Rotor Torque

The company, which oper-ates from eight bases across Australia providing mission-critical services, last year raised $10,000 in support of men’s health issues, a figure it hopes to exceed this year as well as helping to give profile to the cause.

Australian Helicopters’ managing director Scott Swift says he’s buoyed by the fact that his company has developed a culture that fosters this kind of spirit amongst its employees.

“Not only am I pleased that our staff and crew members are getting involved in Movember, but I’m very happy that we can creatively promote the cause and charity by adding mous-taches to our helicopters.

“The helicopters work actively in the community on medical rescue and surveillance tasks and therefore the initia-tive should generate increased awareness and interest.

Boeing Instructors Complete Ec135 Training

Twelve Boeing Defence Aus-tralia (BDA) flight instructors recently completed a three-day training session at the Oakey Army Aviation Centre, for Gold Coast beach patrols as part of an arrangement between BDA and Surf Life Saving Queensland (SLSQ).

The Westpac Lifesaver Res-cue Helicopter Service provided the training on its EC135 helicopter which Boeing has offered in conjunction with Thales Australia for the ADF’s AIR 9000 Phase 7 Helicop-ter Aircrew Training System (HATS) program. SLSQ plans to use the funds earned from the BDA training to invest in equipment upgrades.

“The training provided an op-portunity for BDA to experience the EC135’s capabilities in a va-riety of real-life situations,” said Mark Brownsey, BDA Army Aviation Training and Training Support project manager. “The program is part of our pilot en-gagement strategy, which allows BDA instructors to update their skills on a modern aircraft to support our partnership with the Australian Army. ”

Thales ‘Reality H’ Helo Sim Certified

Thales has announced that its Reality H helicopter simulator has been granted FTD (Flight Training Device) Level 3 and FFS (Full Flight Simulator) Level B qualification by the French Civil Aviation Author-ity (DGAC), in accordance with European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) criteria.

This certification allows the system to be used for EC135 helicopter type-rating train-ing, and confirms its capac-ity for recurrent training to support annual revalidation of pilot licences, annual operator proficiency checks, and line checks. It can also be incor-porated as part of an ab-initio training program leading to a Commercial Pilot’s Licence for helicopters or Air Transport Pilot’s Licence for helicopters, including instrument rating, and proficiency checks.

War Memorial Receives Helo Door Used As Stretcher

The Australian War Memo-rial has been presented with an engine cowling from a coalition helicopter that crashed in south-ern Afghanistan in June 2010.

The door was used as an improvised stretcher to extract wounded from the crash in which three Australians, Private Benjamin Chuck, Private Tim-othy Aplin and Private Scott Palmer from the Special Oper-ations Task Group were killed, and eight others were wounded. Several relatives of those killed, as well as representatives from the Army, attended the pres-entation ceremony which was conducted by the Commander of Joint Operations, LTGEN Ash Power.

The cowling hung in the ISAF Role 3 Medical Centre at Kandahar as a memorial to those who lost their lives, before being presented to the AWM. It is expected to go on display in 2013.

More Lakotas For Us Army

The US Army has awarded a US$181. 8 million contract op-tion for 34 additional UH-27A Lakota helicopters to EADS North America.

The order would bring to 312 the total ordered so far for the Army, which is looking to procure a total of 347 through to 2016. A total of 243 have so far been delivered.

Twenty-four of the aircraft in the latest order will be fitted with Security and Support Battalion mission equipment for use in disaster response and border security operations.