More than SAR
A critical side job for the H145 LUH SAR is firefighting. With dense forests all over the country, the unit is always on high alert during the dry summer season. Throughout the year, many wildland firefighting exercises are conducted with local firefighters, police, and private companies. The H145 LUH SAR normally carries the 820-liter (216-gallon) “Bambi Bucket” as well as the 900-liter (238-gallon) Semat water bucket of the Bavarian fire brigades, capable of dropping the load in just three seconds or conducting a “spray dump” to release the water over 15 to 30 seconds. The Wescam MX-15 FLIR is capable of locating underground fires and can be a valuable asset in the aftermath of a wildfire to see if all hot spots have been extinguished.
The powerful Goodrich hoist with a cable length of 90 meters (295 feet) is a huge improvement compared to the 45-meter hoist of its predecessor the UH-1D Huey. It’s useful for transporting specially trained firefighters including the “Bergwacht” (mountain rescue service) to areas that are difficult to access. These specialists are trained at the Central Training Center of the Bergwacht in Bad Tölz. Training for helicopter crews in mountainous areas occurs on a regular basis in the Bavarian Alps, and at the Mountain Flight Center (Centre De Vol En Montagne) at Saillagouse in the French Pyrenees.
Heavy workload
These crews are chronically busy. “As you can see, our squadron is heavily burdened with a lot of tasks,” Maj. Florian says. “From the seven aircraft assigned to our unit, we only have three at our disposal for special missions and training as the other three aircraft are at their SAR detachments, and the fourth is on standby in case an aircraft change needs to be made at one of the SAR detachments or during maintenance. However, there is an extra H145 available. This aircraft (77+08) is two-thirds of the year stationed at Manching-Ingolstadt Air Base with WTD 61 for testing and training. It lacks the striking orange SAR doors and has no SAR interior equipment. In terms of training, initial training for the H145 LUH was done at the Airbus Helicopters Training Academy- Germany in Augsburg and Manching. There we conducted IFR, VFR, Hoist, NVG, and the external load training, in total around 35 flying hours. Now all training on the H145 is done locally after the student comes from the IHTE (International Helicopter Training Center) in Bückeburg flying the H135. Only the theoretical part for the H145 is still done at Airbus. We additionally use a (full flight) simulator in Frankfurt from Lufthansa Aviation Training to relieve the training pressure in our unit. At this moment, we have two new students and they need at least one to one-and-a-half years, or around 150 flying hours, before being fully mission-qualified and ready to be sent to a SAR detachment. A solution to reduce the workload for our unit would be the purchase of extra helicopters, but due to lack of funding that will most likely not be possible in the next few years, but we do have an H135 temporarily on loan for students and pilots to enable the mandatory flying hours.”
66 Jan/Feb 2024
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