I think you misunderstood me - I was implying a fact, not a 'best practice'.

212, how high are the newer container ships seen in European coastal waters?

The OOCL Hong Kong currently the largest of the 20,000TEU ships has an air draft of 239 ft.

RAF SAR SOP was 'never overfly a radar contact below 1000'

In the early eighties when there was a bit of a slump in the oil industry there were a few semisub oil rigs stacked in Aberdeen harbour. I was a single pilot (at that time) S76A pilot at Aberdeen.

I was called in to to do a crew changeover on one of those semis in the harbour. The Haar was established so as soon as you left the coast it went into fog. A weather check with the rig said fog. Give it a go, said the company; if you can't find it then come back but we will still charge the rig.

I launched and called up for the beacon. It came up solid as a rock so I carried out a low level rig radar approach. I knew the rig from before so I used 200ft as a decision height and eventually arrived on finals. At 200ft I was passing through the tops of the fog with the needle at 12 o'clock and the rig welded to the radar. I saw nothing as I passed over it; there being no requirement to turn left at 3/4 mile in those days.

I returned to Aberdeen and shut down. As I got out the passengers told me that they had seen the derrick top flash by the rotor tips on the starboard side.

What had happened was that the semisub had floated itself so it was a 100 ft. higher than when it was working which was the only time I had flown to it before. Fortunately I was a an ace pilot because the position of their beacon was above the radio shack and because I had gone precisely over it the orientation of the rig caused my rotor to miss the derrick. Slightly off line to the right and Fareastdriver wouldn't be here.

That was over thirty years ago but stand back for the armchair experts to analyse what I did wrong. Times have changed since then; that job would not have been offered now but it was all part of (lucky) experience.

It sounds like you already know the answer to that question!

The revelations from RTE are all very interesting but the number one question that remains is 'Why did the island not appear as a contact on the radar?' Everything else merely amounts to contributory and aggravating factors. It's all about the radar. How many radar approaches were individual ICG pilots required to conduct per quarter?

Even if the Lighthouse had been at 47 Feet AGL....a night transit over water in bad vis....using 153 feet (plus or minus Altimeter error, Radalt instrument error, Auto Pilot/Pilot height holding error) seems a bit bold.

There were some very interesting posts a few hundred pages back about what the screen might have looked like with a waypoint symbol overlaid on the radar picture.

I think it's available via the CAA for interested parties?

Yes, so the question remains. How much radar training do the Irish pilots do per quarter?

To correct my previous post, it's not all about the radar. It's also about the lack of NVG, and what appears to have been a reluctance to build them in to the operation. Why would that be?

Very little of actual significance or meaning. A TRE maintaining low level IF currency by conducting a few rate 1 turns at 500’ for less than 30 seconds just to tick the box tells how much interest there actually is. What about all that well used and demonstrated technology proven in UKSAR on the moving map screen in the main cabin including sea charts and overlaid AIS data for ships. Not much use of that either.

That's astonishing. Is this lack of proper training and the willingness to simply box tick where RTE will be focusing the next strand of their investigation or are the Irish public being fed the side of the story that disenchanted employees (with actors' voices) want them to hear?

Maybe. Certainly it’s an avenue that deflects away from potential problems and further prevents an inward focus..... Currency is a minimum, not confidence inspiring in such a role if perhaps treated as box ticking exercise unless of course there is no inputus to improve amongst a feeling of knowing it all.

Does anyone know how many hours per month are allocated to training in the contract?

You don't need to be an aviator to know where that leads.

Unknown but unlike UKSAR tasking hours reduce training allocation. Maybe hours are precious overall if annual CRM courses last as little as 90 minutes delivered by an off duty ryanair captain apparently with little interactive exercises or case studies. Not like any CRM course I’ve been on, even those I’ve been less than impressed with.

Hedski, is that actually the case?

If so it is a major change of position from what Bristow were stating pre-contract when they were asked about training hours.

They were quite adamant that trg could be conducted on ops and count towards the required hours/stats.

Much of my concern and criticism of the contractorisation was founded on their poor attitude to trg hours so maybe the reality of SAR skills trg has been acknowledged by the management.

The ICG attitude is exactly why I railed against commercial SAR for UK.

Crab,
Are you saying stats cannot be gained during ops?
As far as I am aware the UKSar training hours allocation is working fine.

UKSAR retains training hours allocation regardless of ops. Ireland the contrary. Currency can include operational evolutions in both places.

Jeepys - no that would clearly be silly.

Hedski - if that is the case then they have been re-educated in management since their original statements regarding training.

When questioned about the reduced hours available for trg (1.5 hrs per shift vs SARF 4 hrs per shift) they clearly stated that trg could be claimed on ops - they probably meant stats as in a deck or a radar letdown but they clearly believed MilSAR did far too much trg and was therefore too expensive.

Accidents like the ICG tragedy would seem to prove otherwise. Pay lipservice to trg and eventually get bitten.