Winches on Police/Airambulance helis?
Avoid imitations
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Cyclic,
I'm not sure if your last answer was aimed at me because I said nothing about finding a reason not to do anything.
I take it you do have considerable winching and NVG experience yourself?
I'm not sure if your last answer was aimed at me because I said nothing about finding a reason not to do anything.
I take it you do have considerable winching and NVG experience yourself?
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Not aimed at anyone specifically, I was just commenting that we must all keep receptive to new ideas and change.
Yep, I do have considerable winching and NVG time both over the sea and in the mountains. I've also done it for both the military and commercial operators.
Yep, I do have considerable winching and NVG time both over the sea and in the mountains. I've also done it for both the military and commercial operators.
Avoid imitations
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OK, I've done a bit too. As an ex mil and ex-civilian NVG instructor and ex-SAR pilot, I'm as receptive to new ideas as anyone, (hence my quite varied career). From later in life, whilst flying as a police pilot, I can recall quite a few times when either, or both would have been very nice to have.
However, I stand by what I said in the post before your last.
There are obviously other factors to consider. The training bill would be quite considerable, depending on what level of competence might be expected and mandated.
In UK we really do need a properly "joined up" organisation for civil emergency services helicoptering (a civil air wing), especially if RAF SAR is to be run down even more (I'm not an advocate of that, btw). Without it and without proper funding, any real progress will be very difficult.
However, I stand by what I said in the post before your last.
There are obviously other factors to consider. The training bill would be quite considerable, depending on what level of competence might be expected and mandated.
In UK we really do need a properly "joined up" organisation for civil emergency services helicoptering (a civil air wing), especially if RAF SAR is to be run down even more (I'm not an advocate of that, btw). Without it and without proper funding, any real progress will be very difficult.
Thread Starter
Cyclic - nobody mentioned mountains or safety alt - just a 1500' cloudbase (and that wasn't specified as agl/asl or amsl). In your example a Sea King certainly wouldn't do the IMC transit either. I was questioning the statement about not being able to fly with a cloudbase below 1500' at night and I think Jivusajob forgot to add some specifics to his post.
Not sure how we got on to goggles but the AA will get them eventually and be able to operate at night - which is a good thing - but again there will be a training burden to achieve and maintain competency. In this case, all but a very few ex mil will be ahead of the game and the almost instant level of expertees will be very good for safety.
No one said that rearcrew can't be trained - it is the amount and cost of the training that will be difficult for AAs to absorb.
As for your question about accidents - the same questions would be asked whether it was AA or SAR - the fact that we don't have to operate to Cat A is irrelevant, we have our rules and you have yours, nothing is 100% guaranteed safe.
Shy - can't speak for the SH force but SAR is always 2 pilot for NVG. Thoroughly agree re joined up assets, especially in terms of command and control. Seems to work OK in Scotland so why not the rest of the UK.
Not sure how we got on to goggles but the AA will get them eventually and be able to operate at night - which is a good thing - but again there will be a training burden to achieve and maintain competency. In this case, all but a very few ex mil will be ahead of the game and the almost instant level of expertees will be very good for safety.
No one said that rearcrew can't be trained - it is the amount and cost of the training that will be difficult for AAs to absorb.
As for your question about accidents - the same questions would be asked whether it was AA or SAR - the fact that we don't have to operate to Cat A is irrelevant, we have our rules and you have yours, nothing is 100% guaranteed safe.
Shy - can't speak for the SH force but SAR is always 2 pilot for NVG. Thoroughly agree re joined up assets, especially in terms of command and control. Seems to work OK in Scotland so why not the rest of the UK.
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The training burden for overland recoveries (not rescues) wouldn't be too great but that's for the accountants.
My point that the AA is operating Class One (JAR) in and out of helipads is relevant. When was the last time you practiced a rejected helipad? The safest place to go is back onto the helipad, yet the military don't have a laid down procedure for obstructed helipads. Some of the towering take-offs I've seen from helipads in congested areas would definitely result in an accident should an engine fail at the wrong time. This is considered an acceptable risk and everything is done to minimise that risk, yet if the military would take a little from their commercial colleagues the situation could be different.
Before I left, I had a go at a Class 1 helipad in the Sea King. It works and those that I showed couldn't believe that we weren't doing it.
Our rules for flight over land at night are 1000' above terrain/obstacles within 20 miles of track. Different over high ground of course.
My point that the AA is operating Class One (JAR) in and out of helipads is relevant. When was the last time you practiced a rejected helipad? The safest place to go is back onto the helipad, yet the military don't have a laid down procedure for obstructed helipads. Some of the towering take-offs I've seen from helipads in congested areas would definitely result in an accident should an engine fail at the wrong time. This is considered an acceptable risk and everything is done to minimise that risk, yet if the military would take a little from their commercial colleagues the situation could be different.
Before I left, I had a go at a Class 1 helipad in the Sea King. It works and those that I showed couldn't believe that we weren't doing it.
Our rules for flight over land at night are 1000' above terrain/obstacles within 20 miles of track. Different over high ground of course.
Thread Starter
Cyclic, one problem is that we don't have the graphs required to calculate CDPs etc for perf A ops, so even if we wanted to do it, no-one would pay the money for Westlands/Qinetic to provide the data.
Secondly, for most of our rescues, the towering take off from the hospital site is done after the casualty has been off-loaded so only mil personnel are on the aircraft (acceptable risk).
Thirdly, the vertical reject is covered during basic and advanced confined area training at Shawbury and we regularly do an advanced single engine training package in the aircraft with both vertical rejects and flyaways practised. How many AA trg setups actually pull an engine and droop the Nr to minimum to practise these profiles?
So you flew a Class 1 helipad profile in a Sea King - using what performance data and when did you pull the engine? If you mean you reversed up and back to 150' or similar then you are ignoring the increased exposure time in your risk analysis - the quicker you get SSE the better.
Secondly, for most of our rescues, the towering take off from the hospital site is done after the casualty has been off-loaded so only mil personnel are on the aircraft (acceptable risk).
Thirdly, the vertical reject is covered during basic and advanced confined area training at Shawbury and we regularly do an advanced single engine training package in the aircraft with both vertical rejects and flyaways practised. How many AA trg setups actually pull an engine and droop the Nr to minimum to practise these profiles?
So you flew a Class 1 helipad profile in a Sea King - using what performance data and when did you pull the engine? If you mean you reversed up and back to 150' or similar then you are ignoring the increased exposure time in your risk analysis - the quicker you get SSE the better.
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Okay the military don't have the same regs but on your "secondly" the thinking behind Group A peformance covers not just those in the aircraft but those on the ground around the landing site too.
SSE and what it implies should not just be an airspeed, it should be the profile you use to get there and the options you then have in the event of it all going wrong
SSE and what it implies should not just be an airspeed, it should be the profile you use to get there and the options you then have in the event of it all going wrong
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OK, you're right it will never get paid for now. Hopefully, in 2012 we will all be working to the same parameters.
The "acceptable risk" is not acceptable if you crash into property or people.
The Sea King advanced single engine profile is generally practiced once per year on re-cat. It involves, as you say, a droop of Nr to the fly away or a running landing reject generally to a very large piece of concrete or tarmac. It doesn't involve a vertical helipad profile.
The AAs do pull an engine during reject profiles and are practiced every 6 months. In the Bolkow this involves actually throttling back one engine to flight idle and in the EC135 the training idle switch is used which is very realistic. As for the 902 and 109 I couldn't comment. The EC135 also has a vertical helipad profile.
I flew a simulated profile worked out on best judgement. I didn't pull an engine, just reduced torques accordingly as per all simulated fly aways. Exposure time doesn't matter if the aircraft can always be landed safely or flown away anywhere during the profile. Better to take a little extra time amd make sure that the profile can be safely flown then rush to get towards SSE. If exposure time was everything then we would have no need for Class One profiles.
The "acceptable risk" is not acceptable if you crash into property or people.
The Sea King advanced single engine profile is generally practiced once per year on re-cat. It involves, as you say, a droop of Nr to the fly away or a running landing reject generally to a very large piece of concrete or tarmac. It doesn't involve a vertical helipad profile.
The AAs do pull an engine during reject profiles and are practiced every 6 months. In the Bolkow this involves actually throttling back one engine to flight idle and in the EC135 the training idle switch is used which is very realistic. As for the 902 and 109 I couldn't comment. The EC135 also has a vertical helipad profile.
I flew a simulated profile worked out on best judgement. I didn't pull an engine, just reduced torques accordingly as per all simulated fly aways. Exposure time doesn't matter if the aircraft can always be landed safely or flown away anywhere during the profile. Better to take a little extra time amd make sure that the profile can be safely flown then rush to get towards SSE. If exposure time was everything then we would have no need for Class One profiles.
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Winches on Air Ambulances
Refering back to some earlier posts, in an ideal world we would all have all the equipment and all the training we really need. Obviously funding prevents this.
From my own experiences there have been plenty of occasions when I have been grateful for the ability to perform night HEMS, but only one where a winch would have been handy. In these days of limited funding, prioritisation is essential and I would strongly advocate sorting out a night capability before messing around with winches on Air Ambulances.
On the odd occassion a winch would be useful we have to just accept the delay in getting the guys who are equiped and trained to do it. This delay could of course be reduced by an appropriate and co-ordinated tasking policy for all emergency services aircraft.
On the subject of the Met Air Support Unit I beleive it's more of a chicken end egg question. Was there an actual requirement for winch fitted EC145s or was it more of "Blimey, I can't beleive they've actually found the £15 million! We'd better think of a way of using them now!".
Either way, they have the kit now and are certainly in the best position of any police unit to force a decision from the regulators. Good luck to them - it could be of benefit to us all in the long run.
From my own experiences there have been plenty of occasions when I have been grateful for the ability to perform night HEMS, but only one where a winch would have been handy. In these days of limited funding, prioritisation is essential and I would strongly advocate sorting out a night capability before messing around with winches on Air Ambulances.
On the odd occassion a winch would be useful we have to just accept the delay in getting the guys who are equiped and trained to do it. This delay could of course be reduced by an appropriate and co-ordinated tasking policy for all emergency services aircraft.
On the subject of the Met Air Support Unit I beleive it's more of a chicken end egg question. Was there an actual requirement for winch fitted EC145s or was it more of "Blimey, I can't beleive they've actually found the £15 million! We'd better think of a way of using them now!".
Either way, they have the kit now and are certainly in the best position of any police unit to force a decision from the regulators. Good luck to them - it could be of benefit to us all in the long run.
Thread Starter
Cylic - you are working on old info, since the advent of flight QHIs 3 years ago the adv SE package is practised far more frequently than once a year and the very first part of the sequence is a failure from the hover, first from 10' and then 15'. Now whilst that's not a 75' vertical reject it is still a vertical profile and allows you to point out that in a high vertical reject, you will need to lower the lever to contain enough Nr to cushion the touchdown.
If the towering take off is done correctly, you only transition when you have sufficient height/space to dive on speed for SSE - before that you take the vertical reject option. I'm not saying every mil pilot flys it correctly but most I have done cats on certainly do. The only difference between what we do and a perf A departure is that we don't maintain sight of the LS by moving backwards (thats what markers are for) and we don't have a pre-calculated figure for our cdp, it is done on best judgement just like your simulated Class one helipad departure.
Trolley, thanks for getting the thread back on track, I think you have put the issue of winches into the correct perspective.
If the towering take off is done correctly, you only transition when you have sufficient height/space to dive on speed for SSE - before that you take the vertical reject option. I'm not saying every mil pilot flys it correctly but most I have done cats on certainly do. The only difference between what we do and a perf A departure is that we don't maintain sight of the LS by moving backwards (thats what markers are for) and we don't have a pre-calculated figure for our cdp, it is done on best judgement just like your simulated Class one helipad departure.
Trolley, thanks for getting the thread back on track, I think you have put the issue of winches into the correct perspective.
OK, My post No 30 on this thread was not entirely serious!
In 6 years UK HEMS I've never needed a winch in over 3120 call outs.
(In 10 years RAFSAR I only had 234 callouts. Winched on most of those, correction, hovered* while winchop and winchman winched!)
*Had 70kts IAS on one of those! Is that "hovering"?
In 6 years UK HEMS I've never needed a winch in over 3120 call outs.
(In 10 years RAFSAR I only had 234 callouts. Winched on most of those, correction, hovered* while winchop and winchman winched!)
*Had 70kts IAS on one of those! Is that "hovering"?
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Out of interest, have you ever had to call SAR out to winch on any of those call outs?
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Winches on Police/Air Ambulance Helis
Rules and regs can be changed even by the CAA, so it is not inconceivable for a set of non-passenger HEMS/Police rules to be introduced that allow the use of winches and NVG. The problem that operator will have, is that they will need a training organisation to support these new skills. You cannot just employ suitable qualified ex-mil pilots. This will cost money and this extra cost will need to come from the operator? or central government. Also there will need to be some central form of checking and regulation of skills. A nice idea but with all the AA trusts and Chief Police considering that they 'own' their particular aircraft, a huge amount of give and take will be needed by those involved----a bridge too far perhaps??
You are correct; no hills down here! But not always flat....................
As for winching, FB is generally on hand.
We like to shut down so we can all get out and help!
Possibly could have had the RAF for this one but we are so tiny there's generally somewhere to park......
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US Police Pilot
All...
I was doing some research on hoist training and came across this website and thread, which I found very interesting. I noticed that most (if not all) postings were from the UK, or at least from across the pond. I would agree that we in the US have some different methods and philosophies about airborne law enforcement work (including SAR) but I think the primary issue is training for the missions you perform. The decision on whether or not an agency needs to perform a specific type of mission really depends on that agency's tasking, and/or the availability of other resources.
If we take a look at hurricane Katrina, it's pretty clear that the hoist-equipped aircraft were the ones that saved lives. Those aircrews were far more effective at rescuing people than the aircrews who did not have hoists. When I spoke with the Louisianny State Police pilots, their biggest dissapointment was that they did not have hoist-equipped helicopters, and they were limited to flying around and looking for victims who could only be rescued by aircrews that had hoists. Thousands of hoist missions were conducted and to my knowledge, there was not a single hoist-related incident or accident.
As a SAR wetcrewman and hoist operator in the Navy (25 years ago) I learned the value of hoist operations. When I joined the police department and started flying light helicopters (18 years ago) our SAR work was limited to one-skid landings and other relatively high-risk techniques. They always scared the heck out of me - but they were the only game in town. The smart folks (and fortunately we have several of them) turned the missions down.
We just replaced all of our aircraft with AS350 B3s equipped with a hoist. A hoist does require significant initial training and consistent recurrent training, but hoists enable SAR crews to expand their mission capabilities. It makes little or no sense to me to have a 2.5 million dollar aircraft, which was designed to assist officers and to enhance public safety, to be flying around in circles watching someone drown without the ability to save them. (This actually happened to us.)
Yes, it takes significant initial training and consistent recurrent training to remain proficient at hoist operations, but that's the case with every piece of equipment in the aircraft. In my experience, most airborne law enforcement units in the US don't have hoists because their aircraft are operating at or near their max gross weight with all the police equipment. But as they replace those aircraft, many agencies (like us) are acquiring more powerful aircraft, and many are acquiring hoists.
I love this website!
Regards
Kevin Means
Training Officer, San Diego Police Air Support Unit
I was doing some research on hoist training and came across this website and thread, which I found very interesting. I noticed that most (if not all) postings were from the UK, or at least from across the pond. I would agree that we in the US have some different methods and philosophies about airborne law enforcement work (including SAR) but I think the primary issue is training for the missions you perform. The decision on whether or not an agency needs to perform a specific type of mission really depends on that agency's tasking, and/or the availability of other resources.
If we take a look at hurricane Katrina, it's pretty clear that the hoist-equipped aircraft were the ones that saved lives. Those aircrews were far more effective at rescuing people than the aircrews who did not have hoists. When I spoke with the Louisianny State Police pilots, their biggest dissapointment was that they did not have hoist-equipped helicopters, and they were limited to flying around and looking for victims who could only be rescued by aircrews that had hoists. Thousands of hoist missions were conducted and to my knowledge, there was not a single hoist-related incident or accident.
As a SAR wetcrewman and hoist operator in the Navy (25 years ago) I learned the value of hoist operations. When I joined the police department and started flying light helicopters (18 years ago) our SAR work was limited to one-skid landings and other relatively high-risk techniques. They always scared the heck out of me - but they were the only game in town. The smart folks (and fortunately we have several of them) turned the missions down.
We just replaced all of our aircraft with AS350 B3s equipped with a hoist. A hoist does require significant initial training and consistent recurrent training, but hoists enable SAR crews to expand their mission capabilities. It makes little or no sense to me to have a 2.5 million dollar aircraft, which was designed to assist officers and to enhance public safety, to be flying around in circles watching someone drown without the ability to save them. (This actually happened to us.)
Yes, it takes significant initial training and consistent recurrent training to remain proficient at hoist operations, but that's the case with every piece of equipment in the aircraft. In my experience, most airborne law enforcement units in the US don't have hoists because their aircraft are operating at or near their max gross weight with all the police equipment. But as they replace those aircraft, many agencies (like us) are acquiring more powerful aircraft, and many are acquiring hoists.
I love this website!
Regards
Kevin Means
Training Officer, San Diego Police Air Support Unit
Hi kevin and welcome.
UK police operate under different rules to you. We are NOT SAR capable neither are we encouraged/expected to go out and save lives. We do - by accident but that is the only exemption. Anything on a national level would be run by the Military.
Civvy operators (od which we are one) operating under 'commercial' legislation can only operate under their own remit and not 'stray' outside their field of expertise.
Plus we don't get many hurricanes
UK police operate under different rules to you. We are NOT SAR capable neither are we encouraged/expected to go out and save lives. We do - by accident but that is the only exemption. Anything on a national level would be run by the Military.
Civvy operators (od which we are one) operating under 'commercial' legislation can only operate under their own remit and not 'stray' outside their field of expertise.
Plus we don't get many hurricanes
Plus we don't get many hurricanes...
Yet, TC, yet! The weather is changing they say... we may be getting hot n hi in December yet!
Going back a few posts to that comment on the Met getting a hoist. No inside line here, but I got the impression that the attitude was that the craft could carry it so get it and [as the cost was relatively small] try out the methods rather than just talk about them.... same with the rappelling gear.
It is possible that the pressure came from the firearms boys... brilliant idea
moving them out of Lippitts Hill where they were alongside the ASU and plonking them in a different county also outside London, badly served by roads and twice as far as they were from the centre of the Capital.
So now to get a team airlifted in they have to send the helicopter that is 14 miles from the centre out to the south east about [I guess] 20 miles to bring them back West ... Yes well thought out that one.
Last time they went down this winching road in 1980 they had a single winch for the Bell 222's but took it off the day after the unit launch put it in the store [until they had time to consider its worth] where it stayed until the 355s arrived. I guess it went to Portugal with the 222s!
Yet, TC, yet! The weather is changing they say... we may be getting hot n hi in December yet!
Going back a few posts to that comment on the Met getting a hoist. No inside line here, but I got the impression that the attitude was that the craft could carry it so get it and [as the cost was relatively small] try out the methods rather than just talk about them.... same with the rappelling gear.
It is possible that the pressure came from the firearms boys... brilliant idea
moving them out of Lippitts Hill where they were alongside the ASU and plonking them in a different county also outside London, badly served by roads and twice as far as they were from the centre of the Capital. So now to get a team airlifted in they have to send the helicopter that is 14 miles from the centre out to the south east about [I guess] 20 miles to bring them back West ... Yes well thought out that one.
Last time they went down this winching road in 1980 they had a single winch for the Bell 222's but took it off the day after the unit launch put it in the store [until they had time to consider its worth] where it stayed until the 355s arrived. I guess it went to Portugal with the 222s!
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Anything on a national level would be run by the Military.