Emergency Services Helicopters

Well, yes, they also cost a lot to maintain as well.

Apparently there is a joke about did you hear about the irish helicopter, it was fitted with ejector seats.

However one may laugh, but the Americans hve actually tested some. What happens is that explosive bolts sever the rotor blades just before the ejection.

Brian

Reply to
Brian Gaff
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Tail rotor loss is survivable, provided the pilot goes into auto rotation quickly enough.

Colin Bignell

Reply to
Nightjar

Helicopters are often said to be the "Triumph of technology over common sense"

Reply to
harryagain

In many cities the air route follows rivers so the aircraft can land in the water in emergency.

Reply to
harryagain

In the B52 the crew ejector seats exit downwards. Fine, if you've pleanty of altitude.

Reply to
charles

It's obviously one thing to do it when you're expecting it and another when you're not.

Reply to
GB

+1
Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

it should be as instinctive as putting the nose down when you lose a conventional aircraft's engine. And something any experienced pilot will have practised many times as part of training.

I.e while not routine, its something in the training, like emergency braking in a car.

And its fairly true to say that MOST severe air accidents are a combination of unfortunate events that take the pilot beyond the training envelope. Or result in total inability of any pilot to fly it at all.

Loss of an engine in a multi is not such an event. Nor is loss of two.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

One reason that Police helicopter pilots are, like this one, almost always ex-military, is that their training is particularly extensive and covers situations that most pilots will never have to meet.

Colin Bignell

Reply to
Nightjar

Unless you are French.

Reply to
Michael Chare

Going off at a tangent, why do the police need piloted helicopters at all? Some sort of drone could do the job of carrying a camera and communication equipment aloft. The helicopter weighed around 3 tonnes, and the pilot/passengers would have accounted for nearly 10% of that. Add in their seats, cabin and windscreen, and I suspect that a drone would weigh a great deal less.

I suspect that a model plane sized drone would do the job adequately some of the time. Looking for a burglar with an infra red camera might be better done with a model aircraft, for example. The police turn up with the model in the boot of their car, rather than having to wait for a noisy helicopter to arrive.

Reply to
GB

Easily disoriented, the French.

Reply to
GB

The technology is certainly *getting* there, but the commercial ones don't have the IR capability of the systems used in manned helicopters. And I expect the larger military stuff is more expensive to run than a manned helicopter.

Reply to
newshound

THAT was a different scenario.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

wheres the fun in that? ;-)

It is coming and will come.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

I can hardly believe it flys againsyt the laws of physicas perhaps against the laws that some can understand but that's not the same thing.

Maybe it's the same way it was said that bees can;t fly according to the maths.

Reply to
whisky-dave

And bipeds - damn daft design, always falling over.

Reply to
PeterC

Most are also the local air ambulance.

Already in use in some areas. Merseyside made the first arrest using a drone in 2010.

About a metre across and weighing a few kilos, in the case of the one used in Merseyside. However, the drones are limited to working within about 500 metres of their controller and cannot carry some items, such as the Nightsun searchlight.

Colin Bignell

Reply to
Nightjar

Can we leave it there? I'm on an Air France flight from Rio to Paris next February...!

Reply to
F

It's a quote from an after dinner speech by David Gunson. Google "What goes up might come down" - it's very funny.

Reply to
Scott M

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