An Idea Who’s Time Has Come

Barely heard above the din from police sirens is the familiar rotor clap of a helicopter. Not an ordinary every-day helicopter but Polair I, the NSW Police helicopter. From several hundred feet above the hunted they can hover and watch his every move. He is a veritable rat in the corner, trapped in time while his pursuers tighten the cordon around his position. Realising this, the armed bandit throws down his weapon and accepts capture.

This is just another “routine” mission for the police helicopter.

To the north a deep-sea motor cruiser has caught fire and the occupants have dived into the relative safety of the ocean. The local surf rescue helicopter is on the scene within minutes and the frightened survivors are winched aboard.

One hundred kilometres to the west a goods train has been derailed and the television news team has less than two hours to capture the action and get it on the evening news. This is no job for a car and so the news team are at the site within half an hour thanks to their chopper. That night more than a million people from Cairns to Hobart are watching at home on their television sets the drama that occurred only a few hours before. All made possible by the TV network making good use of what is fast shaping up as one of aviation’s most efficient tools – the helicopter.

Ten years ago there were only a small number of commercial helicopters in Australia. The defence forces operated a large number of helicopters while civilian use was largely restricted to the early model Iroquois as used in Bass Strait oil support work and a handful of private Bell 47s in the charter and agricultural role.

The war in Vietnam changed many traditional attitudes to the basic use of the helicopter. In Vietnam, the helo was performing roles that were never envisaged for it when the various models were on the drawing boards. This then flowed over into civilian life when suddenly with the phasing down of the war in the early 70s thousands of rotary-wing pilots were entering civilian life ever-ready to promote the advantages of using helicopters in place of fixed-wing aircraft.

Through Vietnam a lot of R&D money flowed into the helicopter system research area. Engines were to become more powerful while using less fuel and weighing less overall. Airframes were to become stronger and lighter and the all important hydraulics and instrumentation would undergo a revolution in design that would take helicopter design technology through one huge quantum leap in a decade. Through the design efforts emanating from the Vietnam experience grew such fabulous machines as the Bell Jetranger and the Hughes 500. The Iroquois itself grew from the smallish Bravo model right through to the modern day 214ST with more than double the gross weight of the original aircraft.

In recent years Sydney in particular has seen tremendous growth in helicopter operations. Melbourne a decade ago saw quite a lot of rotary-wing flying in support of the Bass Strait oil effort though little else occurred in any way shape or form resembling today’s boom of helicopter operations.

Sydney’s primary introduction to the constructive these of the helicopter was pioneered by the Bank of New South Wales/Surf Life Saving Association with their Bell 47. To the public, basking in the summer sun on Sydney’s expansive beaches it was reassuring to know that if trouble occurred the blue, white and yellow helicopter would be there to assist. This machine though was extremely limited in its mission capabilities arid with three persons aboard and their equipment, operations on a hot summer day were always taxing on the aircraft.

The situation was improved greatly when in 1974 the Wales Rescue Service, as it was becoming known, took delivery of a Bell 206 Jetranger. The new 206 was not only much easier to maintain but its total mission capability and performance level was so far in excess of the old 47 that suddenly the Wales Rescue Service was able to contemplate extension of the service into medivac-type operations based from a suburban hospital.

Today this is precisely what the service has matured to. The Jetranger spends weekends at its Long Reef base on Sydney’s northern beaches, able to respond to a rescue mission at a moment’s notice. Weekdays the team is working out of their official base at Sydney’s giant Royal North Shore Hospital. Overall the operational spectrum is spread between 45 per cent medical missions, 45 per cent search and rescue and the remaining 10 per cent being pure rescue. As an example of the effectiveness of such a service, from October 1978 through to August 1979, the Jetranger crew performed 106 medicals, 100 search and rescue missions and a number of direct “scramble” type specific rescue missions. The number of lives specifically saved by the Wales Surf Life Saving team is not exactly known though the number to date must surely range into several dozen.

The overall success of the concept has grown to the point where other Sydney metropolitan hospitals are currently examining ways in which to incorporate medivac style helicopters into their services. Concord Repatriation Hospital is one such example where the prospective use of a BK-117 is under serious consideration.

The beaches of Sydney and its environs are now well protected by the Wales network which has been extended to Newcastle (Jetranger) and Gosford where a Hughes 500 chartered from Scruse Air is in operation. The Police Air Wing and the various media helicopters can also be called into operation if additional assistance is required such as occurs in large bush fires or a disaster similar to the tragic Granville train crash.

The Wales Jetranger has a normal mission endurance of just under three hours, has a fuel capacity of 60 gallons and is budgeted for 380 hours operation per annum. Support for the service also comes from Channel Ten and radio station 2UE.

The ideal replacement for the current model Jetranger (which itself is often taxed in extreme operational conditions) would be the Longranger or an Aerospatiale Ecureuil which slots in between the two former aircraft in payload and cost.

Following the success of the Wales helicopter it wasn’t long before the media started to eye this new beast of burden as a useful tool in covering news stories that they would normally have to forgo owing to distance from their base and lack of time to get the story ready for the evening news. The effectiveness of having a helicopter was proved beyond doubt when Sydney’s Seven network invested their money in leasing a Bell Jetranger back in 1975.

Seven’s new aircraft, which they own themselves rather than lease from an independent operator, is a 2061118 and is the most technically advanced example of a news gathering helo anywhere in the world. The basic aircraft cost around $300,000, to which Seven added another $100,000 worth of electronic wizardry in order to beat the opposition.

A recent example of this aircraft’s capability was when a tragedy occurred south of Sydney at the Appin Colliery. The Seven helo was in the area within half an hour of the disaster and was able, through it unique microwave boom, to beam the pictures back direct to the Sydney based transmitter. This resulted in live coverage of the event where normally the film would have to be flown back to the station and then processed ready for the evening news. Furthermore, the Seven network had a link up to OTC (Overseas Telecommunications Centre) who then beamed the story via satellite worldwide, all as it was happening more than a hundred kilometres from Sydney.

Other Sydney networks operating helicopters are Ten and Nine both with Longrangers. All three networks have their helicopters equipped with rescue equipment and are available to assist in search and rescue missions if required. Average network utilisation appears to be budgeted at around 400 hours per annum. So vital is the requirement for helicopters in the news-gathering media that the ABC is also looking at purchasing a helicopter just to remain competitive with the commercial stations.

This situation is also gathering momentum in other capital cities though in this instance Sydney has truly led the helicopter boom in almost every facet of its growth.

Another area in which the helicopter will create a revolution in tactics is that of crime prevention. Both Sydney and Melbourne were experiencing a rash of bank holdups and in too many instances the bandits were fleeing the scene and successfully disappearing into the surrounding environment. The more this occurred, the more robberies were committed. After all, if the success rate was in favour of the criminal then robbery would become a viable means of The MBB-Kawasaki BK-117 twin engined helicopter which has been ordered by Scruse Air to further enlarge their Sydney/Gosford commuter capability. Scruse Air claim that the BK-117 will triple revenue on the fifteen minute Sydney/Gosford run. This design is also ideal in the medivac role making easy money for the underworld.

Melbourne introduced helicopters to its police force several years ago on a lease basis and found the results in deterring armed robbery to be most encouraging. A bandit, as outlined earlier in this article, is most vulnerable to a helicopter police patrol owing to the speed at which a helicopter can reach a defined area and once on station the ability to locate and track a target, day or night, simply deters criminals from attempting many robberies previously considered viable.

Following the success achieved by the Victorian Police in foiling robberies, the NSW Police Force took up the challenge and commenced routine helicopter operations as of late November, 1978. The NSW force used helicopters owned and normally operated by other government instrumentalities such as the Department of Main Roads (Jetranger 2068), State Electricity Commission (Jetranger 2068) and the National Parks and Wildlife Services (with their powerful Gazelle 341G).

The Police Air Wing officially became operational “again” on May 9, 1979 when the official headquarters of PAW were opened at Mascot airport. The NSW Police Air Wing currently operates two extensively equipped Jetranger IIls and a third and larger helicopter, perhaps a twin engined Dauphin or Bell 222, sometime in the next three years.

The PAW operate their helicopter/s an average of 1600hr per year or about four times the utilisation rate of the Wales and media aircraft. This results in the aircraft operating regular day and night shifts with emphasis being placed on high-crime times of Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights. Normal crew is one pilot and two observers, all PAW members are policemen first, aviators second and most have practical in-field experience in previous helicopter oriented operations including service in Vietnam and the defence forces.

New South Wales is no stranger to the “police have wings” concept as the original PAW dates back to 1946 when the Force acquired an ex-RAAF Avro Anson aircraft. In fact this was the first instance of any police force in the British Empire having made regular use of an air wing in its force structure. Unfortunately when the Anson began to show her age and funds for a suitable replacement were not forthcoming the PAW was disbanded (1950) with the result that any further aerial assistance for the Police force was dependent upon the private efforts of the regular Police Aero Club.

Other states have expanded their own Air Wings in recent years. The Victorian Police Force now operate a twin-engined Aerospatiale Dauphin in addition to a 10 seat Navajo Ch1eftan. They also charter from time to time a six-place twin of varying make as the situation requires.

Queensland operates two ex-Army Cessna 180s and is currently looking at a suitable replacement. South Australia operates two Piper Seneca cells and one Piper Navajo. The Northern Territory have recently. incorporated two Navajo 310C aircraft into their structure with one aircraft being based at Darwin and one at Alice Springs. Both Western Australia and Tasmania charter aircraft from private sources as and when required. The primary role of the fixed-wing component of these fleets is the transferral of members of the police force and criminals, etc.

A team of detectives can be flown from, say Melbourne to a country centre 300 kilometres away, undertake their investigations and return in the time it would take to simply drive that distance. This results in high utilisation levels of key personnel and hence cost savings all around in addition to a greater chance of preventing and solving crime in the first instance.

An example of the use of the NSW PAW comes to mind when recently a diver got into difficulties at Manly Dam near Sydney’s northern beaches. The PAW was alerted and in the air within two minutes (routine scramble), they then picked up two police divers who happened to be in a highway traffic jam several miles from the scene of the incident and proceeded to Manly Dam. The police divers then were able to undertake the rescue of the injured diver – the entire operation took just under 15 minutes and surely saved the injured diver’s life.

Police forces worldwide are now following the trend originally set in the large American cities of using helicopter to deter and prevent crime. Los Angeles Police Department operates a fleet of 16 helicopters with four in the air at any given time. In fact, the number of aircraft, both fixed and rotary wing types operated by US police forces runs into air force-like proportions. Even the staid London bobby now makes good use of that force’s new Bell 222.

Commuter operations with helicopters are few and far between yet we could not let this article pass without some reference made to that absolute pioneer of Australian helicopter operations, Joe Scruse.

Joe is a staunch advocate of intensified rotary-wing operations with special DOT guidelines set down for the day when Sydney and Melbourne alone will account for up to 100 helicopters in regular operation. Scruse Air operates a scheduled Gosford to Mascot Airport service using a Jetranger 2068. The distance is around 120km by car, or about two hectic hours of driving or less than 15 minutes by helo. Fare is $29 for a single one-way fare and loadings are near capacity. To extend and develop the concept though Scruse Air really requires use of the newly-opened Sydney heliport which would give them a regular scheduled shuttle between the three points and would win a lot of Sydney to Mascot traffic. To this end Joe has on order a 10-place BK-117 for delivery in 1981 which will place the operation on a more commercial footing as the current Jetranger is limited to four passengers.

When Scruse Air receive their BK-117, when the police forces in each major city operate a number of helicopters and our major beaches and roads are patrolled by medivac style helos – what then?

Certainly life will be a lot safer. Crime should be reduced or at least deterred in many instances, many more traffic accidents might result in less fatalities owing to the greatly reduced time in getting an accident victim to surgery and the use of regular scheduled commuter helicopters will greatly increase executive efficiency and traveler convenience.

Helicopters are here today and here to stay.