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Removing Structural Menbers In Flight (almost)


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As the pilot, you and only you are to blame. Something goes wrong, and everyone will desert you like a sinking ship. A court will only deal with the facts, and the road to **** is paved with good intentions. Nobody will jump to your defence and try to absorb the blame. Nobody. Willing to risk your future and your familys furture? Sure, if your stupid. Insurance companies exist to save money. ANYTHING you do to give them an out will be used. Doesn't mean you are safe from a civil suit either. Got money? Ya, I'm sure that superman cape looks good on you. Even discussing this and hearing arguments endorsing stupidity is incredible.

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Part of the problem is that everybody was friends with this faller and they were all very emotional.

 

It is easy to play armchair quarterback when typing on your computer, its another thing to be Johnny on the spot when the **** hits the fan out in the field.

 

 

Precisely.

 

 

AR

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As the pilot, you and only you are to blame. Something goes wrong, and everyone will desert you like a sinking ship. A court will only deal with the facts, and the road to **** is paved with good intentions. Nobody will jump to your defence and try to absorb the blame. Nobody. Willing to risk your future and your familys furture? Sure, if your stupid. Insurance companies exist to save money. ANYTHING you do to give them an out will be used. Doesn't mean you are safe from a civil suit either. Got money? Ya, I'm sure that superman cape looks good on you. Even discussing this and hearing arguments endorsing stupidity is incredible.

I don't see a constructive solution AH1, a lot of your points are valid about insurance liability etc.. Welcome to logging. Your points about stupidity though is playing the arm chair quarterback.

 

If your supporting fallers AH1 and you refuse to help them rescue their friends when they are dying on the mountainside, don't be hanging around staging when they get back. You will be their only hope of getting him off the hill, and they will be counting on you.

 

Nowhere in my post says that any of the stated solutions were good ones, so come up with constructive solution. Can you refuse to go up and help them when they are calling you on the radio????

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Doing things that go outside the normal way of doing them in a life-or-death situation remains a judgment call on the part of the pilot. Two examples that come to mind are:

 

A - The ENG helicopter pilot who rescued some people when that airliner crashed into the Potomac in Washington DC so many years ago. He basically put his skids in the water and supported/dragged people to shore while flying in near 0/0 conditions. He took a huge risk and saved three or four people. It could have gone either way. He could have crashed on top of those people, and added several victims to that horrible trajedy.

 

B - That helicopter pilot who wanted to help out a speedboat that was broken down on a lake by towing him. He crashed and the footage of that event has appeared countless times on tv bloopers shows and on the Internet. Again here, it could have gone either way. Had he not crashed, we never would have heard about it.

 

In the first situation, the pilot made the judgment that if he didn't do something, those people would surely drown. In the second, well, I'm not too sure what the pilot was thinking, especially since there were several other boats on the water nearby...

 

Rule #1 in any rescue is to avoid making more victims. It is impossible to completely eliminate all risks in a rescue, but one must use one's judgment and keep a cool head.

 

Any individual placed in a stressful situation (like being involved in a rescue) is subject to developping tunnel vision. The adrenaline rush one gets in that kind of situation gives us an incredible dose of energy, but we tend to be so focused on saving the victim(s) that we make careless errors, and those errors can cost lives.

 

A good friend of mine who's a firefighter once told me "the rush I get when I pull a person or even a pet from a burning building is better than sex. But once it's over and I realise I could have been killed in the process I almost always puke my guts out"...

 

As far as removing the door post on a JetRanger or opening the litter door on a LongRanger while the a/c is running, or worse, light on it's skids goes, I've never found myself in a position where I had to decide what to do.

 

If, however, I ever decided to go ahead and do it, you can be certain I would document and report the event to my DOM to ensure any required inspections were carried out afterwards. I certainly wouldn't want my "heroic" actions to compromise any future flights with the a/c... :mellow:

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So has anybody have any constructive solutions to getting a person off a steep mountainside without a multi-engine helicopter on scene?

 

Perhaps the responsibility should be on the logging companies to provide for properly equiped medevac aircraft? It's not the pilot's fault for refusing to structurally compromise his aircraft, just because the logging company didn't want to pay the extra $$$ for a proper aircraft. The fallers should take the issue up with their employers to provide the proper aircraft.

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Perhaps the responsibility should be on the logging companies to provide for properly equiped medevac aircraft? It's not the pilot's fault for refusing to structurally compromise his aircraft, just because the logging company didn't want to pay the extra $$$ for a proper aircraft. The fallers should take the issue up with their employers to provide the proper aircraft.

 

The above post was written by me, not 'Prime'. I was unaware the user had not logged off after using this computer. Sorry for any confusion, and 'Prime' does not own the above opinion, 'Lunchbox' does.

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Its the same old cenerial we hear time after time ...your damned if you do and your damned if you don't...sh$T rolles down hill...you can go from hero to zero in a heart beat in this business..as said if you decide not to go get buddy off the hill you are going to either get kicked off the job or worse...have the crap kicked out of you and then thrown off the job...if all goes well...then chief pilot hears about your great feat and shizam..you get fired for being the man that the fallers can count on...in all ways the pilot will be at the bottom of the sh*T pile...its a loose-loose situation...seem to be a lot of these traps lurking around in our line of work...I once refused to do a medivac as it was night...in a snow storm...single engine..over water...I said NO WAY...nurse says but mister pilot the little kid may die...I then said if we go right now we....that being me..you the nurse and the patient WILL DIE...not may die....this story had a happy ending but no thanks to me...so you feel like an A@@hole but this stuff happens all the time ....for the whole story...pm me or not...happened a long time ago :down:

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Harmonic Vibe I was looking at your original post, and you stated that your high time established pilots didn't see anything wrong with loading a patient with the doorpost removed. So at your management meeting what was decided on how to remove an injured worker from steep logging setting.

 

P.S. Look forward to that Guiness :D

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Haven't heard of this before, sounds daft to do it.

 

Nice avatar, HV, glad to see you got the pixellation/size blah blah issues worked out! Looks cold though, needs some kinda cover...

 

D!ck

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