Winches on Police/Airambulance helis?

[jayteeto]

A short course would be enough for most ex-mil pilots, I did all right and used the Puma winch in anger a few times. Back to the original topic, I don't think the mets purchase was for SAR, it was bought (probably) as a method of inserting personnel into 'difficult' areas.

[fkelly]

Or just about having a bigger, blacker cat than any other ASU...

[[email protected]]

Care Bear - no, any pilot can do winching providing he has been adequately trained and keeps current but that is the problem. Of the many ex mil pilots especially AAC, few will have done any winching and many will have only done basic stuff. We are forgetting that a pilots winching ability is only as good as the winch ops performance will allow and it is these guys who need the training and constant practice - how many ex mil loadies or winchmen are there in AA/ police helis? Not very many at all.

Minself - as others have highlighted you have some disinformation (Pres Bushism) ref the SARH contract. The main reason mil pilots are likely to remain in SAR is that is has been stated that there will be no reduction in capability and under present rules (and yes these could change) only mil pilots can operate the way we do.

The NHS do fund some hospital transfers - a fixed wing twin is used often but certain types of transfer - ECMO (extra corporeal membraneous oxygenation) for example cannot fly in it because of CAA regs and the AA are too small to carry the team and patient. The NHS do pay the MoD for medevacs and have to justify their reasons for calling on us. These jobs still don't need a fully equipped SAR aircraft though.

[MINself]

Yes granted I may have caught some of George's affliction, time will tell how bad this gets.

With the winching I absolutley concur that the military are the experts in all the areas of winching and any Police/HEMS operator will learn alot from how Mil SAR go about their business. A Police/HEMS operator could use winching effectively regardless of whether the rear crew have had an military experience after completing a basic course with continuation training and robust SOPs, I'm sure not all SAR crewmen start off with hundreds of winches in their logbooks, to have a capability if required, and thats at the centre of what I'm saying, its the ability of a Police/HEMS unit to carry out winching when one of the few coastal SAR units is tied up. It has been shown that its better to have a capability and not use it then to be left looking on helplessly because the closest aircraft with a winch is unavailable.

[tecpilot]

Wow, i have learned now, that the "most" police/AA pilots in UK have hoist experiences. Seems the UK mil forces train nearly all pilots in hoisting. What a difference to other armies.
In this case there will be no problem to meet the 500h PIC in HHO operations as needed by OPS3. onshore
As mentioned by Crab there is a need for a crew and i'm sure the usual observer/paramedic is ready to take his harness.

[[email protected]]

Minself - all RAF SAR rearcrew will have undergone an extensive winching course at SARTU at RAF Valley and then completed the 6-month Sea King OCU which includes a fair amount of winching. Then, when they get to their SAR flights they, are mentored by an experienced flight training officer (Tcat) and a QHCI training officer. That is a lot of training and supervision.

I agree it is better to have the capability and not use it; but to have it and use it unwisely or poorly and cause more injury through inexperience is worse.

Proper training and current practice = no problem;

tick in the logbook and no practice = accident waiting to happen.

[MightyGem]

that a large majority of Police pilots (and I would think AA pilots, but I'm not sure on that score), are ex military pilots and will most likely have a deal of winching / SAR experience.

Not quite. Figures, as of 18 months ago, showed 49 ex AAC, 11 ex RAF, 25 ex RN and 9 ex RM(with 22 non mil "civilian") Police pilots. Probably 99% of the Army guys will have no winching experience. SO, at the most you're probably looking at a max of 1 in 3 Police pilots with some sort of winching experience.

[What Limits]

I can't believe that there would be many of the 1 in 3 likely to have 500 hrs PIC in HHO. Perhaps that why most of the HHO in Europe is done outside of JAR-OPS 3.

[CareBear]

Mighty,
I stand corrected - didn't realise the green jobs had made such an influx into the police role in the last few years - thought it was mainly light and dark blue types !!

[handysnaks]

Carebear, we're not capable of a real job.....oh, alright. I'm not capable of a real job (now, if I add a winking smiley here, will it look like I'm being sardonic, unassuming, overconfident or just drunk cos I've had 3 pints of ESB after a very good CRM course?)

[jivusajob]

Crab said

If there is one area that could be transferred from SAR to AA, it is medevacs - these are time consuming and often tedious patient transfers that do not need a military aircraft and crew with a winch to complete. Get AA 24/7 operationally and give them all the medevacs and your precious SAR asset will be far more available for the job it is designed for.
(What picking up fast jet ejectees )


Sorry mate, north of the border (where AA is 24/7 and Gov funded) they have to operate under public transport rules when doing patient tansfers. Therefore, not uncommon for MOD ac to be called to carry out the job at night because wx below limits for public transport. 1500ft cloudbase.

Winching is hovering. Really not that hard, stop making such a big deal out of it.

[[email protected]]

jivusajob - sadly the firghtened teenagers in their aluminium death tubes don't bang out half as often as they used to so we have to make do with rescuing joe public from all sorts of silly places.

Public transport can't fly if the cloudbase is below 1500' at night ? shock horror!! Or do you mean those without an IR and a suitably equipped machine. It would make the MCA SAR job difficult otherwise.

Yup - winching is hovering.....only really, really good hovering

[jivusajob]

No I mean a suitably equipped SPIFR machine with a suitably qualified single pilot instrument rated pilot. The 1500' cloudbase rule means that if you can't go IMC due to the temp, MOD have to pick it up if the cloubase is below 1500'

Quess the difference is that MCA have 2 pilots or maybe some exemptions. Don't know not MCA

[[email protected]]

So actually it's an icing issue because you don't have an icing clearance on your machines? If there was no icing then you could do an IMC transfer even with a low cloudbase?

[cyclic]

Crab, even you know the answer to this one

You cannot fly below MEA in IMC. Therefore, if you are surrounded by mountains and the MEA is 5000' and the freezing level is 1000' it doesn't take a great deal of working out that the ambulance will be unlikely to do this tasking. That's when SAR is used to carry out transfers and why not.

Now, the icing clearance for the Sea King is pretty awful as well if we are honest and the guys and gals do very few IMC transits in true icing conditions. They don't have to as they have got goggles and can go low level through the hills. Goggles will come to the AAs, it is just a matter of time.

[tecpilot]

May be we are going off-topic, sure the goggle will come, but in the moment there are no questions in Europe, in case of a future use of this equipment the weather limitations according to OPS 3 will stay to prevent dangerous situations in case of a goggle failure. Goggles should improve the safety not reduce weather limitation. In the described situation you have to climb to your MEA and request an IFR pickup. If you could not fly IFR as a backup way(helicopter, pilot) you could not start this mission.

[cyclic]

If the cloudbase is 3000' in the mountains then the tops are in cloud. It would be perfectly safe to fly known routes at say 1500' using the goggles to assist. I am not suggesting that SPIFR would be down in the weeds on NVG. It would mean that a lot more transits could be safely conducted at night. Some nights the weather is good but due to the need to be at some considerable MEA to get across the hills the transfers are done by the military. One question never asked is what would happen on a patient transfer being conducted to military limits and there was an accident? These are transfers not rescues and an engine failure then reject lifting from a helipad is rarely practiced by the military and helipad approaches and departures are pretty much at the captain's discretion. Sorry, way off topic!

[tecpilot]

Finding your trail through the mountains absolute safe in VFR sounds good. But in case of a goggle failure right between the mountains you are lost with deep clouds. I remember me to an accident in the same situation, HEMS flight at night in mountain area and the crew tried to find her trail by using a GPS. Suddenly they catched some trees...

[ShyTorque]

Just a question here; are the UK military now flying single front seat occupant flights on NVG? And what about the normal crew complement of an Air Ambulance heli? BTW, possibly the most dangerous thing to do on NVGs is to try to use them to push the "visual" night weather limits.

Back to the core subject, for those seemingly to consider this as only a matter of the experience and competence of the pilot up front. Make no mistake, it most certainly DOES need to be matched by that of both the winch op and the person going on the wire. Especially so if the person to be winched up is on a stretcher.

[cyclic]

Yep, we can all find reasons not to do something. If properly organised and trained, there is no reason why AA can't use goggles in controlled circumstances.

In terms of rearcrew, a recent contract trained all their own winchmen from scratch and have been extremely successful. These winchmen will go on to be winch operators in good time. It is not impossible, it just has to be done properly.