Vigil, Winching and a Sea King.....

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Undried Plum
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Re: Vigil, Winching and a Sea King.....

#61 Post by Undried Plum » Fri Sep 24, 2021 4:22 pm

As recently as 1992 we were still using MainChain as a backup for the other terrestrial systems we had because we didn't quite trust DGPS.

You couldn't buy the receivers. You had to rent them. They came in pairs. Rental cost for a pair was £800 per day! Yes, per day. Accuracy by day was about 20m.

Nowadays even a cheap mobile phone has a GPS receiver built in and has an accuracy of 5-10m. My Garmin hand-held has a capability to utilise phase measurements corrected by the free OS Rinex data giving an accuracy of 2-3cm. I often use it for quick land survey tasks. It has replaced a very expensive geodetic total station that cost tens of thousands when it was new.

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Re: Vigil, Winching and a Sea King.....

#62 Post by Undried Plum » Fri Sep 24, 2021 4:29 pm

That's a nifty little stego programme.

And she's a Whirlwind, not a Wessex.

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Re: Vigil, Winching and a Sea King.....

#63 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Fri Sep 24, 2021 4:31 pm

Undried Plum wrote:
Fri Sep 24, 2021 4:29 pm
That's a nifty little stego programme.

And she's a Whirlwind, not a Wessex.
Indeed it is (on both accounts). I intended to use the Wessex photo but have now reaped the Whirlwind! Photographed last weekend on my weenly phone! Perhaps I should have used the Bell, it would have been more apt.
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Re: Vigil, Winching and a Sea King.....

#64 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Sat Sep 25, 2021 6:44 am

Weenly? Weeny phone and a Wessex..

Wessex.jpg
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Re: Vigil, Winching and a Sea King.....

#65 Post by G-CPTN » Sat Sep 25, 2021 6:57 am

Why are the Wessex hubs 'extended' (the white bits)?

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Re: Vigil, Winching and a Sea King.....

#66 Post by Pontius Navigator » Sat Sep 25, 2021 7:07 am

Flotation air bags

Helps them float upside down like the dunker.

😁

PS, not sure about the down side up but but it would be logical

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Re: Vigil, Winching and a Sea King.....

#67 Post by G-CPTN » Sat Sep 25, 2021 7:12 am

Thanks.

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Re: Vigil, Winching and a Sea King.....

#68 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Sat Sep 25, 2021 12:39 pm

G-CPTN wrote:
Sat Sep 25, 2021 7:12 am
Thanks.
I imagine somebody like C16 will set me right on this one, but I seriously can't imagine an aircraft with the Wesex's shape floating rotor side up for very long in the sea....
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Re: Vigil, Winching and a Sea King.....

#69 Post by k3k3 » Sat Sep 25, 2021 1:48 pm

It might have a better chance than some others as the engine(s) is/are low down and not above the cabin.

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Re: Vigil, Winching and a Sea King.....

#70 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Sat Sep 25, 2021 1:58 pm

k3k3 wrote:
Sat Sep 25, 2021 1:48 pm
It might have a better chance than some others as the engine(s) is/are low down and not above the cabin.
Yes, you make a good point reference the centre of gravity...
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Re: Vigil, Winching and a Sea King.....

#71 Post by CharlieOneSix » Sat Sep 25, 2021 3:51 pm

TGG - as well as the two flotation bags on the wheels, on RN Wessex there was a permantly inflated large bag in the tail cone - inflated to 35psi if memory serves me correctly. Whether or not a Wessex turned turtle would be more to do with how water entry took place - and of course the sea state. A main rotor strike on water entry could well flip the helicopter on its side and then upside down as a result - as could a failure of one flotation bag to deploy.

Here's a photo of a night ditching which shows how the tail of a Wessex 1 fuselage sits low in the water. I presume the guy clambering up to the rotor head was there in preparation for him to hook on the crane cable to the Jesus nut* so the Wessex could be lifted back to the ship's deck:
Wessex-Night-Ditching.jpg
Wessex-Night-Ditching.jpg (34.2 KiB) Viewed 592 times
It was a foolish man who walked closely in front of the 'line of fire' of the metal can covers of the wheel based flotation gear. It had a habit of going off on its own at the most inopportune moments and the cans travelled an impressive distance! That's why the flotation cans were removed before the helicopter was stowed in the hangar. The cans and flotation gear were attached to a steel tube which was inserted through the hollow wheel hub and retained by a pip pin. Here's an example in 1967 of an uncommanded flotation gear activation to a Wessex 3. You can just see one of the two spherical white gas generators that supplies each bag just behind the lower undercarriage strut.
WX3 floats.jpg
WX3 floats.jpg (70.52 KiB) Viewed 592 times
I jest about the Jesus nut* in a Wessex. He would have attached strops to eye bolts in the rotor head and then those to the crane hook.
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Re: Vigil, Winching and a Sea King.....

#72 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Sat Sep 25, 2021 5:11 pm

Thanks for that very interesting post C16. Seems the venerable Wessex was pretty well adapted with flotation gear and sat much lower in the water than I had originally imagined.
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Re: Vigil, Winching and a Sea King.....

#73 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Sat Sep 25, 2021 7:30 pm

I was looking at some of the ditchings that the Wessex made over its history. Many, actually most, were very successful but this one, never truly understood, was tragic and seemed to mark an end point for the type really. Clearly the severity of the outcome had nothing to do with flotation gear, and the cause thereof still stands as a partial mystery, as the very experienced pilot in command seems to have been a man at the top of his game at the time of this unfortunate accident.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.u ... G-ASWI.pdf
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Re: Vigil, Winching and a Sea King.....

#74 Post by CharlieOneSix » Sat Sep 25, 2021 8:10 pm

Can it really be 40 years since Ben Breech died in that accident! I’ve posted somewhere before on here that in 1972 Ben crashed on a Wessex test flight at Cardiff Rhoose - he was virtually in a hover - and the helicopter caught fire on impact. I had just refuelled my JetRanger and was aware Ben had refuelled his Wessex shortly before me. I did some very careful water drain checks before I took off just in case the Wessex had a fuel problem. It turned out the 1972 crash was due to a hydraulic problem in the flying controls which resulted in a violent pitch down.

I recall that Alan Bristow is quite emotional in his autobiography about the loss of Ben Breech.
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Re: Vigil, Winching and a Sea King.....

#75 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Sat Sep 25, 2021 8:26 pm

CharlieOneSix wrote:
Sat Sep 25, 2021 8:10 pm
Can it really be 40 years since Ben Breech died in that accident! I’ve posted somewhere before on here that in 1972 Ben crashed on a Wessex test flight at Cardiff Rhoose - he was virtually in a hover - and the helicopter caught fire on impact. I had just refuelled my JetRanger and was aware Ben had refuelled his Wessex shortly before me. I did some very careful water drain checks before I took off just in case the Wessex had a fuel problem. It turned out the 1972 crash was due to a hydraulic problem in the flying controls which resulted in a violent pitch down.

I recall that Alan Bristow is quite emotional in his autobiography about the loss of Ben Breech.
We had two more accidents, including a double engine failure in Nigeria, but the end of the Wessex came very suddenly and tragically. In August 1981, on Friday 13th, we lost a Wessex 60 off the Norfolk coast, and to this day we do not know why the accident happened. It was coming back from a rig in the Leman Bank gas field when it suffered a complete double engine failure. The pilot, Ben Breech, put out a Mayday and prepared to autorotate onto the water, but in the late stages of the descent control was somehow lost and the aircraft crashed, killing thirteen people. I remember that as a particularly harrowing time because Ben Breech was a personal friend – I’d been staying with him just a couple of weeks before the accident. He was a highly skilled pilot with 5,000 hours on the Wessex 60 alone, and I was determined to establish why he and the others had died. We had a world of difficulty trying to recover the wreck. We sent a salvage vessel called the British Enterprise II with a team of divers, and another ship, the Gardline Locator, with underwater search equipment. We found the helicopter within a day and raised the gearbox and rotor head, but a storm blew up and the conditions became horrendous. The sandbanks on the seabed were constantly shifting and the wreckage was disappearing under mounds of sediment. I spent half a million pounds trying to raise it, and Westlands and Rolls-Royce refused to help until the Air Accidents Investigation Branch persuaded them to make a contribution. Vast amounts of this awful liquid silt were dredged from the sea bed, but no sooner had they made an impression than it would fill with silt again. The salvage effort continued off and on between storms until November, when they finally gave up. They’d brought up some instruments and other small items, but the salvage experts said there was no chance of recovering any more. We’d had six ships and sixteen divers working in appalling conditions for weeks, and it was immensely frustrating to recover so little. The AAIB sifted through the evidence and the wreckage for years, but eventually admitted defeat – they couldn’t even begin to establish why the engines had failed, or why control had been lost. I made an instant decision on the day of the accident to get the Wessex out of the air and grounded the whole fleet. It was a bloody expensive decision but I wasn’t prepared to tolerate accidents that couldn’t be explained. I couldn’t conceal my distress in the days following the deaths of Ben Breech and his passengers. I had a number of heated conversations with Sir Basil Blackwell, who was group chief executive of Westlands at the time. Basil agreed to take back all Bristow Helicopters Wessex 60s, and we shuffled our other equipment to cover the gaps as far as possible. Soon afterwards we ensured that all our helicopters had Cockpit Voice Recorders and Flight Data Recorders. But the frustration of not knowing how an accident happened, of being unable to do anything to ensure that it did not recur, lives with me to this day. Helicopters could be the best business in the world, if it wasn’t for the accidents.
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Re: Vigil, Winching and a Sea King.....

#76 Post by FD2 » Sat Sep 25, 2021 9:49 pm

What a sad day that was and like the Chinook, it disappeared from North Sea service as the oil companies didn't trust it, like they understandably didn't trust the Chinook after the Sumburgh crash. The S58T was used in small numbers for a while but that eventually disappeared too. Alan Bristow came in for a lot of criticism for being heavy handed at times but he knew his men and if he'd sent someone off on a pierhead jump he would remember and give the person a good job next time. I think the only person in the industry who received a Bristow fist was someone from Westlands who argued the toss.

The sea state was calm when they were trying to recover the remains of G-BJVX near the Leman Field but apparently the sea bed was a constantly changing pattern of large sandbanks which covered and uncovered wreckage as the tides changed. That was without a storm to complicate things on the surface.

I think that most people show loyalty to those who have built their own companies like Bristow and Laker rather than the faceless boards of directors who came to rule the company after Bristow retired.

Apologies about the drift from the mudder mystery off the West Coast. It is being shown here tonight so no spoilers please!

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Re: Vigil, Winching and a Sea King.....

#77 Post by FD2 » Sat Sep 25, 2021 9:57 pm

Inadvertent inflation happened occasionally and was a problem if it happened at speed, but it was usually due to water ingress to the activation switch on the undercarriage legs. I think the switches were quickly modified but I know C16 would be more knowledgable about that as it happened before my time in the 3.


Inflated Wessex 3 Portland.jpg
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Re: Vigil, Winching and a Sea King.....

#78 Post by k3k3 » Sat Sep 25, 2021 10:47 pm

Is it on the way to be gelded?

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Re: Vigil, Winching and a Sea King.....

#79 Post by CharlieOneSix » Sat Sep 25, 2021 10:48 pm

FD2 wrote:
Sat Sep 25, 2021 9:49 pm
.........It is being shown here tonight so no spoilers please!
Don't go decoding the encrypted posts from a couple of pages back! [-X ......
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Re: Vigil, Winching and a Sea King.....

#80 Post by FD2 » Sat Sep 25, 2021 10:52 pm

OK - Thanks C16.

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