Helicopter Safety

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The next helicopter safety evening is
at Redhill on 26th November 2008, click for details.

Coventry

The first Coventry safety evening took place on Thursday 4th September 2008, at Coventry Airport.

We think the evening was a great success with what we estimate to be 56 people turning up, the usual mix of students, licence holders, a couple of owners, several instructors and examiners.

Fred Cross and Keith Thomas from the CAA came as invited guests, and were happy to comment from the audience on some of the legal aspects of training and precautionary langings, which we know were well received as several people commented later on and some even emailed us to comment on.

We had a 3rd airing of the presentation with figures updated to include recently released accident reports.

We finished at around 2125 and with the help of everyone there the room was tidied in about 10 minutes. The traditional decamp to a local hostelry took place, and about 20 of us met up at the Old Mill in Baginton afterwards.

Sponsors

We were given the use of a room by the airport in the terminal building and it made a perfect venue, we hope they will invite us back for the future.

Close Aviation Finance part sponsored the event, providing most of the food that miraculoulsy appeared at the start of the evening.

Thanks to them for their support.

Local Helicopter Companies The evenings only work if they are suppported by the local companies and Coventry was no exception we were supported in our marketing effort by some local flying schools, who encouraged their pilots to come along, we saw pilots from these companies on the evening.

If we've missed you out let us know.

As always we have to say thanks to a small group of individuals who made it all happen, they are

Sarah Bowen a locally based pilot, from the Helicentre who did a fair amount of phoning and running around after Gary during the two weeks prior to the event.
Chris Wild the guy at Coventry airport who dealt all of our phone calls, sorted out the room, gave us tea and coffee, sorted out the car parking, all above and beyond the call of duty.
Robert Power who rounded up, some of his students from Heliflight UK at Wolverhampton and put us in contact with the company who sponsored the food on the night.
Craig Parsons who printed the copies of the Helicopter GASIL and the Helicopter Safety Sense leaflets just like he did for Redhill, he might even remember to fold them next time before he gets there. We'll let him off though as he did have to travel to Leamington to pick up the food.
Ian Hentley who has worked in one form or another with Gary on all the other evenings, and now just gets on with setting up, making it happen and tearing it all down again. The whole thing would not work anywhere near as well without him.

If you attended the evening, we would welcome any feedback, please send us some it's the only way we can make it better.