Missing CG Hehicopter.

maby said:
I've seen suggestions on PPRUNE that the pilots did not have access to a chartplotter display - which simply amazes me. It is looking increasingly likely that they simply aimed for the wrong lighthouse and flew into the ground - a basic Raymarine or Garmin chart plotter would have made that error immediately obvious.
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Why would something designed to fly above the water need to know what was under it?

From looking at my brothers aeronautical charts lighthouses are marked and the aircrew will know their local patch extremely well. Lets wait for the Air Accident Investigation report once they have the airframe back.
 
sorry when i said chartplotter i meant it in its broadest sense. whatever large screened gadget on their console that they had showed land, and was linked to GPS etc. a big improvement on handheld OS maps and looking out the window.

as long as the electronics work.
 
prv said:
Are we talking specifically about a marine chartplotter (which I suppose is not that outlandish in a SAR helicopter), or an aviation equivalent which I believe they refer to as a "moving map GPS"?

Pete
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exactly - and the suggestion bouncing around on PPRUNE is that the "moving map GPS" on these SAR helicopters is in the rear compartment and not visible to the pilots.
 
the rear console (where the navigator used to sit in sea kings) can show FLIR with an amazing zoom facility, or map/location etc, in an all singing/dancing display. but i am pretty sure i saw the map image in centre front console also - helo was landed on ground/idling, so never saw what it was like over water. will look more closely next time

however pprune more likely to be reliable(!)
 
Kelpie said:
A very sad reminder of the risks that these incredibly brave people take just doing their jobs.
It's a pretty gnarly bit of coast. We were once holed up in Ballyglass for several days and got to know the lifeboat lads, a good bunch whose hospitality left a big impression on us.
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So true my thoughts are with their loved ones.
 
Rov deployed yesterday and located the main part of the wreckage from the helicopter on the eastern side of Blackrock lighthouse 60mts away from the rock in 40mts of water
Waiting to send divers down next but conditions today not suitable for the dive
The families of the missing crewmen have been taken out to the blackrock on the irish navy boat either
 
Irish Media saying that the preliminary enquiry reports that the helicopter collided with Blackrock Island, and also states that the island was not recorded on the helicopters 'hazard warning system'.
I am not sure what that means but it does seem odd if the chopper depended on something like this rather than a GPS plotter device or similar that gave a position relative to everything rather than just hazards?
There were also reports of a brief 'send help' type message.
 
Quandary said:
Irish Media saying that the preliminary enquiry reports that the helicopter collided with Blackrock Island, and also states that the island was not recorded on the helicopters 'hazard warning system'.
I am not sure what that means but it does seem odd if the chopper depended on something like this rather than a GPS plotter device or similar that gave a position relative to everything rather than just hazards?
There were also reports of a brief 'send help' type message.
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Thanks for posting this Quandry. Total speculation on my part, I did wonder if they were trying to put the aircraft down due to an issue when I heard of the location.

My experience of SAR pilots is they have an encyclopedic knowledge of their patch.
 
It was not their patch. they were sent to give cover the Sligo one. They normally operate out of Dublin airport along the east coast.
 
Quandary said:
Irish Media saying that the preliminary enquiry reports that the helicopter collided with Blackrock Island, and also states that the island was not recorded on the helicopters 'hazard warning system'.
I am not sure what that means but it does seem odd if the chopper depended on something like this rather than a GPS plotter device or similar that gave a position relative to everything rather than just hazards?
There were also reports of a brief 'send help' type message.
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The "hazard warning system" is not part of the primary navigation system - it's a last resort safety system designed to warn pilots that are about to fly into the ground. They also had a "moving map" - what we would describe as a chart plotter - and that did have the island and lighthouse on it - they just did not seem to have it displayed on any of the screens available to them.
 
Anyone interested in what the preliminary report says will find a report on it in the Irish Times website today, they are certainly suggesting there were deficiencies in the navigation information used.
 
Quandary said:
Anyone interested in what the preliminary report says will find a report on it in the Irish Times website today, they are certainly suggesting there were deficiencies in the navigation information used.
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thanks

i asked a pilot friend (not S92's, but Police/Helimed) about whether they had the "plotter" up front in the S92's - he didn't know

the Seakings used a navigator in back and pilot up front with OS 1:50,000 map (with eg telephone cables/high tension wires marked on)
 
bikedaft said:
thanks

i asked a pilot friend (not S92's, but Police/Helimed) about whether they had the "plotter" up front in the S92's - he didn't know

the Seakings used a navigator in back and pilot up front with OS 1:50,000 map (with eg telephone cables/high tension wires marked on)
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The AAIB report includes a photo of the dashboard area of the S92 - it consists mostly of 5 MFD displays that the crew can configure with any data they choose including radar, cartography and IR video feeds. For some reason, it seems that the crew of the crashed helicopter were not displaying the high resolution mapping that would have warned them of the obstruction.
 
The 86 Mt black rock was not on the collision avoidance system .the two crew in the rear spotted something 14 secs before impact and asked pilots to turn right but assume the rock was just hundreds of mts away at this stage not enough time to react
Very sad that there is still two crewmembers missing despite great efforts by everybody
Thought they had personal detector locators on their jackets but not enough time to activate them . No allowance for an incapacitated person to activate it ??
 
d4dunmor said:
Thought they had personal detector locators on their jackets but not enough time to activate them . No allowance for an incapacitated person to activate it ??
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Irish AAIB report states the Pilots had locator beacons but doesn't mention the rear crew. Neither pilot's beacon was detected and it is suggested the GPS antenna and the transmit antenna were conflicting with each other although that appears to be based on the beacon manufacturing stating keep 30cm apart rather than data that says "tested - found <30cm was too close" - but its an interim report.

They should have both beacons from the pilots to test.

Aircraft crew can only use manual LJs as otherwise you can't get out of a submersion. But you can get an AIS beacon that can be rigged to activate once a LJ activates so in theory at least it should be possible to rig the beacon to work 'automatically' once the LJ is activated.

Catalogue of issues as there often is with these things. None alone the cause, but combined they all conspired to have effect:

- Helo was providing "Top Cover" that "should" have been provided by the Air Corps but they were unable to cover due to resourcing issues
- Helo Crew hadn't been to Black Rock area for some time
- Crew followed a standard set of approach notes that didn't seem to take into account a huge great rock in the approach on the 'chartlet' but it was in the notes
- Were navigating using weather radar (I'd have expected the rock to show on that??)
- Collision avoidance system didn't know the height of the rock
- Night flight so they didn't see the rock (although I gather there is a light on top of it - and it was working)
- Took ~20minutes to spot they were missing
- Float free EPIRB broke if I understand correctly (?impact damage on rock)
- Aircraft sank ?as wasn't intact. So liferafts not deployed.
- PLB failed to alert CG

Despite all that - within 3 minutes of the first helo on scene the commander was spotted in the water. That wasn't clear in the original press coverage. It appeared to have taken several hours to find any signs of the aircraft.
 
Sandy said:
An interesting piece on the Royal Institution of Navigation web site.

http://www.rin.org.uk/newsitem/4896/Rescue-helicopter-hit-uncharted-rocks
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jeez oh

on the one hand - don't ever trust electronics re navigation. (I know i'm a luddite)

on the other hand getting told to fly in over something that is not marked on the enhanced ground proximity warning system, at an altitude that means they will collide?

or am i getting the wrong end of the stick somewhere?

what a shame. sounds like a clear systems failure, ie not pilot error (tho they will get blamed)
 
bikedaft said:
jeez oh

on the one hand - don't ever trust electronics re navigation. (I know i'm a luddite)

on the other hand getting told to fly in over something that is not marked on the enhanced ground proximity warning system, at an altitude that means they will collide?

or am i getting the wrong end of the stick somewhere?

what a shame. sounds like a clear systems failure, ie not pilot error (tho they will get blamed)
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Other pilots on PPrune are blaming it all on the systems and management, but the fact remains that the other helicopter responding to the call successfully followed the same course and landed safely just half an hour earlier. The crew of the crashed machine were not under any pressure and had had close to an hour to plan their course to the landing point. All the information necessary to plan a safe course was available to them in the cabin but they seem to have not read past the first page of the pilotage notes.

That GPWS is a last resort system to warn a pilot that they are about to fly into the ground. It is not primary navigation and really should never be triggered - even if the lighthouse had been in it, the triggering of a warning should have been regarded as a failure of navigation.
 
"Don't trust electronic navigation" might be OK for sailors but trusting electronics is an essential part of Instrument Flight Rules type blind flying. Hence tend to be also trusted to visual flight rules flying.
Ground Proximity warning Systems started life as a warning system linked to Radio Altimeter (read depth sounder to sailors) to warn of reducing altitude from the ground and various other warnings thrown in with a voice warning generator. This had limited value until they threw in GPS into a terrain map of the world showing mountains etc to warn of mountains ahead. In it s simplest form a pilot sees nothing until he gets a flashing warning and voice demand "terrain" or "pull up" . Now I have lost track of these devices but I was not aware that the terrain map in the GPWS was available as a navigation map. I guess the GPWS terrain map was really intended for airplanes and may have omitted small details like a rock and light house in the water. This may explain why the rock was not chartered. definitely a failure of the organising of navigation systems. ie it seems to me that navigation should have been by proper charts or proper electronic navigation.
Just a guess on my part possibly way out but this can happen too easily with the apparent ease of electronic navigation. olewill
 
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