Iran 1976.....Papa Charlie Operation 175nm East of Bandar Abbas

http://s473.photobucket.com/albums/r...Picture087.jpg




John "The Black Sardine" Black's first set of Alouette M/R Tip Caps.

Kind of a hard thing to do in the middle of a rocky desert!



http://s473.photobucket.com/albums/r...Picture001.jpg

Wet Start. Djambi 1972 ish. In the style of Turner.:)

http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b270/cumpas/BR2.jpg

Wet Start
 

"Wet start" LOL - pretty moist in the fire marshal's pants too I suspect!

check out the December rotorheads calendar http://www.pprune.org/rotorheads/352...er-2008-a.html

Is this the first for Zagros? Zagros Eye-ran that is. Seem to remember it was the world's highest drilling operation.

http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b2...pas/ZAGROS.jpg

More Abu Dhabi 1974
 

Found a few more.......

http://i99.photobucket.com/albums/l3...nthehangar.jpg
212, WS55 and 206.

http://i99.photobucket.com/albums/l3...PColinSole.jpg
Colin Sole and KGP. KGP's 212 conversion I think.

http://i99.photobucket.com/albums/l3...oftheConaw.jpg
Steve Conaway (I think) and Ray McGrath. Steve had some excitement when the float cylinder pressure relief blew off while he was hovering Bell 212 VR-BEX. The ac had recently arrived from UK and the bottle pressure hadn't been reduced for the Ta.

http://i99.photobucket.com/albums/l3...theAlMulla.jpg
The view looking NE toward the harbour from the roof of the Al Mullah Bldg. No doubt current residents of Abu Dhabi will recognise the road on the left of the picture as Shk Hamdan St.

http://i99.photobucket.com/albums/l3...ftheAlMu-1.jpg
Another shot from the roof looking East. It was from a balcony in this building that an armchair was launched. Not by me I hasten to add.

Thanks for the pics, Mr. Alan. Terima Kasih.

Duri nowadays are most likely still looks like Duri then, but of course, with modern touches. Some of the old plywood houses are still there, also those built from Portacamps.

Unfortunately, Chevron (successor of Caltex) do not carry seismic helicopter operations anymore, so they chose to replace the Bell 212 with a more elegant Bell 430 of Pelita Air Service. It flies between Duri and Rumbai, sometimes Seletar, Singapore....

Our current bird:
http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a2...2150resize.jpg

Pictures from Nigeria??
 

Hi Alan,

Do you have any pictures from Nigeria operations. On a more personal note I have a picture of "two (very very young) men in a boat", who are now not so very very young, no not you and me!! and some other pictures of barbeques at the river beach at Port Harcourt but sadly hardly anything of the operation.

Cheers,

Graeme

Graeme

Pictures of people & life in general on any Bristow operation (past or present) are as valid as pictures of aircraft. When I started the thread my intention was to carry on where www.skyweaver.co.uk had left off. To that end any related photo, video or anecdotal material is most welcome.

TTO

An interesting comparison. Discuss
 

Taken at Redhill.

S-58T (G-BCTX) in the foreground after being modified from Radial to Twin Pac in around 1974 or 75.

Wessex in the background, looks like a refurbished ex Nigeria aircraft destined for Skye or it could be ASWI from Great Yarmouth having had a paint job.

I can't work out what BCTX was doing there but I would date this picture in 74 or 75 or late 79 early 80?

So, Tail Take Off, am I right?

Queens of the Skies they was!

I enjoyed flying the T-Bird as much as any helicopter I have flown.....clambering up the side of the ol' girl after having slung your kit into the windy...now that is a Man's Helicopter!

Add in the Riff Raff being imprisoned below your boots....having that great big windy to open so you could lean out and see the world from a right perspective....you had to as Bristow had mounted all sorts of useful Decca stuff and a third Bar Alt on the panel and in the windows.

She was stable, dependable, well mannered....and in plain terms a "Lady".

She provided entertainment.....you could watch the snow cone form on the main gear wheel....then disappear as the weight of it caused the wheel to rotate.....she spit snowballs out of the EAPS just at the corner of your vision....and made you wonder what the heck had happened.

The brakes never worked equally....or one preferred not to work at all....the tail wheel lock would either not release or would not latch...dependning upon which mode caused the most angst.

....and.....if you needed to do anything under the bonnet....you need two HVAC tin bashers and a small boy to get at anything.

We had some grand times flying the T-Birds.

And some stories to tell....locating ourselves in London by checking the time, whizzing about the Rassay Sound not looking at torpedo's, sneaking into France under a Bomber's Moon.....great days.

Eh, Soggy?

Now as to the other imitation of the T-Bird there was the Wessex....which was a great bird too.....in her own way.

S58ET and W60
 

G-BCTX brings back many memories. Worked extensively on her in Aberdeen and Sumburgh. Among the fleet of Bristow S58T's she was probably the most tempermental. In 1979 she was sold to Astra Helicopters in South Africa along with G-BCRV and G-BCRW with me tagging on behind. In SA she was completely different, perhaps the climate was more to her liking!! I left SA in 1981 and don't know what happened to the S58's after that. By the way, they were left in Bristow colors, even after paint striping one it went back into Bristow colors. Never did find out the real story to that - if there even was one!

Graeme

SAS

Any pics from when you flew her?

Im kicking myself i never got any photos of the wessex landing on my doorstep over the years.. Now that was interesting!

Graeme,
Was that the aircraft that was in Durban doing shipservice with the late Jeremy L of Court Heli's?

Got some old 35mm slides that I will one day get around to scanning and posting. I will have to withhold some of the names to protect the guilty....errrr...innocent however.

No, Court Helicopters were doing the ship servicing. Although Astra Helicopters owned the ex Bristow 58's they were operated by Republic Helicopters supporting oil exploration. Jonny Kluer, Colin Sole were a couple of the pilots I remember that had an association with Bristow. It was Jonny that spent a few hours in the water off Durban after ditching a W55.

When I first went to SA I stayed at the Baragwaneth Flying Club in Jo'burg. In the main hall there was a bust - can't remember who it was - but it was dressed up in goggles, cap and silk scarf and according to the old waiter whose name was Nelson, these items were donated by Sharky Ward during his time there. I'm sure many stories could be told by some people on this forum about these long gone days.

Alan B - didn't you spend some time out there??

Graeme

Johannesburg
 

Graeme,

I did indeed. I went to South Africa in 1975, initially in Jo'burg on the Hiller 12E's and Bell 47's doing powerline inspections and survey work. It was great sport and we would spend 4-6 weeks in the field with a Bell 47 staying in places like Oliphantshoek and Sishen. Went down to Durban for a few weeks on the ship-servicing contract based at Virginia airport and that was good fun too. We had a Wessex, Whirlwind and an Alouette 2. The Wessex & Whilrwind were for ship-servicing but the Al 2 was used on a 6- weekly pipeline inspection that went from Durban to Middleburg in Transval via Sasolburg and back down to Durban by a different route. I did that once and it was brilliant but regretably I took very few pics in South Africa.

When in Jo'burg I stayed at Baragwanath too. It was the Johannesburg Light Plane Club and steeped in history. 'Bara G' is closed now but hopefully JLPC is still there if only as a museum.

Not strictly Bristow - but when one of the two Bristow Wessex was written off, Djambi 72, a Puma was sent in as a replacement. Here it is two weeks after arrival, pictured on a jungle heli-pad.

http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b270/cumpas/puma.jpg

Havn't a clue I was still running around in short trousers then. It's just a picture I stumbled across on the internet when I had a bit too much time on my hands. Thought it might provoke some interesting discussion. It came from Image of Sikorsky S-58. Photos from the AirTeamImages.com Collection of Pictures where the notes date it 1977 but who knows?

By the way the registration on the wessex looks more like G-BAWJ to me.

I know that the S58t & the Wessex were built by differant manufacturers in differant countries & that one was a modified single while the other was always a twin but did they have any common or interchangeable components. (I suspect I have already answered my own question).

Forget.

What happened the 330?

Am i correct in saying thats the tail and tail rotor gearbox in the photo or the whole ship?

Funny how the US Army with the Bell UH-1 series was able to kill off the CH-34.

I always wondered why the Sikorsky folks did not put a GE Turbine in the 34 and save us from the back breaking Huey.:mad:

You don't reckon politics and a Texan in the White House had anything to do with it?

TTO,

The Wessex was by no means always a twin. It started off in life as a single and in its life as the Wessex 1 or Wessex 3 was used for ship-borne SAR or anti-submarine duties. The Wessex 2 (RAF) and Wessex 5 (RN) came a lot later. The Wessex 60 was the civil variant of the Wessex 2/5. It had a lot more power than the S58T, but the 58T didn't suffer the intake icing problems of the Wessex and was also much smoother as it had bifilars. When I'm next on leave I'll look at my old photos and logbooks as I flew all the Bristow 58Ts. As SAS says, Queen of the Skies :ok:

The picture of G-BCTX could indeed be 1977. I can see it has the fuel dump mod on the aux tank which we only did around 76-77. I can't place the location but for it to be parked next to the Wessex I can only think of Great Yarmouth or Redhill.

Graeme

The picture of TX is definitely taken on the Redhill ramp, I spent a long time looking at that view :}. The cheat sheet notes on the picture provide the following data:

Manufacturer: Sikorsky Type: S-58Version: Registration: G-BCTX Sector: Commercial - Current Colours: Bristow Helicopters Country: United Kingdom Location: Redhill Photo by: Carl FordDate: 1977-06-04

I remember packing up the last of the 58's with Graeme back in 1980 or 81 when they headed out to South Africa. I got a lot of great experience on the S58T, and worked some very talented people on that programme. If I am lucky and get a scanner for Christmas, I have thousands of shots of all this stuff that I can stick on here. Back in the early 90's the company I worked for bought a 58T, it was the biggest bag of crap I have ever operate - I was very happy to see it fly away. Still quite a number of them around in the US, and old round motors as well. Come to that, theres a lot of 55's still out there.

Give us a call sometime Graeme, I'm on Skype if I'm awake. I saw Al at Helitech last year, and others with secret identities on here that I am not at liberty to disclose! :eek:

I was very sorry to read about Bob Innes if that information is correct. Bob was a very positive influence on a lot of people who are in this business today. He always had time to stop and BS, and always caught up on the news of everyone he had ever worked with or known. A good man.

Davy07. I didn’t see it burn but the story was – it had landed on a river-side wooden helipad for a running re-fuel. See the fuel drums. Two pilots on board. At some point it ‘twitched’ and both pilots went for the rudder pedals. The result – it rolled off the helipad onto the fuel drums. No one hurt.

The mess you see on top of the fuel drums is the main gear box and engines. Probably lying at the bottom of the Batang Hari river.

Found another picture from above.

http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b270/cumpas/PUMA2.jpg

Must of been a big twitch if both drivers stood on the pedals.

Thanks for the information :ok:

Johannesburg Light Plane Club, at Baragwanath is most definitely defunct I'm afraid,
I went to the site a couple of years ago while on holiday, its a horrible Industrial area, the only thing left in amongst the garbage is the beautiful old WW II hangar that we (Helicopter Services Pty) rented.
The ONLY sign that JLPC ever existed was a large chunk of concrete with blue tiles on it, part of the swimming pool, behind the hangar.
Is Colin Sole reading this forum, we were together in Warri and friends in Joburg. he purchased my motor cycle when I left.

Soggy

As one who knows next to nothing about either type I bow to your superior knowledge.:O What I was getting at is as I understand it the Wessex 60 was built as a twin turbine where as the S58t was a modified piston single.

Did Bristows do the conversions of the S58ts themselves or were they already modified?

Bristow bought the aircraft from the German Army as I recall and did the "T" mod themselves at Redhill.

The 58T used a twin pack concept....two Pratt and Whitney PT-6 engines driving a combining gear box then a drive shaft input to the man transmission.

The twin pac is generally the same as in the Bell 212.

With Dash Six PT-6's the old girl had good single engine power....not as good as the Wessex with two big Gnome's unfortunately.

The Wessex used a different concept to get the drive to the MGB.

TTO,

Yes the Wessex 60 was always a twin, but in the military it operated as the Wessex 1 and 3, both of which were singles and as the Wessex 2 (RAF), Wessex 4 (Royal Flight) and Wessex 5 (RN). The Wessex 60 had excellent single-engine performance for its day and an excellent fuel control system. As SAS says the 58ETs were modified by Bristow from ex German military machines, the old radials being changed to PT6s. In the cabin you could still see some of the ex-military markings in German! I could never understand why Bell never went for the much easier Sikorsky system of a manual flight idle gate, rather than an electric idle stop. The Bristow aircraft had engine air bleed heaters which were never as effective as the BAH paraffin burners, and the passengers often complained in winter when the cabin only attained a few degrees above freezing. They were very smooth because of the bifilars and the worst thing the company did was to remove them from aircraft on the Teesside contract to save weight. We operated them from many bases in UK - Aberdeen, Sumburgh, Haverfordwest, Southampton, Bournemouth and Skye that I remember. This gave us lots of variety. I was also lucky enough to operate one in Portugal for a few months from the old BEAS pad in Figueira da Foz in support of Shell's last offshore well in Portugal in 1977.

Sogs,

Ever pump your onshore diversion fuel over the side by forgetting to shut off the transfer pump while topping up the internal tanks from the external tank?:ugh:

I also seem to recollect a story about a 58T external tank which had its vent taped and re-sprayed during a check. I believe a very impressive demonstration of the ability of the fuel pumps to draw down to a vaccumn resulted in a somewhat flat but wrinkly ET. Perhaps 'That Pilot' could confirm?

TOD

I have been looking for some pictures from Nigeria and have found a couple. I'm sure I have some more need to do quite a bit of digging.

This is on the Sea Trucks boat going to Bony Beach for barbeque. Jan Biles, Bill Denman, Alan Biles, Tony Barrett.

http://i401.photobucket.com/albums/p...r/P1000054.jpg


This is a certain persons farewell night at Port Harcourt, Alan Biles, Ian Jonson, Annie Queen.
http://i401.photobucket.com/albums/p...r/P1000055.jpg

Santa Claus arriving at the Port Harcourt Golf Club, I think it was Jim O'Brien but too long ago now. Sorry for the poor quality picture.
http://i401.photobucket.com/albums/p...r/P1000058.jpg

Okay, this is driving me NUTS!! How do you get the pictures on the website. I have followed some instructions from an earlier post - well obviously I haven't - but I can't see where I've gone wrong.

Help please.

Graeme

Do a search on posting, titles, rotorheads.

Unless of course you reckon a posting is something a Nigerian uses to support his gate..........

A few more from Duri:

http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/n...-OldHangar.jpg
The Old Hangar 1983

http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/n...uri-PK-HBK.jpg
PK-HBK with test load. Sorry about the crop!

http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/n...ri-Rebuild.jpg
Serious rebuild! Graham "Boots" Conway, Alan Biles, Dennis Cummings and Graham Chiverton.

http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/n...HCAJakarta.jpg
PK-HCA at Kamayoran(sp?) Jakarta

http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/n...0/bhl/Joko.jpg
Joko Prayogo in PK-HCH on ferry from Jakarta to Duri prior to being painted in Heineken colours and sold to a PNG company.

http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/n...l/DuriBar2.jpg
The late Dave "Badger" Atkinson with Pete Harris outside the Duri Bar

http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/n...l/DuriBar1.jpg
Pete Cawthorne's leaving party, Duri bar 1986

http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/n.../bhl/Snods.jpg
Snods!

And if you were in Duri you must have been here!
http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/n...rSingapore.jpg
Pete Cawthorne,Tony Sollit, Bob Turner and Martin Heather

Pictures from Nigeria
 

Okay, I think I have the hang of posting pictures so here are some more.

5N-AJT had some problem and put down at Bony. For the life of me I cant remember what it was but must have been serious as extensive surgery was required!

Tom Ridgers directing construction of work base platform.
http://i401.photobucket.com/albums/p...r/P1000060.jpg

Work on-going. Derek Queen on the left and Tom Ridgers.
http://i401.photobucket.com/albums/p...r/P1000061.jpg

Twin Pac out and "C" box removed. Bennet at the left and Monday in the foreground.
http://i401.photobucket.com/albums/p...r/P1000059.jpg

Replacement main rotor blades arrive. Gordon Woods is the pilot.
http://i401.photobucket.com/albums/p...r/P1000062.jpg

Job completed. Ralph Ashcraft on the left, myself at the cabin door.
http://i401.photobucket.com/albums/p...r/P1000063.jpg

Along for the flight back to Port Harcourt. Annie Queen on the left, Tup Moir on the right.
http://i401.photobucket.com/albums/p...r/P1000064.jpg

Graeme

More B212 repairs
 

From one climate extreme to the other.
This is in Applecross on the West Coast of Scotland. We had a brand new B212 which had taken over from the Wessex on the Navy support contract. In this incident the lockwasher locking the nut on "C" box output flange had not been properly installed and allowed the nut to back off. This allowed the flange to have excessive movement which very soon destroyed the output bearing. They landed at the Applecross base after getting chip light illuminated and that was as far as it was going. We managed to position the helicopter between two buildings and rigged up a work gantry to support a block and tackle. Then we had some of the worst winter weather in years. All good fun!!

"C" box change at Applecross.
http://i401.photobucket.com/albums/p...r/P1000056.jpg

On the left is Malcom Innes and on the right is John Neilson. Andy Crossland is kneeling pretty much out of sight.
http://i401.photobucket.com/albums/p...r/P1000057.jpg

Graeme