Thanks for your comments

I suppose I am interested, I ride a ZZR1400 motorbike, friends have been in accidents and unfortunately some killed. As a bike rider I can look at the junction, or the aftermath or know the rider and make a pretty educated guess as to what went wrong. I wouldn't of gone that fast on that bend, or that car pulled out etc etc

With this it is the total vacuum of knowledge, I can't 'best guess' what happened and think 'silly mistake, but we all make them', 'you deliberately flew into that knowing a and b, i wouldnt of done it but I see your point' etc etc

As for the internet forum, we are all them, I'm on a bike one, we have the same on that. Thanks for your kind words, I'll sign up for the AAIB updates.

I wont take up anymore of your time - it just the whole - I know this man, he is safe, he has 1000's of hours of flight time, he employs steel erectors who can be bolshie and difficult and can stand his ground, if he didnt want to go he wouldnt of gone, wife nagging or not (as it happens Ruth wasn't like that) - something made him clip the top of that hill, obviously IMC - you dont fly deliberately into a hill you can see - insufficient MSA - again you dont deliberately fly around in hills with your MSA less than the highest one IMC.

Did he think he'd cleared it start descending -

Its just such a waste, a small miscalculation, it looks OK to fly, autopilot set to wrong MSA, a too short glance or incorrect program of nav

Thanks for indulging me, and its been good to read some of your insights

Fly safe

Can you point to a situation when this actually occurred? Even when HRH was flying SAR there was never any harassment or intrusion from news helicopters.

Well said Whirly.
Kawa my deepest sympathy for the loss of your friends.
It's a shame that some on these threads loose sight of the fact that the people they are criticsing are just like them with families and friends who care.
As it has been said by others they didn't set out to die.
c

If there was a GPS on-board then the track of the aircraft for the whole of the flight should be recoverable from unit memory, at good resolution, by the manufacturer.

Flying in mountains in reduced visibility can make it difficult to judge whether you are going to clear the ridge line, or not. Given the crash was close to the top of the mountain, it's quite possible he may have thought he was OK, until it was too late. But if you stick to the weather rules for visual flight then you have adequate visual cues for judging height when crossing a ridge line.

There is an optical illusion where you think there is clearance between the cloud base and the ridge line, but in reality the clouds go down to the tree tops on rising terrain. You must be able to clearly see the valley on the other side of the ridge before attempting to cross. Crossing the ridge at an oblique angle is a safer option than flying directly at it, gives you more of an opportunity to turn away at the last moment if you miss judge it.

Kawa - hopefully most of us have tried to avoid rabid speculation. To answer your question the reports will be published at the AAIB website and they are very thorough

Sorry about your friend

Sad because of the world we live in.
Naive because the issue is not to do with interference it is to do with the value of exploiting information.

Imagine the following scenario.

Person A, looking at his tablet notices interesting activity involving SAR assets.
They see it is close to them so wander up the local hill with their radio scanner.
Listening in they find the comms and over hear the casualty has serious head injuries. The subsequent transmissions contain further medical and casualty details.
Person A provides info to a website, who know that breaking news creates clicks, and clicks create money, and have no qualms about publishing.
Consequence one : NoK find out their loved one's condition from the internet.
Consequence two: The SAR agency is scrutinised to establish if they took all reasonable precautions to protect personal information. Recommendations are made for future.

There are other scenarios involving lawyers and "experts". I won't even go in to that waste of everyone's time.

End result SAR agency is careful over any broadcast information.

I don't know if the above is the case here, but the general public don't need to know these minute by minute movements of SAR assets, so why choose to make it available? Those that need the info get the info. The rest, at best, is voyeurism.

That seems the extremes of paranoia and supposes that the rescue is in an easily accessible location - it would be much easier to do with an air ambulance rather than a SAR aircraft.

The simple answer is secure comms - airwave can't be picked up on scanners and any decent wireless aircraft to crew comms shouldn't be either. Names should never be mentioned over the air either so your scenario isn't likely at all.

Knowing where a SAR aircraft is doesn't compromise anything - the public pay for it so why shouldn't they have access to such information unless there really is something to hide.

Secure comms as much as possible was also a recommendation. But it requires the other end to have the same. That's not always an option. TETRA is not available to most people and so sometimes you have to resort to standard comms, TETRA also doesn't have perfect coverage. Analogue vs digital is a debate not to be had here as the thread may have drifted far enough already.

Tight protocol is another, but again not everyone is part of the SAR organisation.

Accessibility is only a matter of LOS at any particular moment.

I pay for police, fire, ambulance, refuse collection ... I have no desire to track them. As I say, those that need to can, the rest is voyeurism. To think they "may be hiding something" now that is extreme paranoia.

The scenarios are not hypothetical, so your opinion of the likelihood is of no relevance. Whether UK SAR considered them I have no idea. I was simply offering my view that other SAR operators have answering a specific question earlier in the thread.

A few years ago I was spending the day at ARCC Kinloss and I had a conversation about comms with the duty controller. This was a former SAR Force SK pilot and SH Chinook pilot. "I'm not interested in talk-groups and all that stuff. I just want to press the button and talk and everyone understands what's going on." :cool:

What I take from that is that situational awareness is a valued commodity in SAR scenarios and that there are enough complicated things in helicopter cockpits already: especially when flying around near big bits of rock.

The radio discipline that Crab referred to is already instilled into most SAR pilots and at Kintail MRT it also features in the radio aide memoire that I encourage our folks to carry. :ok:

General MRT comms is in the process of moving from a widely-used radio band and during the next three or four years can be expected to partly or wholly move to digital VHF emissions. Airwave is history and the first major ESN migrations are programmed for summer/autumn 2018. ESN and other 4G/LTE rollouts will also provide improved opportunities for secure comms in some areas and satellite phones are in use by some teams and by SAR aircraft. :ok:

There is also the factor that these 1000m propagation barriers have a tendency to make it difficult for anyone at all to receive messages, so good luck with your Maplin-made-in-china scanner. :rolleyes:

Admitting his son was a fishhead and now this post on http://www.pprune.org/rotorheads/593...ml#post9740508 confirms that Jay is indeed our old pal 'Ye Olde Pilot' :rolleyes:

Crab , Jim,
My previous post seems to have disappeared.

Neither of my scenarios are theoretical ... real world, real requirements.

Here's the real world.

If you were good at physics at school and understood radio propagation, would you end up as a Home Office minister or a Chief Constable? No.

People flying HEMS or SAR helicopters in these situations have the first priority of not turning into red mince on a piece of rock themselves. Everybody knows the issues about privacy and confidentiality and works their messages around it. Secure comms with fancy kit comes way way down the list of priorities. I know of at least one aircraft spec that has some comms problems because the radios fitted are ludicrously complicated and deserving of a dedicated radio operator. Like the Lady said "I'm not interested in talk-groups and all that stuff. I just want to press the button and talk and everyone understands what's going on."

The foot-soldiers on the ground are on the same page as the Lady above who just wants to press the button and talk. They are often wet and cold and more interested the patient's vital signs than the correct talkgroup or waiting for a satellite call to go through.

For every incident in wild or mountainous country that has Airwave coverage, there are several that have not. We currently have no idea how good ESN will be when it replaces Airwave or what access will be available to groups like MRT, CRS, Red Cross and so on. I believe (uncorroborated) that the basis for providing ESN coverage is different from that used for Airwave coverage but I do not expect coverage in wild and mountainous terrain to be substantially different.

If an aircraft has Airwave coverage above an incident, that has no relevance to the situation on the ground. If they cannot advance collaboration with those at the scene and cannot advance air safety and navigation then guess how much use it is at that point? Having said that, HEMS are far more likely to be using it since their controllers and the other ambulance assets are using it. In a SAR aircraft, Airwave is for ordering takeaways at the end of a long tiring shift. (And for updating hospital staff about patient condition.)

Open net VHF belonging to MRT and others similar groups are inevitably the back-up comms for the rest of the emergency services when a major incident is in wild and mountainous country or when their secure systems collapse under intense operational pressure.

Jim, all I answered a very specific question regarding why the SAR aircraft would not have its position forwarded into the public domain.

I answered it privately as it seems to have no relevance to the main point of this thread.

The question came up again, so I answered publicly.

I cannot comment on UK. But I know SAR agencies have required their FF and AIS positions to be prevented from being forwarded, as much as possible, into the public domain. I have explained why.

I've given my answer, based on my knowledge. I don't believe it really merits further discussion. It doesn't progress this thread any further.

From an MRT perspective - teams do have access to ADSB data from Air Ambulance and SAR Helicopters via various sources - firstly from a network of receivers set up by various teams and also via a feed from an online aircraft watchers database that normally block such info to other subscribers.

Airwave is very much with us for a fair while with the delayed roll out of ESN. ESN coverage will be worse than Airwave - as the contract for sparsely populated areas was dropped from the requirement. At present there is Airwave in several areas with no cell coverage - ESN will not cover this.

The MRT VHF bands are migrating shortly to new bands due to the requirement to release bandwidth for marine ship-ship channels. Digital is rolling out but as yet this is not on a national basis but done by particular teams due to their own requirements. The current standard is analogue and likely to remain so for some time.

You know what's coming next ...

LMGTFY

Not quite sure who is where these days, but;

https://duncan.hull.name/2015/05/08/scientist-mps/
:ok:

Good memory SS: and mind numbing to look back at YOPs posts, especially in the NPAS thread :rolleyes:

Rest in peace

helispeed iii
 

god bless, for the grace of god, most of us have made mistakes

Hi Kawa,


First of all condolences on your loss.



I cannot help feeling that some of the criticism here has been particularly harsh, especially when counterpointed with the parallel thread where a fully equipped (bar perhaps NVG) S92 with a crew of four impacted terrain.


Does the twin squirrel have any form of CVR? Or may this pilot suffer in the way that the crew of ZD576 were damned by the absence of evidence?


EG

I've never known a 355 to have a CVR but there may have been a Go Pro or other camera recording.
All theories are purely that at this stage but I think ZD576 is a different issue.
Imagine a car on a dual carriageway approaching a roundabout. It's February OAT 1degC, it's raining. The car impacts a tree on said roundabout. What is the likely cause? Yes it could have been a tyre blow out or brake failure but in all probability it was black ice. Can we be certain.. no but logically speaking????
Now to liken it to 476 you would have to factor in that the particular type of car had questions over the accelerator linkage. Factoring this into the equation would make the cause much more questionable.
Kawa I know how you feel I lost a friend on 576