True Crab True, But that would rely on all sorts of agencies actually communicating, we still get that all screwed up in the military................
They could just give them a winch as they have in Switzerland etc where it all works fine:ok:

you are all missing the point here - daytime TV serves a great purpose - been off sick the last few days - can't sleep at night 2 mins in front of the constant repeating of clips and whats up next what we have seen etc sound asleep - job done.
On a serious note - potential for good to come out of such programmes - but utter crap here from the production team - stretching weak story lines and treating the audience as dim wits - the constant repeating of story lines and whats to come drives me nuts - just show us the programme and don't keep repeating everything!

Tin hat on

Crab,

Mostly true, but a few points worth adding:

- the ambulance controllers are as good as the information they're given. In this afternoon's case, the initial responders told ambulance control they had walked up past at least one area "big and flat enough to get the helicopter in". They're the ones on scene, they have to be believed.

- on our way to the coast, we did advise you and your ops of the nature of the task to which we were travelling. You may remember we even stated that you might wish to consider the possibility that your resources would be more appropriate, subject to what we found on arrival.

Having said all that, we didn't prolong the on-site assessment and soon affirmed what we'd considered en-route: it was a job best suited to SAR. We could've acted thick and "gone it alone", but that wasn't in the best interests of the patient. Very glad we didn't choose to lug her up the hill to where we'd parked - you probably didn't see the Coastguard stumble and fall as he helped carry the stretcher down the easier slope to your Sits site.

Pics are on a CD and on their way to you tomorrow, or with the 2 paramedics who're coming over for a famil very soon (both of whom were on todays crew, btw). I'll pop a couple over on the Pics thread here, too.

There you have it. Applies to both onshore emergency services using air support. :ugh:

Or God the CAA etc etc just give ambo s and police winches............ and of course somebody paying for it. What harm can that do !!! more winches in the UK is good for everybody. Being a mil bloke still the only people I can think that will annoy is US!!! The mil thinking that winching is MIL job, where as it's not really or should not be at all. RANT over.

Not negative by nature, but where is the heroism. Bloke falls off church, goes to hospital.

Girly falls of motorbike, goes to hospital.

More of same in that episode. Had they quick-rigged a strop on that white van to get the guy out-that would have been good.

Being quicker than a road ambulance is a boon, but not heroic.

CG

Thud, strangely enough as soon as we heard where you were going to we knew we would get the job eventually but we can't really follow you around trying to poach jobs :)- we have to wait until we are tasked through the ARCCK (although for urgent cases we could self scramble on the basis of information received).

It sounds like the ground party are the ones who need to visit us or you to understand the limitations of heli ops. You did find a place to land but that wasn't the issue, it was the location of the casualty and her extraction that was the problem. Surely they looked at the slope and realised a carry out wasn't feasible. We used to get WCAS paramedics fly with us every Friday but that seems to have died down - it promoted good heli awareness and an understanding of when SAR was the first choice not the last.

Next time you could call Chiv radio and make a formal request that we can then action quickly - we would have diverted from training and got there much quicker.

We did see the CG fall over - that was a result of a faff on our part (comms failure on Polycon) we wanted to winch the husband away from the overhead of the casualty and then move in to her. They tried to bring cas to heli:ok:

Look forward to the photos - cheers.:ok:

Perhaps this is where Harmonisation is missing a trick - I am sure that there are opportunities to be more efficient by harmonising all air assets. But at the end of the day, it all comes down to the person who answers the phone. And whoever that may be will always be constrained by their local knowledge, training and operating procedures.

Besides which even a grid reference and an OS map is not always adequate to decide on which is the best asset, not least because the grid reference is often wrong.

In this case it seems a shame that there was a delay between the AA suggesting using a SAR asset and ARCCK actually scrambling Crab. I hope the casualty is making a swift recovery.

Hi, stupid question time..... The original post stated this series started Bank Holiday August BBC1. I'm in the east of England and it wasn't on our version of BBC1. At the time I just assumed it was regional differences but haven't seen it listed since. Now seems we are up to EP15 and everyone else on the forum seems to be watching it. Can someone tell me what time/day of the week it is on terrestrial TV??... or is it just available on line via the i-player??

It is on BBC1 (East); I've seen a few - it's on in the morning just after 0900 when most people are at work!

Cheers

Whirls

Droopystop - I think this is why the MCA are still taking industrial action because if you don't pay the people that answer the phone enough, you won't get quality people with that local knowledge and training and common sense.

Good controllers are worth their weight in gold because they can save so much time and effort by allocating the right reponse first time round.

Vortexadminman - if you gave them winches, they would need bigger and more expensive helicopters plus a load of extra training. Rega (the Swiss outfit) use either EC 145s or A109 K2s, whereas most UK AAs have smaller machines like 105s, 135s or 520s.

In order to pay for the extra capability they would either have to raise far more money from donations (more tricky in a worsening economic climate) or charge for their services. For the number of occasions when it would pay dividends it is probably not economically viable.

Didn't REGA use winch fitted Allouettes successfully in the past? Full NVG too!

Bertie - I can just imagine what the CAA would say about single engine winching ops:)

I am sure they did use the Allouette (either the III or Llama I expect) but according to their website they have gone up-market.

Crab,

Nobody in the UK uses a 520 for Ambulance work, do you mean a 902 by any chance? Much bigger machine with 2 engines.:rolleyes:

quichemech - yes that is exactly what I meant - age is catching up:) I had NOTAR on my mind but with the wrong numbers.

Not true - but perhaps true to say that SAR (mil or civ) regard winching as a SAR job, because we know how tricky winching can be (not all the time, but every so often).

On top of the points Crab makes, having winches on all helos (ie Police and Air Amb) could well create extra confusion - how would an Ambulance Service controller decide which winch-equipped helo to send? From the examples given, they often have difficulty making the basic decision about whether an incident requires a winch or not - so to have different aircraft which can winch different weights over different distances in different weather conditions could be v confusing! At least at the moment every winch-equipped SAR helo has a (reasonably) powerful winch with a reasonably long cable and is equipped to fly in most conditions.

True about confusion but I am sure but that could easily be addressed by good old fashioned briefings for briefings sake!!!. Did not mean to imply that Police/Ambo s have the same winching capabilities as a SAR aircraft. Crab quite correctly states that it would require bigger cabs to do that, just that adding a winch would enable them to move the casualty a few feet in some cases so the aircraft can land to load the casualty on, therefore leaving SAR cabs to do what they do best.....SAR.:ok:

BBC1 7:30pm tonight. :ok:

Crab, visits for the controllers doesnt work. You assume they will learn something............
PS, I dont want a winch, horses for courses. I want a small, quick reliable helicopter to do OUR job, Air Ambulancing, not SAR.