Loosing one engine over the water

Another friend of mine is flying with the 442 Search and Rescue (SAR) Squadron in Comox, BC. He is on his way to becoming a Flight Commander of the CH-149 helicopter, the Cormorant, which was selected as Canada's new SAR helicopter and the first of these aircraft entered service in 2002 at 19 Wing Comox. Currently, the entire fleet of 15 Cormorants is fully operational.

Over last Christmas they have received a call that a man ski-dooing in the mountains had an accident and broke his back. As this was on main land and Comox is situated on the Vancouver Island flight over water was imminent. This is, however, usual business for the crew and training over water is almost as regular as having breakfast.

My buddy happened to be on the night shift which runs from 4 pm to 8 in the morning. The crew was assembled and quickly dispatched to the site. None of them expected what was about to occur.

Few minutes into the flight, over water and at 10,000 feet, the Cormorant lost one of its engines. The helicopter started loosing altitude. Thankfully the machine of 3 engines had two more to fly with and the forward speed helped maintain altitude once they dropped to 9,000 feet. Without forward speed the helicopter would not be able to hover on just two engines, especially when it's fully loaded with crew, equipment and fuel. They made it back to base and had one more crucial task to accomplish - landing the bird while, again, maintaining forward speed of 60 knots!! My buddy who was piloting that day said it was quite nerve wracking but everything worked out perfectly. They hopped on another chopper and set out to retrieve the man on a ski-doo.

Listening to some of these stories makes palms of my hands sweat. Not only did they loose an engine over water but it was also dark and the helicopter was very heavy having been filled up with fuel. If the engine failure had happened only minutes later, over the mountains, they would most likely have crashed. That's because the Cormorant would not be able to hover at higher altitudes on just 2 engines.

As you can see from these stories we are very lucky to live in Canada, where someone is always on standby to help those in peril. The crew, including pilots, SAR technicians, ground team, all work shifts so that they're ready 24/7. And that includes Christmas and other holidays. What's nice, though, is that a pilot will get 9.5 days off per month and gets to visit UK twice a year. They fly them to London for training on the Cormorant simulators, which Canada does not have.

Searching for ... nothing

Sometimes the search and rescue centre will receive a call when there is really no one in distress. This happened to a pilot friend of mine who flies the Herc out of Trenton. Since he was on call he received a call to show up and search for "something" over the lake Ontario. A boat 10 miles south off shore saw flares to the north. After flying the search pattern in the middle of the night and not finding anything the team determined that probably what the boat saw were fireworks and not flares :)

Still an interesting mission if you take away being awaken in the middle of the night and going back to bed at 4:30 in the morning.

Flying the Royals

Recently a friend of mine, who is now a Cormorant helicopter pilot, was selected to participate in the chopper demo for the Royals.

They did a Search and Rescue (SAR) demo which consisted of 7 people in the water. The coast guard rescued 6 of them then the Cormorant came in and hoisted the last one out.
Then they flew to the Summerside airport, shutdown and waited for the royals to arrive by car. This is when they were able to take a group shot and shake their hands.

What was also cool is that Kate flew the helicopter. One of the pics show her in the pilot's seat. Here is more on the story from the Air Force web site.

http://www.airforce.forces.gc.ca/14w-14e/nr-sp/index-eng.asp?id=11943