- What's going on here then... Will G-POLU be brought back into active service?

Looks like the lamps are about to fall out and the doors drop off with red smoke bellowing from the exhaust 🤣

Either that or…

Watching "Sky Coppers" on ITV, about the West Midlands Police Drone Unit. Interesting.

What Yorks - increase in funds.
 

The West Yorkshire force have received an extra £18m this year. Will it be spent on aircraft or drones?

BBC interview.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-66054322

Drones are quieter and a lot more cost efficient.

Last year’s NPAS stats for those that are still interested. The decline continues with the number of Actioned Calls attended and flying hours both down on 2021/22.The usual winners and losers on the amount paid to NPAS by Forces for Air Support, with the total up on 2021/22 by £1,133,797.

Although NPAS don’t charge Forces per Actioned Call, it’s a simple way of seeing what Forces are paying. As in previous years there is a vast difference in “Cost per Call”. GMP paid NPAS £1,917,399 and had 1154 RW/FW Actioned calls. That equates to £1,662 per call.

At the other end of the scale, Hampshire paid £1,034,070 and had 102 Calls, equating to £10,138 for each call.

I asked Hampshire for a breakdown of what they paid NPAS for but they said that they “do not hold a breakdown of costs.”. Astonishing. I passed the question onto the PCC and they are investigating.


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https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....188bc23f44.png

Thanks MG, still interested, still saddened.

After a massive wait since 2019 NPAS has finally published an Annual Report.

The 29 page PDF can be found at https://www.npas.police.uk/sites/def..._version_0.pdf

Among the information imparted is that G-POLU is to be brought into the fleet and the fixed wing are again on the move - to East Midlands I understand. Meanwhile there is a £2M sports hall going begging at Doncaster's now closed airport.

Despite the four year black hole of information (a period of some pretty murky goings on) this report is fairly comprehensive and almost a breath of fresh air.

The PCC weren't much help either:
​​​​​​​Still as clear as mud.

I did a little digging on this as I've always had an interest in police aviation, despite not having the experience or credentials of others on the forum here that have worked in the field.

It turns out G-POLU has been painted back into full NPAS colours with a photo dating as far back as July, and searching for its Mode S code on ADSBexchange (40472C) returns test flight activity out of oxford as recent as the 27th of September (Two days ago at time of writing)

Ideally I'd like to have links to both the image and the track on ADSBexchange but unfortunately haven't reached the 8 post threshold to do this.

Looking forward to seeing it deployed, whenever it's ready. I did note that it was previously registered as G-XMII before being leased to the Norwegian Police and then used as a test bed by Airbus, built all the way back in 2002 so a similar aged aircraft to the rest of the rotary fleet.

Can you imagine police driving around in 21 year old cars?

At this rate they'll bring back our old MD902's and pay a premium for them.

I'm sure the Hungarians felt a little hard done by in the end when they realised what they'd been sold and for how much. Usually it's the kind of thing we'd fall for.https://english.atlatszo.hu/2018/09/...ice-contracts/

Aaah...G-POLU, aka G-XMII. Got a few hours in that one. :ok:​​​​​​​