Also if you are employing a dipper (and even triple so at night).
Point of order <pushes glasses up nose>, USCG does SAR OCONUS as well.
Point of order <pushes glasses up nose>, USCG does SAR OCONUS as well.
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Harrier Down Off Oki, or SAR threadjack :)
- Thread starter Rocketman
- Start date
Hover hold in the 60 works REALLY well. About the only time it goons up is when it's misused by the operator.
Fun fact: Hover couple is one of the things that's required for a helo to be considered SAR capable at the LHD. We went down a fun staff rabbit hole when it looked like the SAR birds weren't going to have hours but the MEU was going to. After working the available resources we discovered that since the Phrogs had gone away the H-60 was the only organic platform that met all the criteria for being SAR capable. The skids lacked a hover coupler and a hoist. So our only SAR assets would have been a raft kicker* and the ship's RHIB. I don't remember my LHD matrix but I think this completely took troop movement off of the table. Since we were trying to support a major exercise someone looked in the seat cushions and found a few hours for the SAR bubbas.
*V-22 in the overhead delta makes a great raft kicker. They can hang out there for a long time. We even floated the idea of bringing in Sumo to tank the V-22 so I'd only have to recover it at the end of the day. Sumo was game but the V-22 guys didn't think our jokes were funny. When I said they should put a few extra guys in the V-22 and get them T&R points for tanking they they were even less amused and were insistent that this idea never make it to the OPSO.
I know USCG does SAR in HI and PR. But not Guam. And I figured if I had said USCG does SAR OCONUS some other internet hero would have said, "Not true! what about Guam?!?"
Serious question...is PR and Guam (and American Samoa) considered OCONUS US (if you will)? I guess it probably is. I was just thinking HI and AK, but I lack imagination.
I couldn't tell you from the little contractual blurb. The word "improved" gives me no idea of the new capabilities and whether it has auto approach, auto depart, etc.
As a guy on a disassociated tour I found it hard to feel bad for guys flying.8.0's for . . . somebody else!
Skids have hover hold (not super stable but not terrible either) and a hoist. What does the coupling do? fix it to a gps point?
Our skids didn't have their hoists installed. Our understanding from talking with the Skid Kids was that their hover hold wasn't as capable as the 60S.
Super-stable matters when you're trying to maintain position over a dude in rough seas, at night, etc. A coupler can do multiple things, based on the airframe and what it's being asked to do at that particular moment. Legacy aircraft used doppler to maintain position (based off of the body of water beneath it). Newer airframes use either GPS, drift based off of GPS (which still makes my head hurt), or drift based off of system input (ie, with a dipper).
I haven't flown the new and improved "hover coupler" on the 60G very much. I got a chance to play with it a little before I was banished to staff land, it seemed to be shit loads more useful than the old POS we had.
The old system was more useful as way to keep you from going full retard if you got a mild case of spacial D. I used the rad alt hold function with the cyclic control turned off, though it still wouldn't hold precise enough on it's own to run a hoist. You still had to keep your hand on the collective and reset the system/provide inputs.
I'll admit I did get super reliant on the hover cues. Some old dudes would talk about using the chem lights floating around as hover references and not using the system cues. I doubt that would have actually worked in the open ocean on a bad night, at least not well.
The old system was more useful as way to keep you from going full retard if you got a mild case of spacial D. I used the rad alt hold function with the cyclic control turned off, though it still wouldn't hold precise enough on it's own to run a hoist. You still had to keep your hand on the collective and reset the system/provide inputs.
I'll admit I did get super reliant on the hover cues. Some old dudes would talk about using the chem lights floating around as hover references and not using the system cues. I doubt that would have actually worked in the open ocean on a bad night, at least not well.
Can you share your exchange tour experience? How did you get slotted? What was your job? Flying/ops experience, etc. Culture difference between AF vs Navy helo communities, esp in the '60. Do exchange billets still exist?
I can only imagine that using chem lights in the ocean without a good horizon reference (NVDs) would give you a terrible case of Spatial D.
