Articles for category Helicopter Sectors
|
Oct
23
2017
|
|
Posted by Admin
|
|
Colombia historically has been a country full of security challenges. For more than five decades, its military and police forces were engaged in a bloody fight against armed terrorist groups and drug trafficking organizations that claimed more than 220,000 lives. These armed organizations such as FARC (in English, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia) unfortunately brought Colombia an international reputation for high levels of violence and cocaine production.
The extended internal conflict in this South American country has led to improvements in military and police capacity and equipment. Colombian armed forces once lagging behind in technology and operational readiness are now strong, trained, and global benchmark institutions in the fight against terrorist organizations and illegal drug trafficking.
The National Police of Colombia’s Police Air Service is an integral part of this transformation. Since its founding in 1958 with a few Cessna 206 aircraft to control crime, this unit attached to the Anti-Narcotics Directorate has boosted its capabilities and exponentially increased its aircraft fleet. Thanks to the help of the United States, the Police Air Service currently has in its inventory 80 helicopters and 60 airplanes that record a total of about 42,000 flight hours annually to support police operations in both rural and urban missions.
[Read More...]
Categories:
Helicopter Sectors
Company Profiles
Training
|
Oct
16
2017
|
|
Posted by Admin
|
|
The following is a sidebar of Rotorcraft Pro's story on Hurricanes Hit - Helicopters Rise that outlines ten valuable lessons learned from the first responders that were on the ground in the days following Hurricane Harvey.
1. Think about roles and responsibilities in advance, and put safety first. “People can get into these disasters…and they start to take risks they wouldn’t take elsewhere,” Tom Baldwin, Air Evac Lifeteam safety manager said. Put an immediate stop to any of that. Debrief after every shift.
[Read More...]
Categories:
Safety
Helicopter Sectors
|
Oct
16
2017
|
|
Posted by Admin
|
|
Facing a mind-boggling 122,000 victims who needed to be rescued across 182,000 acres of flooded neighborhoods, air rescues were especially critical to the massive effort to save lives when Hurricane Harvey struck the Gulf Coast Aug. 25 then stalled and dumped a record 51 inches of torrential rain in three days.
The federal government deployed more than 21,000 staff to the hurricane area in late August, but that wasn’t enough. Alongside volunteers, private industry was essential to search & rescue as well as recovery efforts – especially air operations that could spot and rescue people in areas that were inaccessible from the ground. Everyone worked together under the same incident command system.
Hundreds of helicopters performed a variety of simultaneous missions in the worst of conditions and somehow avoided accidents. Crews cut through roofs to hoist people stranded in attics, flew patients in critical condition out of flooded hospitals, and repaired major transmission lines.
[Read More...]
Categories:
Human Interest
Helicopter Sectors
Company Profiles
|
Sep
09
2017
|
|
Posted by Admin
|
|
As the use of Night Vision Imaging Systems (NVIS) technology has continued to mature and grow throughout the helicopter industry, managers, pilots, and mechanics must be committed to supporting the entire NVG program both inside and outside the cockpit. Rotorcraft Pro asked several training experts in the night vision industry to point out the most common operational errors they see in the field so operators can enhance nighttime helicopter NVIS operations. Here are 9 operational areas that night vision experts Night Flight Concepts and Aviation Specialties Unlimited say could use consideration and improvement by operators and end users.
[Read More...]
Categories:
Helicopter Sectors
Training
Safety
|
Aug
07
2017
|
|
Posted by Admin
|
|
It may seem odd that in a helicopter magazine, we are going to talk about fishing. Not with nylon and hook, but with helicopters. Behind the tuna we buy in supermarkets, helicopters are critical to getting tuna from the sea to the table. And for those who love the sea and its marine life, this job is a perfect adventure.
Since tuna is such a popular food worldwide and commands a high price, the use of expensive helicopters is cost effective for commercial tuna boats that use large nets called purse seines. Helicopters are extremely useful for spotting tuna, since these fish gather in large schools or shoals to cooperatively hunt vast areas for smaller fish prey. Helicopters takeoff early in the morning and fly long hours before parking on the ship overnight. R-22, R-44, B206, and MD500 are the most commonly used helicopters for this type of fishing.
It’s not unusual for pilots with relatively few hours of flying time to join tuna operations. These jobs allow pilots to accumulate hours quickly, earn a decent paycheck, and work with fishing crew members from around the world while visiting exotic ports of call. It’s a bold alternative to the common practice of starting a career as a flight instructor.
[Read More...]
Categories:
Helicopter Sectors
|
Jul
31
2017
|
|
Posted by Admin
|
|
I’ve always felt the shapers of the American experiment from the late 1700s were not only exceptional, but brilliant thinkers. Their ideas and ideals still guide our success in the 21st century. Take Adam Smith for example and his theory of the “invisible hand.”
Investopedia says: Smith’s theory of the invisible hand constitutes the basis of his belief that large-scale government intervention and regulation of the economy is neither necessary nor beneficial. Smith put forth the notion of the invisible hand in arguing that free individuals operating in a free economy, making decisions, primarily focused on their own self-interest, logically take actions that result in benefiting society as a whole even though such beneficial results were not the specific focus or intent of those actions.
[Read More...]
Categories:
Helicopter Sectors
|
Jul
04
2017
|
|
Posted by Admin
|
|
Sometimes a small airborne law enforcement unit can make a larger impact than its size suggests. The Imperial Valley Airborne Narcotics Enforcement (IVAN) Air Support Unit makes such an impact. IVAN operates within Imperial County, which covers the lower east corner of Southern California and is bordered by Mexico to the south and Arizona to the east. Most of the area is low desert with a few small cities and many thousands of acres of farmland growing many types of produce. The area is warm all year, but during the summer months it is always hot; temperatures can reach well over 100 degrees for consecutive weeks.
IVAN Air Support is a part of The Imperial County Narcotics Task Force (ICNTF),which originated in 1973 to combat local and regional drug trafficking and gangs. Federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies take part in the task force by sharing information and intelligence from many sources. The task force is governed by a board of directors chosen from participating agencies that include the Imperial County District Attorney’s Office, the Imperial police department, Imperial County Probation, U.S. Border Patrol, California Highway Patrol, Federal Drug Enforcement Administration, and Homeland Security Investigations. ICNTF’s chairman of the board is District Attorney Gilbert Otero, and its commander is Mike Loyd. The IVAN Air Support Unit formed in 2011, with the purchase of a Robinson R44 LE helicopter. Since the program’s establishment, its chief pilot has been Donald Wharton.
[Read More...]
Categories:
Company Profiles
Training
Helicopter Sectors
|
May
30
2017
|
|
Posted by Admin
|
|
On December 22, 2016 a State District Court judge in Austin upheld a ruling, giving the State of Texas the right to regulate fees paid to air ambulances for transporting patients covered by Workers' Compensation Insurance. On the surface it doesn’t look like that ruling affects the American HAA (Helicopter Air Ambulance) industry, but it could prove to change the fabric of the industry. The ruling has the potential to create a negative ripple effect in our industry, if successfully argued and used as a precedent in other State class-action lawsuits currently filed against for-profit HAA providers.
Air medical companies have legally operated under the umbrella of the 1978 Airline Deregulation Act. This Act was originally crafted to remove government control of airfares as a way to promote healthy competition. This gave the consumer a choice of which airline they patronize based on a price they would be willing to pay. Air ambulance patients do not have a choice -- and are not told what the air ambulance company will charge until after the transport, which is the core of the legal argument.
In July 2015, over a dozen clients in Oklahoma City were billed thousands of dollars for an air ambulance transport. The clients asked a judge to certify a lawsuit as a class action, naming several air ambulance companies in that suit. The claim: “They’re making profit margins [of] in excess of 750%, huge profit margins they’re trying to get from the average public.”
[Read More...]
Categories:
Regulatory
Helicopter Sectors
|
May
22
2017
|
|
Posted by Admin
|
|
Throughout the past few years, privately-owned and -operated aerial firefighters have continued to demonstrate their rapid response to the nation’s most destructive wildland fires, due largely to ongoing investments—with their own funds—in newer, more capable aircraft.
Many, in fact, are operating under US Forest Service (USFS) exclusive use, multi-year contracts that have helped to put the industry on a pathway to modernization. For example, the fixed-wing operators of large air tankers are moving from USFS “Next Gen 2.0 contracts” issued in 2016, toward “Next Gen 3.0” contracts that will be awarded in 2017 and implemented in 2018. By that year, the Next Gen 3.0 contracts mandate the complete transition from legacy, World War II and Korean War Era piston-engine aircraft, to newer, turbine-powered equipment. For the industry, this is a major accomplishment, considering that only six years ago there were no modern large tankers, while today there are 21. The USFS has a stated goal of a fleet of 22-28 new generation tankers, and the contractual vehicles are in place to meet that.
[Read More...]
Categories:
Helicopter Sectors
|
May
08
2017
|
|
Posted by Admin
|
|
For those brave hearts who do not associate optionally-piloted helicopters and UAVs with The Terminator movies’ computer-controlled human-hunters, the idea of using unmanned aircraft to help people makes good sense.
Apparently the engineers at Lockheed Martin are not haunted by visions of Skynet; at least not while on the job. This is because Lockheed Martin recently proved just how powerful a team of UAVs and ‘optionally manned’ helicopters can be for fighting fires and rescuing people.
Specifically, the company staged a demonstration on November 8, 2016 which showed that a quartet of UAVs and optionally-manned, autonomously-controlled helicopters can perform effectively in the location and airborne attack of fires, followed by airlifting personnel from the fire scene – all without having an actual firefighter at the scene. (For the record, an autonomously-controlled helicopter combines the aircraft’s own suite of onboard sensors and flying control modes with human-directed flight plans, mission instructions and direct interventions; usually done from a remote location using the aircraft’s visual and other real-time sensor data to inform the human pilot.)
[Read More...]
Categories:
Helicopter Sectors