Helicopter Stuff and Things

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Took a trip to Nashville a few weekends ago just for a fun getaway..

My wife bought us one of those "helicopter tours", just a little R44 and a quick trip around Nasvhille.

As soon as we started lifting, I was like "ohp.. yeah I missed that feeling"
 
FiremanMike said:
Took a trip to Nashville a few weekends ago just for a fun getaway..

My wife bought us one of those "helicopter tours", just a little R44 and a quick trip around Nasvhille.

As soon as we started lifting, I was like "ohp.. yeah I missed that feeling"
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I actually recommend to a lot of my patients that are experiencing their first helicopter ride in HEMS, to go down to Nashville or St Louis when they're healthy and take those tours for the view.

Nashville is one of my favorites to fly into at night.
 
GMCmedic said:
I actually recommend to a lot of my patients that are experiencing their first helicopter ride in HEMS, to go down to Nashville or St Louis when they're healthy and take those tours for the view.

Nashville is one of my favorites to fly into at night.
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It was a decent trip, obviously way too short for my liking, but nice views for sure!
 
Local News ran a story, complete with an interview with one of our Battalion Chiefs, about how the Department wants to buy a new $12 Million helicopter.

Aaaand all they say said is its a twin engine, big enough to load a patient inside (vs the sling load we have to do with our current MD520...)

No other details on what model though 😭

 
Jim37F said:
Local News ran a story, complete with an interview with one of our Battalion Chiefs, about how the Department wants to buy a new $12 Million helicopter.

Aaaand all they say said is its a twin engine, big enough to load a patient inside (vs the sling load we have to do with our current MD520...)

No other details on what model though 😭

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I would imagine HEMS has a much more prevalent mission in Hawaii? Probably justifies spending more for a better aircraft?
 
Jim37F said:
Local News ran a story, complete with an interview with one of our Battalion Chiefs, about how the Department wants to buy a new $12 Million helicopter.

Aaaand all they say said is its a twin engine, big enough to load a patient inside (vs the sling load we have to do with our current MD520...)

No other details on what model though 😭

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That's a cute helicopter and all, but I think something bigger would suit you guys better.
 
FiremanMike said:
I would imagine HEMS has a much more prevalent mission in Hawaii? Probably justifies spending more for a better aircraft?
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I know there's a fair bit of Fixed Wing and the like bringing patients in from the outer islands to the main hospital here at Queens for example.

But as far as regular 911 responses here, its pretty much all ground ambulance based. The helicopter mostly picks up people off the mountains or out of the ocean and then flies them to an ambulance waiting at the LZ for transport to the hospital.

I know Queens (the main hospital) does have a helipad as the Coast Guard, when they pick someone up can/will fly straight there, and back in the day we used to have arrangements with the military where they'd actually provide MEDEVAC helicopters for 911 HEMS usage, but that ended like 10, 20 years ago.
CALEMT said:
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That's a cute helicopter and all, but I think something bigger would suit you guys better.
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I wish! That would be super awesome to have here... Even discounting MEDEVAC we could use that water tank capability, way better than our current Bambi buckets for Brush fire water drops haha

Though I half suspect we'll end up getting something more like an MD 902, basically just a slightly larger version of our 520, especially since they can keep the NOTAR feature
 
Maui Fire Department is getting a brand new helicopter. A BK117-850D2.

www.hawaiinewsnow.com

Maui Fire Department gains new aircraft to battle fires, save more lives

The new Air 1 helicopter comes at a perfect time as the county sees alarming numbers of wildfires.
www.hawaiinewsnow.com www.hawaiinewsnow.com
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I wonder if this is the unnamed twin engine model our Dept is looking at as well. Maui also flies the MD520 same as ours, although they have conventional tail rotors, ours have NOTAR, so I wonder if we'll stick with that or not, haven't heard anything specific
 
DesertMedic66 said:
Good luck finding a hospital helipad that can handle that
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Any hospital that lands on the roof of the parking garage can land a Chinook, besides that just land them on the street in front: drivers will stop. Of course you can do a low hover and drop the back ramp, 30 deg down angle. Had a pilot tell me that they could hover over my ambulance and have the crew walk down the ramp. I dared them to do it, Captain said no
 
I wish I could take pictures today, we have 6 chinooks, 8 Blackhawks, and 6 Apaches, sitting 1/4 mile from my station
If needed we could use any of the Blackhawks or Chinooks for Medevac Missions. That would freak out the hospitals.
 
johnrsemt said:
Any hospital that lands on the roof of the parking garage can land a Chinook, besides that just land them on the street in front: drivers will stop. Of course you can do a low hover and drop the back ramp, 30 deg down angle. Had a pilot tell me that they could hover over my ambulance and have the crew walk down the ramp. I dared them to do it, Captain said no
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All helipads have weight ratings clearly printed on the pad along with max rotor diameter. If the operators helicopter does not meet those criteria they should not be landing there as the pad was not designed or build to hold more weight. The Chinook has an empty weight of over 24,000lbs. That is more than double of the heaviest civilian HEMS airframes when they are at their max T/O weight.

You also can not just land a helicopter in front of every hospital. You start to have these pesky little things like power poles, street lights, traffic lights, other buildings, street signs that don’t mix well with rotor blades. Are there hospitals where you can do that? Yes. I have done it several times but the vast majority of our hospitals are not in locations where that is possible/safe to do so.

This is civilian HEMS. This isn’t the military in the Middle East.
 
Just a couple of photos from when I went to visit London HEMS :cool:😍
Bloody awesome. It sure is a great view from the RLH.
I forgot to ask why they do not use a winch-capable machine. I would imagine in the very densely built up metropolis of London that would be quite handy cf trying to find some place to land every single time, which can often be a problem. I wonder. Probably because a big winch-capable machine and specialist crew to do it is too hard to maintain when not also doing SAR-type retrieval too. Fair.

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