And the million dollar question comes out. Did the contract writing team include any crewmen?

Don't be silly.
The contracts will have been written by someone hundreds of miles and many, many organisational levels distant from the nearest crewman. And the contract-writing skills required would probably be possession of a BA LLB, with demonstrated ability to act as SLF between Gatwick and Nice being a desirable, but not necessary, skill. :ugh:

Can someone clarify the need for two different types?

From what I can find online the US Army uses the 206, the navy the same, and the usaf Hueys. I take it they train on their respective types then go to their front line type. Is this correct?

If so how do they make that work? And if it works why does the RAF need two types?

The optimum but very expensive solution is to train helicopter 'crews' on the aircraft they will fly operationally.

'Pilots' do not require a complex aircraft to learn the skills of rotary flight and therefore the cheaper the runnng costs, the better. Some countries use two seat helicopters for this purpose, the U.K. used Gazelle and in turn Squirrel helicopters. Both did as asked of them. All operational helicopters in the UK are multi engined and therefore it is logical though not essential to train pilots from the onset on a multi engined aircraft.

The introduction of the 'crew' must provide a platform that is not so sensitive to weight distribution that prohibits pilot - crewman - crewman instructor - winchman - 'survivor' all being on the right side of the aircraft with no counterbalance on the left. Clearly not the job for a small helicopter; and few medium helicopters can cope with deliberate imbalance as previously described. The primary risk being loss of cyclic control as the stick hits the stops, whilst lives are at the end of a wire. Typically on an instructional sortie, the student and instructor crewmen are akin to me and my shadow and so the weight change across the cabin is usually the price of two people. Freedom of movement across a cabin is essential in training for both rear crew members, as students will be allowed to make errors without instructor intervention until such time as a situation develops to the point of danger. This means that on rare occasions the two rear crew members will be crossing the cabin in opposition to one another in haste.

A footnote should be that nations of the world use their helicopter crewmen / flight engineers in different ways. Some (French - Russian) rarely leave the cockpit. The U.K. (& others) has a crew member that on many occasions have actively contributed to accident avoidance and Flight Safety, and the training syllabus that has achieved this should be nurtured, not undermined by austerity.

Thanks tiger mate.

So quite simply it is still cheaper to run a basic and an advanced heli trainer rather than just a basic trainer and use the operational type later on?

If the savings are significant I would have thought the yanks would go the two type route. Interesting that the two outfits go in such different directions.

I believe the US methodology is for the Crewman to have aircraft engineering background training, and as 'Crew Chief' when his/her aircraft undergoes deep maintenance, so the 'Crewman' contributes & oversees the work.

In the UK, Crewmen are Aircrew with only sufficient engineering knowledge to undergo turn round servicing as indeed so do the pilots. They have no involvement in offline servicing and are neither constituted crews nor aircraft supervisors. The U.K. crewman is expected to be able to deliver a briefing to their base groundcrew concise and accurate enough for a deploying ground crew party to know exactly what problem they face when deployed to a downed-bird situation brought on by technical failure.

There would be little benefit for a gunship aircrew undertaking flying training with rear crew and I assume that their flying training path is basic trainer > Apache direct.

Juliet - also understand the vast differences in scale between the US and UK military and their associated training systems.

They have a much bigger budget and much more choice plus the additional pressure to keep training types American.

With all the discussion in mind, I understand that there is a 135 flying around Shawbury and may have been there for a couple of weeks.

As the contract doesn't start for another year would this be working through some of the 'shortcomings' or Boscombe getting started on their evaluation?

Perhaps the source of the OP!

Although there is a Griffin HAR2 (ex Cyprus cab) based nowadays at Boscombe with RWTS; they never evaluated the Griffin prior to entry into service, and I doubt Boscombe will be involved in the introduction of the new types.

Boscombe did complete a HIRTA Assesment of Griffin HT1 when such checks were flavour of the month, but by that time the aircraft had been in service for some time.

Nope. They are transitioning to the EC145. Leonardo are currently blocking the procurement half way through but US Army now has no plans for single engine front line aircraft so "logically" have moved to again for basic training. Some bits of interest in here.
Comment that flying the EC145 is easier for new guys but the it might be exponentially more expensive in longer term. Legacy trainers generating extra costs for helicopter pilot school

Contingency plan unveiled!
 

R66 seen at Thruxton recently. A possible alternative 'contender'?
Might be a bit of a squeeze for the more generously proportioned rear crew applicants though!
https://scontent.flhr4-2.fna.fbcdn.n...94&oe=59757218

Sioux/Whirlwind :ok:

Gazelle/Wessex :ok:

Squirrel/Griffin :ok:

Case made??

To be serious for a moment, there were always (and probably always will be) a few basic rotary students who couldn't fly rotary - even some experienced FW pilots. The cheap(er) simpler type found these out early, while the "advanced" type - latterly with 2 engines - was good for the applied stuff and for teaching the "freight deck execs".

Seems simple pour moi, but then no-one asked me........ :(

Agreed - chop early if the skills/ability aren't there or make the training easier and waste time and effort and hours by chopping once they have been most of the way through the training system and then can't cope with the higher difficulty tasks/disciplines.

Having an easy to fly trainer isn't the best way of doing things.

crab@ Exactly so. As we know, it's lack of capacity rather than skill that leads to the chop - and if they haven't the capacity on the little one, there's unlikely to be much hope on the bigger (spelled d-e-a-r-e-r) type.

So the Juno, with its impossible autorotation/slope issues, should be ideal.

Best Ascent get rid of their 7 FTDs then, because the multi-aircraft scenarios which the FTDs enable might prove very effective in weeding out the weaker students.

The RAF doesn't. The British military does, because of the opinion that all helicopter crews need to receive winch training (much as the Army appear to have missed the boat - geddit?), and much as Ascent might love to have one fleet, they seem to have decided that the 135 platform is unsuitable for winch training. Some have said that it's not great for basic crewman training either, but I quite enjoy perusing PPrune at lunchtime so I'm not saying that (RIP Baldeep!).

That was only ever a peripheral task which may well end with the legacy contract. Meanwhile the unit (NB identity change a year ago) is busier than ever with the steady throughput of RAF and RN pilots, observers and crewmen.

When did that become policy? See post 52!

and where will those multi aircraft scenarios be fed in? Not for any of the first few months of training - seems a much more AFT element.

The RN require winch trg because of their enduring SAR role as a secondary funtion - the Army do need it but don't appear to have asked for it and the RAF could spend lots of hours doing it on Puma and Chinook when it is so much cheaper on 145.

135 doesn't have the capability to hover OEI at winching weights (crew on board) but I think the 145 can just manage it (possibly with wind assistance) hence a single fleet isn't possible.