Things may have even changed
from the last time I, properly flew
but as it was then,
so you had in the Chinook
there was the Chinooks
All it is, is different.
Some points along the aircraft
the one that everyone remembers
because that's where the cockpit becomes
And that's the sort of,
the divide.
So you took that all back of station 120.
That means that that's the crewman stuff.
We don't we won't want to interfere there.
And forward of station 120.
It's the cockpit. So.
So because of this
So ahead of station
a guy go in the
right and see the pilot,
who will be handling the aircraft.
so they their job is purely to fly it.
left hand seat, which would have been me,
which could have been a pilot or navigator
then down the back, obviously the, the,
Chinook is different
whose job is to go out and either
so doing stuff at range,
the whole point about, the support
alternatively known as the battlefield
Puma, Merlin, SeaKing mk 4 of old
Back in history,
Their job is, very much geared,
but very much geared around the army
up from point A
and landing on and delivering it
so to actually get the job done,
either with underslung loads
the guys down the back, the crewman,
the shots because they were
they were the ones who got the job done.
The front crew would get the helicopter
but once you get there, it's
Not yeah.
If you if you're landing on. Fair enough.
That slightly easier crew dynamic.
But if you're picking up a heavy
at night, in a desert, etc., etc.,
then it's a heck of a job of communication
it and needs to be told
whether to go forward or backward or left
because there's only so much
And the mk1 human eyeball
replaces all that, the left hand seat
They're actually talking on the radios
making sure everything is
the crewmen down the back doing
talking the aircraft into the right place,
the technical stuff of the load hooks,
the Army or the Royal
to get strapped in as they should,
I was supremely admired
in the navigation and the radios
the front, left and defensively,
extra job of the voice marshaling
And over and above that, going back
crew environment if say, some of the best
Flying is when you go off as a fairly
of the Salisbury Plain main training
And it's a lovely spring day, and you've
and you pitch up in Landon
you go find the army, command and say
What do you want us to do?
And then
no one around because it's this huge
and you don't know what you're doing
I wanted it to go here to there
And you're you're making up the plans
You're preempting
and then coming back that,
about the crew environment,
I really enjoyed those days.
If you then transfer that
such as, I know, Iraq,
this crew feeling of the end of a day's
you've moved people, you've moved kit,
and you've done it
and then you go back to the mess
And it's just that
is really the envy of a lot,
I've not known anything like it since,
and that's not
but it is a unique working environment
ethos that you have with the guys.
