A rescue I missed
A few days after I went home, Chris and the A division boys had a great call. A bad spot with people in serious trouble and they did an AWESOME job!!!

http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2009/oct/13/san-diego-8212-passenger/?metro&zIndex=182061

This is the kind of call and flying we do on a fairly regular basis that make all of the b.s. from management seem insignificant and putting up with all of it worthwhile. Well done boys!
- posted by mike @ 9:34 PM 0 comments

 
Another busy day
The Miramar airshow has been going for the past few days which places Montgomery Field's airspace under a temporary flight restriction controlled by the Miramar tower. Right before the Blue Angels went on we were dispatched to Mission Bay to help get a person off the jetty rocks. Calling Montgomery tower, they coordinated a very quick clearance for us and got us out quickly. Over the scene we found a person had overturned their sail boat and was with a Lifeguard on the jetty. The wind had been blowing pretty strong all day and the seas were kind of rough which made it hard for the Lifeguards to get the person off of the jetty safely, so we were asked to hoist the victim off of the jetty. The victim had an injured arm but was not too bad off. We lowered our medic to the victim and he confirmed the victims physical condition and made preparations for the hoist. The difficult part of a hoist along the water is that there is very little in the way of references and all of the water moving in the reference that you do have can play tricks on you. You might think that you are holding a point in space when you are actually moving with the current, as an example. Fortunately the victim was on the side of the channel that with the prevailing winds allowed me to see the jetty on the opposite side of the channel, not the best of references, but it was better than no reference at all!
Selecting a higher altitude (200 feet) for the hoist to keep the rotor wash off the personnel on the jetty we had to position the helicopter about 30 feet in front of the medic (when picking them up) to get the hook to him because the wind was blowing  the hook that far behind us. Once he had the hook I had to back the helicopter up so that when we lifted him and his patient off the rocks they would come straight up and have as little swing as possible. It all came together and went smoothly. Another fun call for this tour done! just a few more days and I can head for home to get ready for the snow.
- posted by mike @ 10:27 PM 0 comments

 
Interesting Call
I am a bit over half way through my 14 day tour. The fog was closing in on three sides of the airport and I went to bed thinking we would get fogged in and have a quite night. Then just before midnight we get a page to head east to hoist 6 hikers off of a ridge. Apparently they had gone for a hike and as it got dark they lost the trail and got stuck. This was all happening about 35 miles east of us in the Japatul Valley, east of San Diego. I didn't get much more information than  that and the immediate thought that I had was about how much fuel I should have, but the 412 is heavy enough that you have to be careful about fuel loads. I had added a bit of extra fuel earlier in the day for another flight that we had scheduled but had fallen through. So I decided to go with what we had. Once we arrived at scene we had to locate the victims, locate an area to bring the victims to after we hoisted them out and then arrange for the police to get to that location to handle that end of things. Our first bit of luck was that the cops had already located and set up at a good landing zone so after locating that site we reconfigured the aircraft into a hoist configuration and flew back the the ridge line to start hoisting these people out. Watching the fuel, I knew we needed to get this done as quickly as we could and we came up with a plan to accomplish that as well as making a back up plan in the event we ran low on fuel and couldn't make it back to base. Breaking policy a bit (I like to call it improvising) we decided that we would close the normally open left rear sliding door to prevent somebody from falling out, have the medic bring up one victim, seat belt him in and the  send the medic down to get a second victim and go to the landing zone and drop two victims off at a time. That cut us back to only having to return to the landing zone three times with the victims. With the landing zone being about 5 miles away, that saved us a bunch of time. Another time saver was doing the hoist at 50 feet instead of the normal 150 feet. Doing that you blow the daylights out of the people on the ground but you can do the hoist faster. All of the hoist operations went off like clock work and we got all 6 of the victims out within about 45 - 50 minute. The total flight time for the mission ended up being an hour and a half which I think is pretty fast. After dropping off the last of the victims, we started for the base before the victims had even walked over to the cop car and I pedaled as fast as I could to get back. Now the low fuel light comes on in the 412 at about 420 pounds of fuel remaining. That light came on when we hit a 1 mile final and we landed back at base with 410 pounds of fuel which is as close as I care to take it (I normally am on the ground at about 500 pounds of fuel). But it was a good call, and it was a first. I don't know of us ever doing 6 hoists in a day let alone on one call. Fun stuff!
- posted by mike @ 7:44 PM 0 comments