Helicopter Safety

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Redhill

The third safety evening was held in the Terminal Building at Redhill Aerodrome on Monday 14th April 2008. The premises were kindly donated by Redhill Aerodrome.

The evening started at 1915 with a phenomenal attendance of 51 people, too many to get everyone to introduce themselves in the time available but a quick count of a show of hands leads us to believe that the group was made up of primarily PPL holders or students, 8 owners (very unexpected but encouraging) and 7 instructors a couple of whom are examiners were there. Once again a few PPrune members were present, with most of the group being made aware of the evening by the local helicopter flying schools.

The evening went pretty much as planned although the first half overran by 20 minutes, due to a discussion which was allowed to go on a bit too long.

We had a short introduction to the prominent faces of experience in the group, Dennis Kenyon and Phil Croucher were there along with David Cockburn the GA Safety Promotion Officer from SRG at the CAA, David is a fixed wing PPL examiner in his spare time and has given us some of his safety presentation materials and plenty of ideas to support the evenings.

We had a look at the common causes of accidents in the UK, based upon our accident study, which inevitably turned to flight in poor visiblity and why you should not do it unless suitably qualified and equipped to do so, this included a look at the consequences of one accident from the recent past, the options when faced with bad weather, and the legal implications of precautionary landings.

A short break was followed by the group being given some choices of what to look at next, we had a discussion of LTE its causes recovery actions and a couple of videos.

The evening finished at 2225 and about 30 of the attendees then decamped to the Station Inn nearby and discussion carried on there for an hour or so, just like we found at Newcastle this is were some group members want to talk on a more personal level to talk about what they have done or seen and to ask for opinions.

A huge thanks have to go to some people, they are

Phil Wright the SATCO at Redhill who provided the premises and food for free.
Ian Hentley who spent the entire day sorting the room out, running around after Gary and going out to collect the beer, when we realised the Burco boiler had gone u/s. Ian also went back the next day and sorted the room back into some semblance of order.
Rob Garstang who spent several hours trying to teach Gary how to use colours more effectively in the Powerpoint presentation.
Meinard van Toulon at London Helicopter Centres who had the presence of mind to e-mail almost their entire student base with a cutting from the BHAB newsletter with details of the evening.
Craig Parsons who printed the copies of the Helicopter GASIL and most of the Helicopter Safety Sense leaflets that were available on the night.

If you attended the evening please let us have any feedback be it positive or negative.