Elvis....who were you working for back then...those others mentioned were working for AreoTrades out of WPG...they had the hydro contract and were flying a G4 and a couple of Jetrangers....Woody Venton was the Chief pilot til he left and went with Midwest. :blink:
So without digging in to CARS, you can fly ferry flights at night, single pilot, single engine?
You cannot fly with passengers for revenue single pilot, single engine. Can you fly surveillance, monitoring or filming at night single engine single pilot?
Police fly single engine single pilot and sometimes carry a passenger. Pretty sure both HAWK and AIR 1 do this. Those regimes are ok? Then why not revenue with restrictions on ceiling and visibility. I think sight seeing over a big city (YYZ or YVR)at night should be allowed in a jet box but I've done lots of night so maybe I'm off the mark as my experience is all military as well.
I also think that night VFR in the arctic with reasonable ambient light should be allowed too, seems operators loose revenue to me. I remember an exercise in the late 80s in Goose where we spent four or five consecutive nights doing slinging ops all night and weather maintained barely VFR. We were dual pilot though and in an IFR capable bird but we still had 20 mile transits with the loads.
Mind you I remember doing parade night formation in 83 with four Twin Hueys in the formation. We flew echelon left, line astern and echelon right, a two hour ordeal in puckering your rectum and sweating off five pounds. Some major was trying to prove that we could do it and I remember in the debrief how we talked about getting so close we could read the triple tach on the aircraft ahead of us and hear his tail rotor. Oh God is kind to dumb animals......we never did that again. Everytime I think about it again I start to sweat and think to myself, dumb, dumb, dumb, lucky to be alive, dumb, dumb, dumb....
night vfr over vancouver got us about 150 hrs flying lastyear. we will be increasing that to the 400 hr mark this year with more request coming in each month for night patrols and spl events. we plan to use 5 miles and 1500 feet for normal ops and down to 3 miles and 1000ft for emg call limits.
i was just down in the LA basin area and spent some time flying with LAPD. they use 800 ft and 2 miles for min limits. they fly about 17000 hr per year, all single eng. 10 astars, 4 bell 206 and 1 huey. one pilot i spoke with had over 18000 hrs and 13.5 thousand hrs of night. as stated before there is a difference when flying around at night over a well lit up area. many of the police depts that cover the rural area have all switched over to nvg's. even when flying from one build up area to another there are many black holes out there and the use of nvg's enhances safety as long as crew(s) get proper training.
i spoke to the chief pilot and they train to do night autos in the astar at 45 kts to full touchdowns. want to keep the speed down so that they do not slide when they touchdown and also want to keep the flare low so that they can still see with the landing light.
we do night autos in the jetranger at 45 but have not done thenm in the astar at night at 45 yet.
Having done a few hundred autos with Astar(all day mind you) at 45 knots and higher am not sure what they mean it keeps the slide minimized?
The 45 knt auto's I have found do not allow you to build up any inertia in the rotors and the flare is almost non existant. Remember a flare does at least two things, one reduces forward speed but also reduces rate of descent. I can '0' speed an auto almost every time when approaching at recommended speeds or above, whereas at 45, slide every time. I think the 45 kts allows the flare to not be extended and thus not travelling to far in the flare. If you flared at normal speed with normal flare you lose sight of ground with landing light. If you flared at normal speed with a shallow flare(to extend you glide path or in this case keep light on ground) then you travel quite a long distance which if you are trying to stay in small vicinity would be bad. Quite a few companies train with 40-45 mph approach speeds into confined areas(especially with 206's) which allows the approach angle to be very steep, not bad training if you have the training crew that is experienced at it. But realize that if you have nothing going for you at 45 kts entering the flare, the flare may not be very effective and you may end up in a heap or sliding through your confined area into whatever obstacle may be there.
So, what I believe the chief pilot meant was it allows you to go into a smaller area as you have a steeper approach. I think if I had a well lit area I would do a normal autorotation at normal speeds. Anything else and modify it accordingly.
good points. one of the pilots i spoke with, said it would not be a good day to lose the eng, do the auto and make the spot only to have it slide accross the road into the side of a building or parked car. like all of us, he is aware that the front end of the astar will not take much impact.
If you watch that video of the two officers who had the engine failure in the 333 you will hear the non flying pilot telling the other to FLARE. If you look at the wreckage you will see it looked as though there was no run on at all. Probably had low airspeed prior to flare entrance. Am not critisiziing at all in fact I think they did a hell of a job, sure wasn't much time to do anything. Correct me if am wrong but didn't hear the non flying fellow say anything about where to go in auto, and they did at least one 360 turn. I think if you have consistant people in the other seat then it would be wise to brief him/her to help point out potential landing area for emergencies, especially in Astar where lower/left side of the world is mostly non-existant. Sure is a manuevarable little aircraft, gained a lot of respect of that machine from one video. Pilot flying was definately switched on.
I hope it wasn't the stupid lines on the Rollsroyce C20,,,, AGAIN.
