WG13,
If you are concerned how your taxes are spent, perhaps you should question why we pay welfare benefits to foreigner's and still continue the Wildcat Programme.

Because Wildcat is with the FLC already and will have reached IOC before Puma 2 will even have got out of Romania.....plus it'll be in service for 40 years.

And I do also agree that Wildcat isnt the best way of spending tax payers money either. :ok:

IIRC and I'm not doing very well when I cannot get the pilot's name right, one of the members of the BofI was a very respected member of the Support Helicopter force. I was a surprise to me when the verdict started to filter through and it apparantly filtered through to the AOC. He took further advice and threw the conclusions back at them and told them to re-write it. At the same time the FRCs were amended.

Bigpants. It will all end in tears. The Third World is littered with derelict Russian equipment. There is nothing intrinsically wrong wiith them, there just aren't any spares. They are either not available or the lead time is too great.
I worked for a long time in China and in the late nineties the Chinese civil aviation was expanding explosively. They were buying everything in sight, even BAC111s. I flew a couple of times in the Tu 154M. One of the things that stood out when you walked in was that several of the overhead locker doors were missing. My Chinese engineers later explained that they were irreplacable even though the aircraft had only just gone out of production. In Tanjian in north eastern China I looked out of the window on the approach and there was a clutch of surplus Aeoflot 154s on a pan. They had been bought by the regional Chinese airline to be used as Xmas trees.
Apart from a few licence built AS Dauphines the civil helicopter industry in China is exclusively Western equipment and also since the turn of the century so are their fixed wing brothers.
They do produce helicopters that have a unique capability. To see a MI 26 underslinging a full sized tracked excavator into the hills during the Chinese Earthquake plus another one with a bulldozer in the back is something you do not see very often. However you cannot get away from the fact that they have low TBOs and poor spares support plus any political ramifications.

Fareastdriver, from what I know of the accident I was told about, that very respected member of the SH force probably had the initials DL.

Wg13 - several Puma 2s are already well clear of Romania :ok:

This has got Nimrod written all over it...

I just hope I'm wrong

Not quite the same. Nimrods were hand built and they, as they found out trying to put the big hulls on, were all different lengths. The Pumas, albiet built in Britain, were made in French jigs. The Makila conversion has already been done to Portugese Pumas and the rest is modernising the electrics. It's a shame they couldn't have flashed out on the single wheel undercarriage but you can't have everything. It may be over forty years old but it's a utility helicopter. The job that utility helicopters do has not changed much over that time and it goes as fast as any and carries as much as any.
I would not have believed that when I sat behind a Puma windscreen for the first time in 1971 that I would sit behind an identical windscreen, blue/amber pips and all, on my last professional command thirty eight years later.

Sure - but I meant more the delays, Govt still uber-short of cash, thinking the unthinkable etc, rather than the act of modernising an old airframe.

What! and make a load of Rumanian aircraft workers redundant. Brussels would never let it happen.

Since when was the Cougar AS532 a civilian version? :ugh:

Puma tail rotor failure
 

Yes it was Neil, with Phil Bleasdale and Ron Graham. No troops though. 37secs from bang to crash and thank goodness Den Holland, watching the event as numbeer 2 in the pair, said in a Mayday relay that the tail rotor had gone; because there were some empty thinks bubbles in the cockpit at the time, and only 300ft to play with.

I was just about to say that Den was #2 but Cadenas beat me to it. However, his description of watching it all happening was 'interesting' to say the least. I always thought they had done an outstanding job actually getting it on the ground in more or less one piece, and as for DL's comment of the 'finding the power/speed combination' with only 2-300ft to play with................!

I've got the photos of the after crash scene somewhere in someones loft. Tha aircraft turned on its side and apparently Ron Graham came out of the bottom cabin door and got a bollocking for not using the upper door!!:hmm:

He also got a bollocking for not assuming his correct crash position.
He spread himself flat on the floor and hung onto the seats - seemed to work fine!

If they can do all this retrospective stuff, maybe Neil could now be awarded the AFC he undoubtedly deserved?!
A nicer, more modest and more brilliant pilot it would be difficult to meet.

lsh
:E

Ah so it was Ron that started the non approved crash position which most Crewmen have used, in the various prangs that have occurred over the years.

It may not be official but if it works.........:ok:

Apart from you........ obviously:)

But the 'Crash Position' or rather Crash Seat will be resolved with the upgrade surely.....................:E

Surprised no one picked this up, bit of a milestone:
http://www.shephardmedia.com/news/rotorhub/puma-hc1-completes-last-sortie-raf-benson/

So no aircraft available for either squadron?

Now last time that happened…

Can anyone say for certain if the HC2 airframes will retain their original military registration numbers when they go back into service?