A wise man once said.....
 

“The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of low price is forgotten.“

Benjamin Franklin.

I heard that HNZ will start their SAR contract in Australia today, anyone confirm?

And is that AWSAR 24/7 or a lesser service?

Crab

in your language its a lesser service so a dedicated 15 minute LIMSAR and Medivac with AWSAR in Q1 2018 which is the same as brs was giving but brs wasn't on 15 minute sar.

Which part is the LIM in LIMSAR? Is it daylight only, VMC only, no winching or what exactly? Its rather a vague term.

Well things might get easier for HNZ now that Pilots are back on the Skilled Migration List...


https://www.9news.com.au/national/20...ilots-shortage

I'm not so sure about that. The news grab I saw specifically mentioned the visa was only to go to foreign pilots working for Regional Airlines, and only for 2 or 4 years. I guess at the very least it's the thin edge of the wedge to open the door for helicopter pilots to come here. HNZ are paying some of their AW139 line pilots $190k per year plus car, you'd need an armored door to hold back the flood of International applicants keen to get their snouts in that trough.

Oh yes they are, their contract pilots flying Esso AW139 are on that deal.

Nice try Nescafe. I'll look in again next week and see if we are back on topic.

Too true, too true!

Out of curiosity, what percentage of the "not low cost" operator's medevacs launched in the prescribed timeframe before they were replaced.....?

And the copy of the ATSB report into the winching incident is now released.....

http://www.atsb.gov.au/publications/...r/ao-2017-095/

What would cause this equipment to break.

The weak link in a hi-line is designed to do exactly that - break - so that any entanglement or snagging doesn't put an undue load on the hoist cable and snap the wire or damage the housing/drum or even pull the hook off the wire.

The fact that this one recoiled towards the rotor isn't unusual, we had one that did go through the rotor after the hook itself snagged a boat rail and then came free under tension.

This incident would be considered a Normal Operating Hazard for military SAR.

and another time, at band camp....😴

If I could be bothered, I'd link to the DASOR for it but it happened to a Mk3A Sea King from Wattisham about 8 years ago on a routine training sortie. I wasn't involved but was the Sqn Trg Off.

The aircraft was landed safely without any undue vibration apparent and the extent of the damage was only realised on shutdown.

Wouldn't you expect there to be a much lower recoil from a weak-link breaking than a hook snagging and releasing though?

Our navy lost a Wessex while doing a personnel transfer to a destroyer. Seaman clipped the hook to a guard rail with the inevitable break causing the cable to fly up and tangle about the head resulting in a ditching. Ship ran over the aircraft in an attempted recovery.

That's horrendous Megan, poor sods:(

PhilJ - it's probably a compromise, like so many things in life, a weaker weak-link would break too often and make the rescues more difficult not less but I have had hi-lines part several times without such a recoil - just luck of the draw I expect.

Normal operating hazard YES. That much hook rebound from the tension of a 90lds weak link parting NO. I suspect the link did not function correctly hence the buckle breaking instead which must have happened at more than the rated 90lbs.
After all crab most UK mil and Civi weak links are 150lbs breaking strain and even that does not cause the violent rebound seen in this incident.

I missed the following section on my first read of the report

"The operator inserted a 300 ft line into a hi-line bag that was advertised as either a stand-alone
item, or fitted with a 75 ft line. In addition, the hi-line bag was a sausage shaped bag with a narrow
throat relative to the amount of line inserted. Therefore, when assembled, the hi-line equipment
presented an increased risk for restrictions during a hi-line evolution and the equipment was no
longer fit-for-purpose."

But this doesn't explain the recoil from a wire that should have only been exposed to around 40kgs of tension..

Perhaps the rebound is explained by the angle from the hoist - if the aircraft climbs to deploy the hi-line then the angle is steep and the hook has a long way to go vertically to reach the rotor.

If, on the other hand, the aircraft is moved laterally as the hi-line is deployed, the vertical distance is much lower - ISTR the report mentions the winch wire being snatched from the winchop's hand - that would correlate with the hi-line snagging and then parting.

Or it could well be a problem with the hi-line itself or a combination of the two issues.

Had that issue elsewhere that despite the ops manual description and illustration certain winchops insistence of deploying the highline and remaining 1 unit at most from the overhead with the strain vertically as opposed to offsetting laterally giving me more of a chance to see what’s happening etc. Like banging your head against a wall....

Very true Hedski...

If you are not visual with what is happening on the deck/cliff then that rather defeats the object of the high line.

That is where some winchops misunderstand the object which is to get the pilot visual - they think that as long as they can see, that is all that matters without considering the pilot's references.

Said winchops were/are sadly part of a self perpetuating self congratulating corps thinking they are as knowledgable and experienced or more so than those elsewhere who actually are and refuse to listen. The old “we’ve always done it that way...” scenario. Although in the corps to which I refer the same applies to quite a few pilots. And so endeth the thread creep.

Wherever I have worked in SAR a high line technique requires that the pilot flying has visual contact with winching events. The Winchop requests 'permission to winch' from the PF before doing so. If the PF does not have the required visual references then it is a simple matter of saying no until in the correct position.

Yes, but in this situation, the winching of the crew to the deck had already been completed and they were moving laterally away from the boat to the hi-line datum - the pilot would have been unsighted until clear of the boat with the hi-line deployed. It was during this manoeuvre that it all went 'Pete Tong'.

The winchop was already winching the cable (and hi-line) in so no extra permissions to give

I’m happy to see we can agree on some things Crab.

The hi-line snagged and as it came taut the hook was moving upward. The weak link parted with almost no load which allowed the hook to continue its upward trajectory. Momentum is a powerful force.

So, HNZ All Weather SAR is up and running...

yes mate, started on 7 april, seems to be going well but i m on crew change not sar.

Look at the Weak link. Its broken apart, not pulled apart in the way designed. The weak link mechanism must have failed to release, and the weak link has broken, albeit at much greater force than designed for.

Once bitten twice shy?.......

Almost on the anniversary of this incident it would appear that HNZ have thoroughly investigated and completed their usual management of change process having identified the causal factors in yet another SAR winch training accident:

https://www.watoday.com.au/national/....html#comments

The paramedic was unable to face forward when arriving at the deck. This could be resolved by either better training of the staff - he may well have been rotating slowly ("As he was being lowered towards the boat on the winch, the paramedic was rotating slowly. When he was about three metres from the deck, he noticed the top edge of the side of the boat was close.) but he only has to face forward once in the transfer and that's immediately before he arrives at the deck. It requires technique and a little bit of physical effort.
Alternatively,

1. if the conditions were such that for some reason he shouldn't face forward (I can't think of any), or
2. he was not suitably trained/ capable to face forward and provide himself with the safety of seeing the deck coming up and being able to prepare himself for the landing

Then the answer is to use a hi-line. However, given the previous incident, perhaps HNZ are now uncomfortable/unfamiliar with the required techniques and safe use of the hi-line.

I would hope that nobody thinks that these events are completely avoidable, as SAR is a dynamic task carried out in a potentially hazardous environment. Even in training it is possible to get injured but surely it's time that there was a common standard that all companies conducting SAR operations should have to achieve.

The ATSB and CASA have a record of unfortunate incidents, some times tragic, from a mix of different operators across Australia. A national organisation with legislative power to enforce a minimum standard should go some way to improving the service that these companies provide.

After all as the HNZ eye witness - the insightful a/c captain- said:

“A post-flight brief was conducted with the crew discussing whether they could mitigate this happening again,” they said. “Given the physical nature of the work, it was agreed – ‘not likely’.”

As I understand it, HNZ employed a very capable ex-RAF winchop to re-write all their training documents but when he and another ex-RAF winchman operated a long way above the standard of the native rearcrew, they got the hump and the poms got the push (only after all the training manuals were completed though!)