With regards to the missing "D" maybe John S being a near local lad is using local dialect/spelling?

Hansard.....


HANSARD 1803–2005 → 1940s → 1945 → November 1945 → 7 November 1945 → Commons Sitting → ROYAL NAVY
R.N.A. Station, Culrose (Road Material)

HC Deb 07 November 1945 vol 415 cc1253-4 1253
§4. Mr. Stokes asked the First Lord of the Admiralty in view of the decision not to proceed further with the Culrose R.N.A. Station, Cornwall, whether he is aware that loads of clinker, stone and tarmac are still being delivered to the site in spite of the fact that this material is needed for the repair of local roads; and if he will now terminate this waste of road material.
Mr. Alexander My hon. Friend is under a misapprehension in thinking that it has been decided not to proceed further with this station. It is essential to finish certain parts of the work to prevent serious deterioration, and this applies to the partially completed roads and runways for which this material is required.
§Mr. Stokes Why is it necessary to complete roads and runways when it has been decided not to complete the aerodrome for some years yet? Is my right hon. Friend aware that all this material and labour is urgently wanted elsewhere, and that there are complaints all round regarding the waste that is taking place?
Mr. Alexander My hon. Friend is really never satisfied.
§Mr. Stokes No.

I suspect one reason why the ASaC wasn't mentioned is the MoD (not RN) PR machine would be scared of the obvious question "So what's replacing it?"

At least they would have plausible (if not entirely sensible or reasonable) answers for SAR, ASW, SH.

I think he looks like a cross between John Betjeman and Jonathan Meades! Thoroughly enjoyed the programme.

Posted over on the Flypast Site

http://forum.keypublishing.com/attac...1&d=1362139796

Seaking Chesil beach - Key Publishing Ltd Aviation Forums

Perhaps because in the history of aviation no helicopter has ever found and successfully sunk a submarine............................!

or am I wrong?

Running for cover from the Pingers now.........................:O

Most likely slotted the odd whale or two back in 82, However a Helicopter has found a sub and attacked it, causing major damage.....Just wasn't a Sea King and the sub wasn't submerged.

Out of interest, can anyone tell me why Sea Kings have one of their main rotor blades painted yellow? Is it to increase visibility of the rotor disc when in motion or something?

Exactly that, when viewed from above.

More likely that stores ran out of green/black ones ;)

George Cross or George Medal?

Either way, they were both impressive to listen to.

George Medals:

Viewing Page 12275 of Issue 52218

Utterly humbling.

"Utterly humbling"

+ 10

Very impressive work.

Not surprised that the BBC avoided discussing the Baggers. What do they do ?

According to this, Baggers drive Daggers :) :

I thoroughly enjoyed it. Well done the BBC and MoD.

Re. CulDrose pronunciation by 'locals' ... NO!! we don't leave out the D!!. Apart from that, rather a lot of 'cringe-making' in JS's presentation, poor editing and little appreciaion of the aircraft as distinct from the people who operated it.
Would probably have spoiled the story to point out that a SEARCH & rescue helo is not best served by a SEARCH radar which is blanked in the forward direction by the gearbox 'shadow'. I know, it didn't matter for 'pinging' but S&R ?? It COULD have been so much better - the helo, that is.
Oh and for the usual BBC bashing suspects, the Beeb was the commissioning customer NOT the programme maker.

Out of interest, can anyone tell me why Sea Kings have one of their main rotor blades
 

I seem to remember it happened by accident when I was at Lossiemouth back in the 80's. I think we had a Sea King fitted with a light grey blade which was very noticeable from above. Later the yellow blade was introduced as some protection from all the fast jets with small windows and short sighted pilots.

CJ

I think we have to distinguish between the basic aircraft, which is superb, and equipment. The original radar had a 28 degree blind arc and, as you say, was acceptable for ASW. This imitation was understood and at the first opportunity, only a few years after Mk1 ISD, a development contract was let which resulted in a 14 degree blind arc (approx) and much higher power. (The spec was written by RRE).

In this period, the RAF took delivery of the Mk3 and retained the old RN radar with the large blind arc/low power. When they had the Mk3A approved, in about 1993, the RN were getting shot of the newer radar as Merlin was due, and offered the RAF sufficient scanners, transmitters etc to upgrade. Not quite free of charge, but a lot cheaper than what they did, which was get a digital processor and colour display, which left them with a hybrid which was neither here nor there.

Part of the problem here was that even into the mid-90s the RAF's radar maintenance policy was 1A, 2BC at RNARW Copenacre, 3BCD at Fleetlands. The problem was RNARW had closed in about 1983 (!) and the entire 2/3 line burden fell to Fleetlands. But, as the RN had replaced this radar, Fleetlands' capacity had been chopped by 80% (as 80% of aircraft now had the new radar).

Allied to this, RN observers were trained on the RNGT, a raw radar. They expected noise paint on the screen. But many RAF observers were trained on the BPRT, and in 1989 we had the ludicrous situation whereby, despite having inherited 140 old radars from the RN, the RAF didn't have enough serviceable out of a stock of 180 to fit a 20 aircraft Mk3 fleet. Well over 100 complete radars were "awaiting final test" at Fleetlands at any one time. Poor or non-existent training meant the operators were rejecting them for "noise", as they expected clean "digital" displays. There was a 99% No Fault Found Rate at Fleetlands, but the test bottleneck meant a backlog. In one 3 month period around this time, every single Sea King Mk3 had a complete radar change, every day. Not one of them was u/s. That was a far bigger problem to MoD than the blind arc.

I remember us going to Finningley to suss the problem. My oppo (best radar diag in the MoD) was standing next to the radar instructor in the aircraft on the pan. We could see the nearby church spire, but little else. He said, if with go up to 1000', that's still all we'll see. My mate reached across and tweaked Swept Gain and the screen lit up. "FFS, we're not allowed to touch these controls". Yes you are, the ones you can't touch are under this screwed down flap. Two days later we delivered a full training rig and documentation. And we dropped £80 in the mess bandit.


The German version (Mk42 I think) overcame this by having both nose and dorsal radomes, but this was a different radar.

I missed first half so only twice heard him commend this fine British aircraft. Please tell me that early on someone mentioned Sikorsky and GE.

You gotta love pprune.

Somebody makes an asinine statement about pingers and how a blind arc doesn't matter to them
Somebody else confirms this and suddenly it's fact!

For your information, it is vastly more important and limiting to a pinger aircraft that there is a blind arc than to the glory boys sittting around watching sky waiting for some **** to fall off a cliff.

Excellent show - congrats to BBC and John S, rather have a true enthusiast than a so called expert boring the pants over I remember the Mk1-4 a dash 526 bla bla in which the inverter wiring was blue rather than green bla bla . Hope he does more - Lancaster as may have been hinted at.

A most enjoyable, memorable, and poignant piece - despite the big girl's blouse.

Its on again tomorrow night (Sunday). A click will tell you what time from any TV program listing. Sorry about that.

Wessex
 

The production used out of 'cab' clips from a Wessex when 'dramatising' the yacht rescue, how lazy

@tucumseh:
German Sea King: Mk41. Radar: SeaSpray Mk 3 with nose and rear antenna.

@all:

I did enjoy the documentary, quite personal at times, moving stories, a decent (early) farewell to one of the most versatile, flexible, durable and amazing helicopters that ever was around.

(Although the Sea King will continue to fly for at least another 10 to 15 years in Germany)

Tom

Just to be sure, I've just watched it again. I have to say, IMHO, it's not too bad a program. I dread to think how it could have been carved up, John Nichol commentates on Martin Shaw and brother doing the "proffesional" flying. Nah, stick to Jo Brands twin brother, it'll do for me ! :)

Why was the cab in which the baby was born registered in Germany? Was it on attachment from the Marineflieger?

Tucumseh - thank you for that bit of enlightenment ... my time with the SK was early test flying at Boscombe and it seemed to me that there was so much that could have been improved for its intended role - but compromise rules, as ever!:ugh:
Tourist - the non-relevance of the forward arc for pinging was something which was said to me by my mentors at CulDrose when I did a short introductory course with them. I, generally, accept the view of them 'as knows about' these things. My personal view is coloured by the loss of two crews off Falmouth and two in the Gulf which MIGHT have been avoided by a forward radar view. "If wishes were horses" ... etc.!http://images.ibsrv.net/ibsrv/res/sr...lies/yeees.gif

Cornish

You seem very heavy on the CulDrose thing but you do not discuss your reasons. Do you feel Hansard was a mistake? Do you feel the senior RN officer on the prog was also making a mistake? If so I wonder why.

Cornish; the two in the Gulf were AEW SK, so their radars have no blind arcs forward!

And what two off Falmouth? i don't remember that one.

Possibly referring to the two 820 Sqn SKs that collided off St Catherine's Point on 6th March 1981 when flying from/to Invincible. Casualties were:

BATEMAN, Robert W, Sub Lieutenant,
LITTLETON, Paul, Lieutenant,
MARCHMENT, Ian J, Leading Aircraft Mechanician (A/CMN),
MCDONALD, Marcus H, Sub Lieutenant, (Service no. two off mine)
ROUE, David F, Lieutenant Commander, (After whom the trophy is named)

Yes, AA; I was there. Nowhere near Falmouth though! And that accident wasn't due to blind-arcs either.

The CulDrose pronunciation irritant is just parochialism as are the non-local's usual efforts at Mousehole, Launceston, Fowey etc. Just put it down to 'grumpy old man' syndrome. :*
Radar positioning? The only reason I can think of for putting it there is weight concentration close to the mast/CG. My limited exposure to the SK was mainly in the initial stages of winch trials at Boscombe and as a machine intended for THAT specialist role, it seemed to me that there was room for improvement - but that is a universal 'given'.:oh:

Cornish

As previously stated.

Bagger cabs have 360 radar.
820 is a pinger sqn.


Pingers almost always work in pairs. At night/IMC a radar is what keeps them alive. The endless "clear blind arc right/left" is imprinted on my brain for ever.
A pinger works from a ship. It has to find that ship. It then has to control itself to the ship by HCA/ELVA which is a radar controlled approach to the ship. Approaching a ship by radar control when you cannot see the direction you are going is challenging.....
Think about it.

SAR cabs require a radar on I would guess 1% of shouts. Usually on your own, got GPS, and very rarely actually radar "search".
It happens, of course, but even the low level landfall apprach is rare. You could pretty much do away with a radar, and the RN never even used to have observers on the SAR for exactly that reason. If you needed somebody on the radar we just pinched an observer from a pinger sqn.

Blind arc effect on SAR, almost zero.
Blind Arc effect on Pinger, huge.


Oh, and by the way, it is CulDrose! Always has been , and in fact before the program had never heard it mispronounced.

.

By the big girl's blouse!

Tucumseh, your post on 2nd March is, unusually for you, only half the story – it’s also written from the engineer’s perspective and not the operators.

When the Sea King replaced the Whirlwind in RAF service it was recognized that trained radar operators would be required, and these were recruited from AEOps from the Nimrod fleet, experienced in operating ASV 21D. However, you’re right to say that by the mid-90s the standard of radar operating was not good. The main reasons for this were quite complex, but boiled down to the fact that many RAF Sea King radar operators (or radar instructors, for that matter) did not come from radar operating backgrounds – they were a mix of Navigators, Nimrod acoustic operators and SH-trained Loadmasters. Those few Nimrod radar operators that were selected for SAR (on a course designed solely to assess winchop and winchman skills) were, as you say, trained on and experienced in processed radar. However, your assertion that the radops were staring at the screen wondering what all the noise was is plain wrong, almost to the point of insult. I remember the period you allude to as I was a radop at Lossiemouth at the time and although I didn’t have the overall perspective you had, I remember that the radars as fitted were weak and seemed underpowered. None of the radops at Lossie at that time would have rejected radars because they “expected clean digital displays” as at least two of the five of us were ASV 21D trained. The Swept Gain story is also a typical engineer’s tale – whilst I’ve no doubt it happened as you say, the fact was that radar instructors at that time advocated leaving swept gain alone, as it had a very powerful effect on the display and without understanding exactly how it worked you could get yourself in trouble with it. It’s also quite likely that the operator you dealt with at Finningley was not an experienced radar operator, or even a radop at all. Still, your tale paints (geddit?) a MoD-satisfying picture of untrained operators so incompetent they couldn’t understand either the display or the controls, rejecting serviceable radar after serviceable radar through sheer ignorance.

The real problem was that instructors could not see the operator’s display because of the Fresnel lens over the CRT. Without this supervision, it was difficult to convey to a tyro radar operator exactly what he was expected to see in front of him. The RN had a very good rig down at Culdrose, which was made available to our students on SKTU, but once they moved on to the SAR flights they never saw a rig again. I don’t even remember the “full training rig” you delivered; I certainly never received training on it. This was the reason the RAF opted not to upgrade from old RN stock, but instead to procure a display that both the operator and instructor could see simultaneously – it also had the side benefit of being a processed radar that all future radops, recruited from the Nimrod MR2, would be comfortable with. Although a bit of a lash up, it was not a “neither here nor there hybrid”, it was a radar that could provide phenomenal SA in busy sea areas such as the Thames estuary and one which gave the crews enormous confidence.

Tourist, your assertion that SAR cabs could do away with radar, and that blind arc is so much more important to the pingers, is just plain rubbish. I've often used (not just 1%) radar on SAR, for searching, let downs (both coastal and open water) and general SA. I understand blind arc limitations as well as any pinger crew - I would imagine they affect us equally. It's not a major problem, and coping with it is relatively straightforward, but when you're in the hover near a busy sea lane and trying to prevent being run over by 40,000t of container ship, blind arc is a pain in the @rse. I'm sure my captain, asking me in our MS10 after the event why I didn't see that ship coming, would take great comfort from my reply that the chances of that happening to a SAR cab were "almost zero".

You have a very strange idea of how SAR crews operate...

sargs

I'm and ex pinger and ex SAR...

Unlike you, I'm not imagining anything.

I know which has more use for a 360 radar.

Radar u/s in a SAR cab in most cases mildly irritating.
Radar u/s in a pinger, no point in going.

Yeah, alright then. I suppose after all these years I still don't understand radar...at least, as comprehensively as a Looker...:hmm:

The 820 crash in 1981 had nothing to do with the radar - despite the weather being awful. Nope, it was all about running when we couldn't even crawl. ...too fast too soon.

RIP Ringbolters.