Geoffersincornwall

Amen - They take what you say and twist it round without doing one the courtesy of actually comprehending the message.

Where did I say that?

What I actually said was -

.... do our best for one and all and that includes those in your list of unfortunates. Nowhere did I say that we don't offer them a service but you implied that any attempt to help them would fail due to the shortcomings you believe you have identified. I have more confident view because my glass is half full and yours is profoundly half empty.

Happy 2015

G.

[email protected]

And nowhere did I say this I still want it to be the best SAR service possible but some of us are concerned that trying to provide that within all the constraints imposed by EASA, CAA and most of all training provision make that a difficult task.

Happy 2015

Same again - welcome as a new member to the ad hom club

Vie sans frontieres

Just not very comprehensive training.

Same again

The lead vocal always gets the last word.

jeepys

"even the new shiny helicopters don't give the pilot a view of what is happening underneath the aircraft"

Some of the SAR cabs have a number of cameras on them one of them pointing down which is a nice gimmick.

How many times in the last ten years have the RAF had to rescue ejectees from the ocean?

[email protected]

hmmmm, you might be confusing footage you have seen from the FLIR/TV turrets with the camera mounted on the tail on some of the new shiny ones.

As for ejectees - don't know the exact stats but there have been a few, mercifully far fewer nowadays than used to be the case but a person in the water is a person in the water and there have been lots of those rescued both by day and night - so what was your point?

shetlander

By civvy SAR just as much as Military.

jeepys

No the cameras I have seen are totally independent showing a good picture directly below the a/c.

As for the ejectees question I was curious. Your compatriots bang on about ejectee training and how will the new SAR service provide for this but you have put it quite nicely thankyou, "a person in the water is a person in the water". Case closed.

llamaman

I see this is turning into the usual civvy v military bitch-off. UK SAR is being civilianised whether we like it or not, will it be any better or worse? Impossible to answer as it will be un-quantifiable; there is no current mechanism to judge overall success in SAR nor will there be in the near future. Will there be less training hours? Yes. Do the military currently over-train? Arguably, yes (I know Crab won't agree but we are, at times, guilty of 'tick chasing '). Will the new cabs be faster/more reliable? Yes. Will there be less bases? Yes. Will the new crews be any less capable? Probably not. All of which means, in all probability, the service will on aggregate be as effective. Some areas will be slightly better, some slightly worse. For those of you unable to accept the inevitable, have a bit of dignity and try supporting those who will do their best to make things work despite limitations that have been imposed outwith their control. Oh, and a safe and successful 2015 to you all.

Vie sans frontieres

That's very gracious of you llamaman but I'm not convinced by your reckoning that crews probably won't be any less capable. Irrespective of the capabilities of the individual, they're hamstrung by regulation and limited training resources. On top of this though, the SAR pedigree of some of those being recruited is shaky to say the least - more than anyone, those being recruited without a proper SAR background will need more thorough initial and continuation training than that currently provided/required by Bristow. (Whatever happened to the six month rearcrew OCU? That soon died a death didn't it?) To help prove the point, on this page alone there appear to be at least two of the current Bristow SAR aircrew who seem to think that hazards associated with ejectees are nothing to write home about. Heaven help us. Whatever happened to learning the lessons of the past?

llamaman

VSF, I don't think you should tar all of the Bristow's crews with the same brush based on the opinion of a couple of characters on this forum. I'm very sad to see the military SAR force go but going it is. I believe my point that the crews will be capable is valid and that they will do their utmost to overcome any limitations imposed upon them. Just as military SAR does. Constant negativity will achieve nothing, a bit of support would not go amiss.

noooby

crab, all 139's and 189's can have up to 8 external cameras fitted. Standard fit with the external load kit is to have 2 cameras in the belly, one pointing at the hook in case of a hang up with an external load, and one pointing straight down where the external load would be. They are mounted under the belly in a pod on the right hand side of the belly near sliding door. Great picture with very high resolution. Very useful. Image can be brought up on either of the MFD's up front, or at a crew station, or the 5th screen (if fitted) or all of them.

louisnewmark

Sorry Crab, but why are you so insistent that the best service for the winchman and survivor in calm winds and high hover is provided by a winch op using 'hover trim', rather than by the pilot using what is available to him/her? Besides which, the pilot can't see what is going on directly below the aircraft anyway, either day or night, so surely that's irrelevant? (Except, of course, for those downward-pointing dedicated cameras...)

leopold bloom

Years and years and years of experience.

Cabe LeCutter

It doesn't matter how many cameras that you fit to the helicopter, they are only of use to monitor a situation. You do not have the field of view to give you peripheral vision to be able to hover on them, otherwise you may as well buy drones to carry out all your SAR tasks.

There are some really useful comments posted by experienced guys on this thread, just a shame that the bitching comes up time and again and the voice of experience gets drowned out.

SAR is being privatised, the individual guys will do their best within the limitations that have been shouted about. There will be jobs that cannot be carried out, that has always been the case. When deployed with the RN, my diver was able to explore the cabin of a sunken yacht for casualties, the RAF could never do that, nor will the new service. My current organization has started carrying out night wets training, wow what a shock that is to the guys, but they are expanding their envelope. I suspect that the Mil guys have always tried to do that and are questioning whether the limitations placed on the Civ guys will allow them to do that.

Society is changing, when I started flying, if it wasn't written that you couldn't do something you tried it (within reason). Today, if it is not written that you are allowed to do it, then it is avoided at all costs. There is, in many cases little incentive to do more than the bare minimum, that is what you will get with contractorisation. Live with it.

I have had my rant, I will look in again in 6 months and see if the pointless bitching and back biting continues.

Cabe

[email protected]

Jeepys, not quite case closed - the additional risks from dealing with an ejectee are from entanglement with their kit or, the really dangerous one, the parachute if it is still attached.

The same risks might be encountered with a kite-surfer, parascender or even base jumper - the need to avoid re-inflating the canopy (or just blowing the kite) is paramount for the safety of the aircraft, crew and casualty.

More often than not, the safest method is a very high hover - to ensure the downwash is clear of the canopy - then a hover trim recovery of the winchman and casualty.

Absolute bread and butter stuff for milSAR rearcrew as they train for it regularly. Why? because the potential for f**kup is enormous.

LouisNewmark - the hover trim is often used for small vessels where maintaining visual from the cockpit is not possible - the difference in reaction time between verbal patter, pilot action and subsequent movement compared to winchop adjustment using hover trim means that hover trim will inevitably be the best option to provide the best service to the winchman. I was on one job where we used hover trim on a 3-masted schooner with 180' masts because there were no hover references in the overhead - trying to use attitude and patter would have been horrendous (I know because we tried it as a dummy, oh yes and it was dark)

Geoffers - I would like to be 'glass half full' but when the rearcrew, who do all the really nasty and messy stuff on SAR, are shafted on pay because they don't have a union or a licence, I have grave concerns about their motivation to go that extra mile beyond the minimum spec in the contract - no matter how professional they are. If you have a set of hard-won skills which rely on personal bravery to achieve and maintain, those skills should be accurately valued and I don't believe the UKSAR payscales do this at all.

Let us hope that 2015 brings some changes in this area.

jimf671

Nice one. Crab.

louisnewmark

"Years and years and years of experience."

Yes, for which I have a great deal of respect....but most of those years were spent on Sea Kings.

Thanks for the concise explanation, Crab; I understand your point, and recognise that there may be a time when 'hover trim' is useful, but I thought that the discussion was centering on wet winching, specifically ejectees, particularly at night. I respectfully suggest that, in such scenarios and with doppler-driven autohover systems being something of an anachronism, the 'hover trim' is virtually redundant and the best service would be provided by the pilot manipulating the AHRS-supported AFCS modes at whatever height might be necessitated by the scenario.

[email protected]

LouisNewmark - I believe both the S92 and the AW189 have very clever autopilots with GPS/inertial nav autohover capability - either the pilot or the winch op can fly the aircraft in this configuration - just the same as the Sea King (the 3A has a more flexible HT arrangement than the mk3 AHT).

So, despite the increase in accuracy - ie laser ring gyro type technology instead of doppler - it is still better (and easier) for the winch op (who can see exactly what is going on under the aircraft and what the winchman is doing) to control the aircraft using a hand controller with both the winch controls and the hover trim controls, than it is for him to verbalise the required movement and for the pilot to react to it.

There will be times when the winch op has to hand back control to the pilot (assisting cabin entry for winchman and survivor for instance) but that can be done quickly as a verbal handover.

There are plenty of rescues where the pilot gets to earn his pop-star wages but at night or when there are limited hover references over water, the hover trim operated by the winch op will be the weapon of choice.

S92 and AW189 SAR will be the same as Sea King SAR but hopefully a bit faster - no matter how shiny and new the aircraft, what happens underneath it hasn't changed much for many years, and for good reason - it works.

Geoffersincornwall

He'll find out all about it when he does the TR course.

Happy New Year to all those living in the present and not in the past. Happy though those memories may be.


G