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Sick Buffaloes

I_Drive_Planes

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Well I was supposed to be going for a Buffalo ride tomorrow, for a CASARA training lift.   They called this morning and said they weren't comming because 5 out of the 6 Buffs were unavailable due to mechanical trouble   :mad: so they needed to keep the last one in Comox in case something happened.   I'm just curious is this typical?   We seem to get a lot of our lifts cancelled.   I realize that North East Zone is sort of the red-headed step child of the province when it comes to training with the military (we are lucky if we get one lift per year, and for some reason they always schedule it in December, when we get our worst flying weather, we've had a lot cancelled due to that as well, last time I went up I believe our ceiling was a grand old 700-800 feet, I asked the crew to do a short field take off, but they said the ceiling was too low for it ??? they attempted to do a short field landing, but they tried to make it soft too and it didn't work very well </rambling>) but this is getting really bad.   It's supposed to be nice tomorrow too, I may just go flying anyway.
 
You think that's bad, try having only 3 of 15 Sea Kings actually serviceable. There is always a SAR standby aircraft, if there's only one serviceable Buff, then it's the SAR standby. Saving lives is pretty important don't you think?
 
Inch said:
You think that's bad, try having only 3 of 15 Sea Kings actually serviceable. There is always a SAR standby aircraft, if there's only one serviceable Buff, then it's the SAR standby. Saving lives is pretty important don't you think?

Absolutely, I completely agree with their decision to keep the buff in Comox, but if something happens to that one it will mean that the only servicable fixed wing SAR assets in BC are civillian, and as much as we can perform the search role it is quite difficult to deploy a SARTech from a C-172.
 
All the more reason to keep the Buff there, in case something breaks en route.  As long as you can find the casualties, they can send a Cormorant to drop the SAR tech, Cormorants don't search. They're grounded right now for the tail rotor hub cracks, but they are cleared for essential SAR duties, at least they were the latest I've heard.
 
A profound sorry from us here at 442 - we really do appreciate what the volunteers at CASARA do and we truly enjoy working with them.

This past month has been a really bad time for the veritable CC-115 Buffalo.  I was up flying one the other day and had to return to the airport with an engine shut down - gave the firetrucks something to do that day.  ;)

In the event that all of our FW SAR are grounded - we rely on the CP-140 to hold the SAR standby - so no worries about you guys having to fill in for us.
 
Zoomie said:
A profound sorry from us here at 442 - we really do appreciate what the volunteers at CASARA do and we truly enjoy working with them.

Thanks! much appreciated   :D

Zoomie said:
In the event that all of our FW SAR are grounded - we rely on the CP-140 to hold the SAR standby - so no worries about you guys having to fill in for us.

I wasn't serious about dropping SARTechs from a C-172 (I should've made my sarcasm a little more obvious), although it would be fun, a tad cold and breezy this time of the year though considering you'd have to fly with a door off.   I think contour searching in an Aurora could get very interesting, I wonder if it's ever been tried.   If I'm not mistaken mountain flying is the reason that there are no C-130s in BC for SAR.
 
You are correct in that astute observation.  A CP-140 would not be able to conduct most of the search patterns required of mountain flying SAR.  They would be mainly tasked for the initial response - (ie ELT search - or track crawl).  Hopefully by that time we would have a Buff serviceable and on-station.
 
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