NS air

[Turkey]

OK, rumour has it that the tender for sale of the 4 Dauphins has had them withdrawn at a price of €600,000.
Now the really sad bit of this is that that may be a realistic asking price for these aircrafts. Yup, 4 choppers and a s***load of spares for the price of a 4 bedroomed semi-' in the capital.
These machines are only about half way thru ' their expected life, but are in need of a rebuild.

I think it's time to let the NS have them, 2 are suitable for shipboard ops', as soon as that CRT junk is ripped out of them, while the other 2 may be adopted for the same job, [I cannot get a definitive answer on this] but even if they are not, they are available for training, inshore work, whatever [subject to the same rebuild, of course].
Selling them at the rumoured price would clearly be not value for money, where as useing them to reintroduce the concept of shipboard air ops' might make a bit of sense.
And, before anyone says anything I do realise that 'sense' is an alien concept to our present and preceeding governments, but you never know......



Also posted on franks site......

[hptmurphy]

Not simply the case..most of the kit which was required aboard the ship for heli ops has also been roved..and there haven't been many guys qualified as FDOs nor have the Aer Corps got the guys for ship board ops since its about 10 years since the last flying ops...nice idea but becoming more impractical.

[heinrich.held]

I believe the Irish Navy only have one ship capable of carrying a helicopter. Surely there were no qualified "FDOs" prior to this ship being made? Same with the pilots?

[Goldie fish]

This is true, but it is very unfortunate when you have to go overseas to relearn a skill you had already learnt, not even 20 years ago.

Hopefully the future generations of vessels will have helidecks as standard, if not in frequent use, at least to allow the option of their use.
I noticed on my last few visits to eithne that the honeycomb has been reopened. However you won't land anything on that while there are 2 pallets of the "Hospitality suite" lashed to the deck.

Welcome to IMO.

[morpheus]

To the un-initated....
whats the honeycomb?
whats the hospitality suite?

[hptmurphy]

The honey comb as Goldie puts it so nicely is the Grid like sruture built in to the flight deck to capture the helos harpoom as was fitted to the two naval equiped SA 365fi Dauphin. Bacically a heavt duty mesh.

Goldie mentions the obscure but negleceed the obvious..all the guard rails around the flight deck are still in their collapsible format...

In the case of flying at sea..I don't think the AC will ever buy an aircraft with all the nessacry extras ..It was such a waste to have two deicated machines that didn't spend a tiny fraction of their working lives on the vessel they were aquired for.

If the Naval aviation thing comes to pass ever again it would have to left soley in the hands of the NS with no other commitmnets on the machine....and it would have to be on a three to one basis..to ensure that one helo is available at all times.