from high LEVEL.

Concur all your thoughts. Low flying is a vital and neccesary skill. I do have it on good authority and from a reliable and high ranking source that the UKLFS is very seriously under threat and there is a very realistic chance it will be abolished.

What chance then?:{

Waiting on the Findhorn road for an ac to land at ISK one summers day, a lovely elderly lady said to me

"Young (ish) man, why do these aircraft have to fly so very low when they come in to land ?"

"Not sure M'am - might be something to do with the experience of the pilot"

"Oh, I see, thank you - by the way, my grandson want's to be a pilot, so I can explain that to him now"

Retired to the Kimberley

So if they bin the UKLFS then we will be able to operate to CAA regs ie 500' rule - No-one will notice the difference in noise nuisance between a FJ at 250' and one at 500'. The folks who will suffer (and it's started already) will be rotary. Helicopters don't do medium or high level in conflict, we have to be low to survive and to do our jobs.
This unfortunate (Heather Bell) incident has escalated from a fatal accident (possibly avoidable had she been wearing a helmet) to the possible death knell for UK low flying. The coroner may well have had views on the way to prevent this sort of accident happening again (stable door closing and horses comes to mind - pun intended) but stopping us low flying won't reduce the number of horse riding accidents that occur every year due to traffic. Is someone going to stop vehicles using the roads in case a horse gets spooked? It is a massive overreaction from the MOD which should have been dismissed out of hand.

very true. Banning Low flying will have a severe detrimental affect on our OC.

low flying
 

I'm currently holding on a UK SAR flight, and as of Monday we will have to record a record of every single low level flight each day, along with exact routing and heights.

In times gone by we just faxed the LFBC to tell them what LFA's we'd been in when, but now we must tell them our enitre route and how high we were flying! This must be returned each day so some desk-jockey can fill in a form to file away in a filing cabinet never to be seen again!

And just to add to the madness we are also going to have to produce a map of all local horse stables, along with probable routes that the horse riders might take! Its not like we can avoid low flying, when the clouds on the deck and we need to get somewhere.

Surely this is beurocracy gone mad!!! As if we didn't have enough forms to fill in!!!

DF

What complete and utter madness!

What happens if young Chlamidya Windless-Chunder is thrown off in the middle of nowhere because Dobbin has taken offence to a black bin liner or something, and is now lying there in agony, needing to be airlifted to a spinal injuries hospital? Does the SAR crew have to check that Dobbin and his kin are safely chained down before they can attend the shout?

It's all a balance of risk. Something the huggy-fluffy litigation culture cannot understand. Horse riding is a dangerous activity!

But if you want to have a spy-in-the-cab position logger, they are readily available as sealed, integral GPS-driven devices which make an independent position/time record for later download. About £500 a pop.

I've fallen off horses more times than I can remember, and never was an aircraft or car/lorry to blame. In 40 years of riding no-one (who I know personally) has been in accident caused by a low-flying a/c, yet I can count several deaths and paraplegics resulting from riding accidents.

We live 2.5 miles from Benson and my children have also fallen off plenty, and again, not once was a moving vehicle/aircraft involved.

There's a girl I know (of the type that Beags and I admire, from a distance) who has fallen off (in competitions) and required the services of TV HEMS 5 times in 3 years.

Go figure.

Well put BEagle. Why do you types that operate low level (or any level for that matter) not wish to be "monitored" I have on more than one occasion been informed that the mil are not required to used mode c and at low level rarely do so. Use of a LL squawk is no doubt a requirement, or is it, and so why no mode c to go with it? Any particular reason. I have read what has been said above about use in combat but, I repeat, on earlier threads it was stated that this was not done because it was too dangerous for the a/c. Now come on guys who is telling the truth and who is not? When, where and in what circumstances have different a/c (FJ and C130 for example) been used in combat at low level in recent years. No secrets just what is already in the public domain. Perhaps we can then form a BALANCED view of the training requirements.

Beagle,
Under £300 for a datalogger for a Glider Beags but I expect the manufacturer could get the price up to 5 or 10 thousand pounds if you tell him you want it for a military aircraft. After all, they would have to convert it from an internal pp3 battery to duplicated uninterruptible, interference free 28 volt supplies and fit it in a waterproof to 300 m box capable of withstanding a 50g decelleration.

Mike W

Gosh, Working Hard, a little knowledge is indeed a dangerous thing!!!

The mode C of a transponder transmits, when interrogated, its height (and this is the important bit) in relation to the pressure setting 1013.2 mb. There is a separate capsule in the master altimeter which is constantly set to this pressure.

This is entirely useful in an airway when the pressure to be used is same, but at low level, when:

(a) all flying is done with sole visual reference to the ground

(b) no pilot would ever pay too much attention to what the
altimeter says anyway

(c) if the atmospheric pressure is anything but 1013.2 mb ( as is almost always the case) then the reading is inaccurate anyway.

Of course, one could attempt to recover the exact pressures at the time from along the route, but this would be a bit difficult to say the least.

If you were to attempt to prosecute someone on the strength of your pressure record and their mode c reading I don't think you would be very successful.

Set 18 - thanks for the lesson! Read up a bit more on the accuracy and use of mode c, there's a good chap. I said nothing about prosecution, is that your paranoia showing through?
The whole idea is that we learn from others, including the military, and learn what is NEEDED by all airspace users so that we may co-exist in peace, harmony and safety. Do you not wish to subscribe to that?

I would be interested to hear who doesn't use Mode C at LL. As pointed out above there is no advantage/disadvantage to using C when in the UKLFS, but everyone I have worked with over the years still wears mode C at low level.

We need to do low flying, simple!