| Ship's Diary |
| During her time at sea, HMS Endurance will be sending back regular diaries to keep us all up to date with what is happening on this deployment. Use the links below to read extracts from the diary. |
| NEWS FROM THE FLIGHT DEPT |
|
Hello once again it’s Johno the Aircraft Controller. What I would like to tell you all about this time is the Flight on board HMS Endurance, our helicopters, or “helos” as we call them and our role onboard.
THE FLIGHT: Our Flight is quite unique because it is actually quite large. Other warships in the Royal Navy normally only have one helicopter onboard but we have two. So we therefore have to have two sets of Aircrew who fly the helos and two sets of maintainers who make sure the helos can fly. The maintainers are split into two watches or shifts so that we could if needed work or fly around the clock. But we try not to because we only have one Aircraft Controller, me. Ah! In total our flight onboard has 17 people in it: 4 Officers who make up the Aircrew (Pilots and Observers), 1 Warrant Officer who is the Senior Maintainer, 2 Chief Petty Officers who are the Watch Chiefs, two Petty Officers and two Able Rates per watch. We also have Steve who is a Leading Hand and looks after all of the Flights survival equipment. So that’s our Flight onboard and over the coming months you will be seeing plenty of photographs of the Flight. THE HELICOPTERS (HELOS): Our two helicopters onboard are Lynx Mark 3’s; they are powered by two “Rolls Royce Gem” engines, that can fly up to 120 knots and carry up to four people (Aircrew not included) and can stay in the air for two and a half hours with maximum fuel. The helos can lift by winch up to 272Kgs, and underneath them up to 1360Kgs, which is the same weight as a small car. They are very good hard working helicopters that the Royal Navy has used for many years. OUR ROLE ONBOARD: Another way in which our Flight is unique is the way in which our helos are painted. Lynx helos on any other ship are painted grey; ours however, are very distinctive red and grey. The reason for this is because one of our main roles onboard is Search and Rescue. If any of our own ship’s company ashore, other ships or people or the scientist in the Antarctic get into difficulties and needed help then it would be our helos that would be used in the rescue attempt.
Since our deployment first started, we have had two very enjoyable visits to two very different countries in South America. The first was a place called Salvador which is in Brazil and the second was Montevideo which is in a country called Uruguay, which although unplanned (the ship needed some work doing) was probably the best of the two. After those two stops we made our way down and across the Southern Atlantic towards the Falkland Islands. Whilst the ship was alongside the Flight as a whole disembarked with 434 and 435 up the Mount Pleseant Airport (MPA), the big British military base on the island. Although we were off of the ship we still had a busy time flying, sometimes up until eleven o’clock at night.
|
| Website designed and maintained by Westover Computing |