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MH-60 crash in San Diego

Swanee

Swanee

Cereal Killer
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None
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MIDNJAC

MIDNJAC

is clara ship
pilot
ChuckMK23 said:
Who/what is Federal Fire?
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I honestly had no idea either until I was doing a short 90 day fill for the active FRS Safety O job up here. I learned a lot of stuff about the whole little world that is civilian GS base support. It was a world that I guess I was aware of, but did not know the inner workings of.
 
Gatordev

Gatordev

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Swanee said:
Thank the universe for some good news. I expected to see a less positive headline. I'm glad I was wrong.


The helo dunker training works!
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Meyerkord said:
I saw an article today that confirmed they were indeed doing SAR jumps as their mission when the incident happened
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Since they're is an article confirming SAR jumps...

Typically when the FRS does these, it's rare all 6 people are in the helo at the same time. Usually it's 4 plus one on the hook. Everyone else is in the water or in the boat.

That said, some sort of reason to have to ditch while doing SAR jumps is, to me, far scarier for the swimmers than the crew.
 
robav8r

robav8r

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Gatordev said:
Since they're is an article confirming SAR jumps...

Typically when the FRS does these, it's rare all 6 people are in the helo at the same time. Usually it's 4 plus one on the hook. Everyone else is in the water or in the boat.

That said, some sort of reason to have to ditch while doing SAR jumps is, to me, far scarier for the swimmers than the crew.
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One night doing jumps in the St John’s (HSL-40) we had an engine malfunction requiring the HAC to nose it over and get some airspeed. Lots of chaos for the hoist operator when all that cable is deployed in the water with swimmers and boat so close . . . .
 
Gatordev

Gatordev

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robav8r said:
One night doing jumps in the St John’s (HSL-40) we had an engine malfunction requiring the HAC to nose it over and get some airspeed. Lots of chaos for the hoist operator when all that cable is deployed in the water with swimmers and boat so close . . . .
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Towards the end of my tour at -37, I would try and snag as many SAR jump flights as I could because they were fun there. Basically a license to fly low in the bay and buzz all the boats while the swimmers would reset. During one flight, thankfully before sunset, we were in the hover with a swimmer half-way up (or down) on the hook. Basically the worst place, just like we would brief.

At that moment, the AFCS completely reset itself. I'm not sure why...maybe it got wet. When the controls did their jump and the altitude hold kicked off, we immediately started to settle and it felt very much like a single engine power-loss. I don't know how long it took us to figure out what happened...probably half the time it felt like (and I still remember), but the crewman in the back was milliseconds from blowing the CAD. He was reeling out the cable, but it still was going to be a fairly long fall.

Since I wasn't flying, I could focus more inside and saw all the cubes flashing and realized what happened and told everyone we were good, but we definitely took a minute once everything was turned back on and took some deep breaths.
 
JTS11

JTS11

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pilot
Contributor
Gatordev said:
Towards the end of my tour at -37, I would try and snag as many SAR jump flights as I could because they were fun there. Basically a license to fly low in the bay and buzz all the boats while the swimmers would reset. During one flight, thankfully before sunset, we were in the hover with a swimmer half-way up (or down) on the hook. Basically the worst place, just like we would brief.

At that moment, the AFCS completely reset itself. I'm not sure why...maybe it got wet. When the controls did their jump and the altitude hold kicked off, we immediately started to settle and it felt very much like a single engine power-loss. I don't know how long it took us to figure out what happened...probably half the time it felt like (and I still remember), but the crewman in the back was milliseconds from blowing the CAD. He was reeling out the cable, but it still was going to be a fairly long fall.

Since I wasn't flying, I could focus more inside and saw all the cubes flashing and realized what happened and told everyone we were good, but we definitely took a minute once everything was turned back on and took some deep breaths.
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Just curious, what kind of profile would you fly for the drop-off and pickup?

(Being a former shitter dude, I'm guessing the -60's AFCS had more computing power than the two hamsters we had running around in the 53E). Was there anything more than RadAlt hold and Attirude hold? I guess I'm asking if there were precision hover hold capabilities on the -60 that you flew.
 
robav8r

robav8r

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JTS11 said:
Just curious, what kind of profile would you fly for the drop-off and pickup?

(Being a former shitter dude, I'm guessing the -60's AFCS had more computing power than the two hamsters we had running around in the 53E). Was there anything more than RadAlt hold and Attirude hold? I guess I'm asking if there were precision hover hold capabilities on the -60 that you flew.
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Swimmer deployment 10-15’, pickup ~40’
 
Brett327

Brett327

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MIDNJAC said:
I honestly had no idea either until I was doing a short 90 day fill for the active FRS Safety O job up here. I learned a lot of stuff about the whole little world that is civilian GS base support. It was a world that I guess I was aware of, but did not know the inner workings of.
Click to expand...
There's an entire organization that performs all the little tasks that most tenants aren't even aware of... Base Operational Support Contract. I think it's still Chugach in Whidbey. These guys are kind of a jack of all trades (literally). They cut the grass, fix the water main when it breaks, do repairs to facilities, drive the fuel trucks, etc. Here at PMRF, they're also the gate guards, fire & emergency services, ATC, arresting gear techs. Between the Base and Range contracts, they comprise 85% of my workforce.
 
Griz882

Griz882

Frightening children with the Griz-O-Copter!
pilot
Contributor
JTS11 said:
Just curious, what kind of profile would you fly for the drop-off and pickup?

(Being a former shitter dude, I'm guessing the -60's AFCS had more computing power than the two hamsters we had running around in the 53E). Was there anything more than RadAlt hold and Attirude hold? I guess I'm asking if there were precision hover hold capabilities on the -60 that you flew.
Click to expand...
Way back in my tough guy days I did helocasting from every rotary platform the Corps (except Cobras). However, I only did hard duck boat work out of the -53. That massive tail rotor always scared the shit out of me.
 
JTS11

JTS11

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Griz882 said:
Way back in my tough guy days I did helocasting from every rotary platform the Corps (except Cobras). However, I only did hard duck boat work out of the -53. That massive tail rotor always scared the shit out of me.
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Funny you ask...I somehow got goat roped into being the OpsO of the air side of Marine Week Seattle. At the completion of this dog and pony show, I had a few weeks left until terminal leave. Many weeks of coordination were had from various dets across west coast Marine aviation, and then this happened...

The air show leads off with a MAGTF demo. I'm monitoring and doing a bastardized C&C from my hotel room on a laptop with all of the dets on chat...this clip show the leadoff to the demo that I watched on live Seattle TV, and I almost shit myself ☺️


Turns out, if the grunts don't strap their heavy packs to the Zodiac boat, the boat turns into a bounce house in a tornado...
 
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