Tried it with goggles on
 

Too easy Mighty Gem.
Have you tried it with NVGs? Have you tried it whilst posing for press photos? Have you done it after consuming a curry preceded by sitting on yer a*se watching soaps for 6 hours? If not then you'll never make it as a SAR pilot.

SAR helos in Thailand
 

Can anyone direct me to where I can get some info on SAR helos in Thailand and what the future requirement might be? If so, please PM me.

Arctic Tern - From what I understand all of the SAR is provided by the Thai military. There are not that many civil machines operated in the country, except for the Police machines and also Si Chang have a BK117 based in Bangkok.

Will see if I can find out any other info.

:E

Don't forget the CHC S76A++s and S61Ns based in Songkhla supporting Unocal and Chevron. The Thai Navy also operate S76Bs out of Utapao Airfield.

Most of the othere aircraft (helicopters) are operated by the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (EGAT) as well as the Thai Police. Most of these are Bell 206Ls and 412s. Sometime ago, PHI set up a maintenance program there at Lopburi but the venture failed and they are no longer in country.

:cool:

RESCUE - Police, or anyone?
 

You are a police Air Support Unit working in a coastal area which has miles of beaches, and mudflats, which are prone to rapid descent of fog.

From time to time, people get caught out by this when they are out walking, fishing, or whatever. Worst of all is the tide, which when it comes in, comes in quick.

You, the aircraft commander, haven't got the job by being middle of the road. You have thousands of hours experience in all weather conditions, maybe at sea. You are adept at flying in zero visibility.

Your observers are top of their trade. You trust them and they trust you.

Your helo is a light twin, state of the art, and FLIR equipped. No winch of course, but nice big deep skids .

The person stuck in the fog is in real trouble. The tide is coming in and they are hopelessly lost. They are on a mobile phone. They are told to stand still.

Bearing in mind the flatness of the terrain, if you were able to get yourself into a position where you could take a GPS fix in clean airspace - do you think you could go looking for them on instruments, utilising the FLIR and your observers talking you onto - hopefully - a heat source.

The workload would be massive, and lets leave out what we are legally allowed and not allowed to do. Keep it hypothetical. Someone is down there and is likely to drown if someone doesn't do something.

I believe the lifeboat service is now doing something with hovercrafts in some areas, but would be interested to know what you think.

Dangerous, yes. Daft, maybe. Would you be able to track back in on the GPS backbearing? or is it a no brainer from start to finish?

No, most of us (police types) are VMC only and even if we were IFR qualified we would still need 200 ft and 600 metres to get down a nice accurate ILS. To get down to the surface on a flat beach using GPS is the sort of thing we leave to corporate pilots!!!

However, if you're on a fishing trip for TC...good luck ;)

Leave it to the big boys with their Seaking.

Auto let down over the sea then doppler hover taxi to the survivors if you can get a good fix on them.

Leave the police to catch speeding motorists!!:rolleyes:

HF

I must be missing something from the story. Several bits confuse me, and I do not understand the point of the question:

The fog is thick enough that the person can't find his/her own way to dry land. The person in trouble has a mobile phone, fine, so at least they can ask for help. The aircraft has a GPS, of course. But all of this gives no clue as to how you are supposed to find the lost person. It is foggy, so you can't see him. Decent fog is a pretty good blanket to TI images (on the frequencies used by police units, anyway), so the infra-red won't help.

We can assume that the fog is sea fog, and that you could fly to and from the police base visually, and fly above the blanket. It still doesn't help find the person................

Hmm...in daylight I might give it a go, but in the dark? :eek: :eek:

We've been doing approaches down to 100' & 1/2 nm on a weather radar for some time without autopilot or altitude hold, etc. If someone is calling from a beach, we can plot their location, use the weather radar to map a point on the shoreline nearby and complete the approach.

Could be possible with IR as well, although I'm not certain how well you can get distance from IR.

With weather down to 0/0, helicopters aren't normally the best rescue platform. Hovercraft, GSAR, etc. are better.

If the helicopter can fly above the fog and stay in cell phone comms with the person in the sand, the helicopter may be able to vector the person to safety. Fly overhead, if he hears the helicopter get him to walk towards it. Risky, but it may buy time until a ground team gets in.

Matthew.

I assume this stems from the case off Grange last year where the father and son were stuck and disorientated? The way the scenario is described in the post, I would say almost certainly not - dangerous and daft indeed, if one goes down the route of searching on instruments; that puts us beyond the "acceptable risk" approach and into sacrificing the crew for little chance of success. It's very rarely that the conditions are such that the fog is dense enough to get the person in trouble but shallow enough to get safely overhead.

Hummingfrog - none of us would rather go after speeders than help someone in distress, that one was done to death in September.

The problem is that with proper [2 pilot, IFR, winch etc etc] SAR assets spread thinly and police ASUs able to respond within minutes to most areas, we are potentially first on the scene of all these cases.

Standto - I'd caution against the capability of the crew. Police crews, regardless of their abilities,do not routinely train for this sort of thing.

In most cases, people have bust the rules and got the right result, trebles all round and nothing more said. As we all know however, the assessment after the event is based on the outcome. So far all the high profile UK cases have gone well but police crews are in an unenviable position, faced with not carrying out a duty of care on one hand and being accused of endangerment on the other.

Now if he had one of our auto hover S76, he would home to overhead the gps position, push a button, select a hover height and then the 76 would come to a hover 100 metres downwind of the person. Winch Trimpot down who would bellow at the person to get into the winch strop. Once in the cabin, the pilot pushes another button, selects a cruise height and destination and returns home.
QED!!:ok:

Standto...a rebuttable presumption that your "top of the trade" and "trusting" walk on baggage would get in the cab...let alone agree to try and make the first edition of the morning front pages.
We all have a duty...but...:hmm:

Often the fog is too cold for the FLIR to see through and is as such useless in those circumstances..
Been there done that... Went home to fly another day..

Have however used the FLIR (dark moon) in mountains for rescue.. It is a great tool..

Thanks for this. Its made things a lot clearer.

It is indeed based on the tragic incident at Grange, but that isn't the first time and won't be the last.

I wasn't aware that FLIR was so badly affected by fog. I remember an incident some time ago with someone in a river being picked out by FLIR, but it was a very faint image and they were lucky.

By the way, it wasn't a TC fishing trip, but I'm sure he'll have a veiwpoint - and most welcome it will be.

Perhaps, if anything, this brings up the question as to whether coastal ASU'S should be a multi- agency (Police/ Coastguard Customs/ HEMS) unit equipped with something bigger and braver than a 135 or 900?

Arguably, the crew could all be directly employed and trained forthe unit, rather than having to pluck bobbies and paramedics off the streets, so to speak.

On a helicopter forum this is probably one of those 'wash your mouth out' moments....

The RNLI [lifeboats] have taken on hovercraft in recent years and more to come .... I assume [if I have understood what I read in the press releases correctly] that part of the reason for aquiring these craft was to undertake this type of mission.

They at least take out [most of] the dangerous 'third dimension' when they 'fly' to rescues over mud flats. Additionally they can sit and think about it as they sit 8 inches off the surface! Not recommended in any helicopter.

you cant 'pre-plan', 'what if' rescues above and beyond the call of duty.

it comes down to how you and your crew feel on the day at the time at that moment. sort of 'gut feeling'


you dont know till your there in the thick of it if your going to try.


mind you easy with hindsight to plan what you should or shouldnt have done

STANDTO

I'm inclined to think that we will, one day, operate multi-agency coastal ASU's thereby producing the best return on investment and the most efficient coverage by specialist units.

As always, the biggest mountain to climb is persuading all the interested parties that they could, and should, work together for the ultimate benefit of those that pay the bills.

Here, in Sussex, we have 3 full time pilots all SAR qualified operating a non SAR 902 along 42 nm of coastline!

What better than to have all the coastal ASU's operating an EC145/Bell 412, IFR capable, SAR capable, operating a 24hr roster and responding to all calls from all agencies within the designated area.

Nigel,

The S76 scenario sounds almost as good as the Sea King; hang on, that was 34 years ago when we didn't have GPS, just talking ballast in the back :rolleyes: ;)

Good Point Tim

Out here on Fraggle Rock, we have six lifeboats and can call on the air assets in Eire and at Valley. A nice big multi-role machine would suit us nicely, even being able to undertake patient transfers to the UK for specialist treatment (burns, brains etc) We've even built a 3 pad heliport at the new hospital which will take chinooks, I am reliably informed.

Here's one for you.

If the Royal National Lifeboat Institution was to replace the word "Lifeboat" with "Lifesaving (at sea) ", how many boats would be replaced with Helo's?

This isn't decrying their excellent work or extreme bravery, BTW.

BUT - How often can a Helo not get there a darn sight quicker and do what needs doing - saving lives. 100 kts beats 17 kts any day.

I remember the night the Solway Harvester went down in the Irish Sea. I believe the flight time from Valley to locating the SAR Beacon was under 20 minutes. Notwithstanding on that occasion the boat had already sank with all hands, the wx on that night was beyond belief.