Victoria Police Air Wing Tender
 

The Essendon refueller told me that Starflight are the preferred bidder for the Victorian police tender.

Another interesting move by an Australian government body looking to award to relatively unknown operator.

Not wanting to 'thread creep', but on the topic of Australian Tenders, it all seems very quiet with regard to the NAFC Fire contracts. Aren't these supposed to be up for renewal in a matter of months? And I believe StarFlight were a very talked-about bidder with a bid-fleet of Blackhawks. Surely there must be some word on who is getting what by now?

Whoever gets the contract, they should keep using the Dauphins until the new Airbus H160's are acquired. Don't go down the path of operating 139's like every other operator, and realize they are too big a machine for the role it plays.

I was not aware of any Airbus H160 on order in Oz? They are expensive a/c for sure thus unless you are a big operator....

Babcock MCS have ordered some, but not sure if that would be for their Australian operation lest bid for any police work

Word is that it that they will be AW139s... like everyone else.

H160s won't be certified in time.

A 139 for police work??

There won't be any quiet surveillance going on, then. The B206 was a good little workhorse for many years in NSW, and the BK was a x2.5 scale up, making it even better. Now they have B412, another x2.5 upscale, and the 139 is even bigger.

The Vics have always had Daphne screeching around the suburbs, but the 139 is still a quantum leap from that one. Do they really need that much space for a police machine, or will it be rescue configured as well?

Everyone else? Which Australian PAW has 139s, I thought that the largest is NSW PAW with Bell 412s.

Lets be honest, you could do 98% of police work with a B407/AS350 etc but the Empires are being built and the Police force with the biggest toys wins!

Dubai Police getting them, Abu Dhabi police got them, think the Dutch have some, Japan have some. Maryland State Police have a LOT.

The tender for the VicPol AirWing states, among many other things, that a capability needs to exist for 8 SOG guys to be in the rear along with the FLIR console and it's operator; it'd be a squeeze for the 139 and it would most likely make it too heavy for CAT A helipad ops (not sure if that would matter much to the cops). They were looking at the 189 there for a while, including taking the demonstrator for a spin, but many think that would be overkill considering that 90% of the work is getting the FLIR ball on target

I guess the days are gone where a night patrol involved a high hover at the western suburbs drive-in when Fatal Attraction was showing? Only the observer with the gyro-stabilised binos got a really good look, but it was still fun to be doing for real what the Blue Thunder boys did in the movie.

We (Vic PAW) had a pre release showing of Blue Thunder, so when patrolling (ASTRO) over the suburbs and seeing Blue Thunder on the Coburg drive in, it was a given that we’d disappear then pop up over the screen and put the nitesun onto the patrons. Night approval was (cough) 400’, easily done :cool: :p

China Police also has them.

John, how many JAFO caps did your guys have made?

This :ok:

Or maybe even an EC135.:hmm:

Isn't there an EC135 in the VicPol fleet already?

Yes, and I'm told it's only good for driving the dog around. They really do like their Dauphines and I don't blame them.

It came straight from the horses mouth before the 139 was even put on the table.