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Vortex Ring

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Stupid stupid question, please don't shoot the messenger boys. Besides my glider and private licence all my experience has been military.

Where is the line between light - medium - heavys? We obviously don't refer to machines in the same way and nowdays our smallest beast is the CH146 Griffon (Bell 412). Which believe it or not may soon be the machine we use to teach the basic helicopter course in Portage La Prairie, but that is another whole story.

Do you generally (without digging into specific personal info) speaking make more money if the machine weighs more or is the job you do what matters? Is it both? In broad terms, what are the salary ranges nowdays for commercial helo pilots?

Just trying to wrap my brain around it all. :huh:
 
Vortex Ring, is that the same as Ring of Fire, you know Johnny Cash.

Military people will be accepted into the association.

The question you ask is conviluted, but as for the average salary and standard of living you are better off.

That is one area of concern which will be addressed in the association, amongst numerous other things.

The whole industry is crazy, if I want to get my Volks fixed the labour is $78.00 an hour, plus parts.

The average rate that has been published down in the states for an average licensed car mech is $100,000 per year, working straight shifts.

Go figure.

The rates charged by the companies for helicopters is to low and it reflects all the way down.

This rant could go on for a long time, but it's just to give you some indication.

At one time the drivers and mechs from the states were coming up here for work, not anymore, it's the reverse.

I hope I indicated why we need an association for all concerned, to make this not only a better place, but a fair'er one in our society.

We are proffesional's, lets get treated as such, and paid accordingly.

Rant to continue at a later posting.

Cheers Don
 
A 206/Astar/500 etc would be a light, the 205/212/412 would be the mediums and the only heavies out there that I'm aware of are the 61's.

I don't know what salaries in the bush are doing these days.

Check your PMs bud.
 
Of course, the "Intermediate" class wasn't even mentioned, that mid-class between the 206 and the 204.

I've always thought that the light class went up to 3,500 lb AUW or so (206, R44, MD500, EC120, and all the other piston trainers ), the Intermediates up to 6,000 Lb (350, 206L series, 407, Koala?), the mediums up to 12,000 (204 to 412), and the heavys (61, 64, 214, 107, 234, KA32) beyond that.

Basic Training on a 412? What sense is there in that Vortex? Who thought of that, some government department obviously? Sounds like a complete watse of time and money. I'm thinking that you can run a 206 for about 1/3 or less of that cost.

The basic rate in most of the west is around $3,000 Month and $60 Hr on average If I'm not mistaken. (given 3,000 hrs, flying a light or intermediate)
 
BlackMac, thanks man, glad to hear we are welcome to join. One of the things we could bring to the table is somewhat of a reverse idiology I guess. Over the past ten years for sure military pilot salaries have been increased substantially as incentive to curb early departures to the airlines. It did help somewhat, of course the most benefit has been reaped by us helo drivers. You are correct that our current wages are very decent indeed which I believe could be reasoning to support better wages for industry to follow suit of the military. Surely Canada is loosing pilots to US and overseas markets because of it. I've watched guys long line and work fires or powerlines and the thought that they may only be making $35K/year seems nuts :down:

Bladestrike/407 Driver, thanks for the info on sizes and relative wages. The whole thing still confuses me though. I do know several guys who have made the transition from GI Joe to commercial ops but the majority go to IFR jobs. I don't want an IFR job, maybe I'm nuts but I want that tired old Jet Ranger job :blink: 😛 It seems whenever I describe my experience that operators look at it as totally insufficient for those light machines since the smallest thing I've driven was the 212! For the past ten years it's been BV107 or SK61. I just hope I can find someone who will give me a chance with a 206 or 500 with a straight forward job moving folks and equipment around up north, a few weeks in, a few days out and on and on.........aaaahhhhh just straight forward flying. Don't get me wrong, I love flying off the frigates with my 20,500 lb grey beast, but I don't want to do this forever.

407 Driver - who's idea would it be to use Griffons for Basic Helicopter courses, the same moronic gang who says our Sea Kings are the same as George W's Sea Kings so we should just be happy to be driven'em. (They are still grounded :wacko: ). The Griffons in Portage is not 100% official but we can see it coming. We have around 35 Griffons that are virtually parked because units have been reduced in size and we are so short of pilots....My peers and I are very much all wishing that common sense will prevail and the Jet Ranger will be retained along with a lead in machine like a Koala, Twin Star or maybe A109. But the good folks who count the beans (politicians - not us military guys) have those Griffons in their sights, they are already paid for and sitting there....yeah the same guys who cancelled our Sea King replacement :stupid:

Some operator who wants to pick up some nice 412s should put a bid in, they don't have many hours, current C of A maintained with all ADs and full FMS,GPS and autopilots etc... 😉
 
Vortex Ring,

When will this change come about? I know the contract for 3CFFTS is due, so is this soon to be? Will they actually let someone go solo in a Griffy????????
 
Donnybrook.......you are correct, the contract is about to expire as it is. The new contract calls for the ability to teach students basic NVG, FMS, autopilot, sling and hoist as common skills for all helo grads. Since the smallest and simplest machine currently in our Air Force is the Griffon there is a limited need for solo and all the current schools would greatly benefit from students arriving with the additional skills of NVG, FMS, autopilot, slinging and hoisting.

The preferred solution as far as I and most of my peers are concerned would be to retain a light single for ab initio training with a course conversion to the larger machine. As I have stated I am not privy to all the exact details and nothing is publicy decided yet. Many machines have been considered for the course upgrade including the Twin Star, the Agusta 109 and the Agusta 119 but I know not what will happen for sure.

I am sure details will be posted here once they are confirmed and released to the public.
 
One would think that using a 206 for at least 50-60 hrs would be the best route. Isn't the percentage of 412's available like 10-15% due to snags etc.
I see how low the Astar tail gets with one person in it when doing a clearing turn. A light student in a twinstar constantly doing 360 turns in various wind speeds is surely an accident awaiting them. I have only few a couple of smooth Astar drivers,and being close to the ground is not where Astars like to be...An A109? who in Canada has touched one???The 2X6 suits the initial phase well from my experience military/civilian ..
 
donnybrook said:
When will this change come about? I know the contract for 3CFFTS is due, so is this soon to be? Will they actually let someone go solo in a Griffy????????
Click to expand...
Why would we need to solo anyone in the Grif? We don't have a single helicopter that is flown single pilot in DND. We need to breed crew members and at the junior level, first officers, not aircraft captains. That will come later.
 
Combat Support Squadrons regularly fly the Griffons single pilot....but that can be taught at unit level.
 
I'd have to agree with frenchy on this one. Not only would using a jet box be easier on a student but it would also be a lot more cost effective for the initial training (IE. learning to hover). Now I havn't got the slightest on how you boy's do things....But I cannot see how cutting out ones solo time can be benificial. Thats the time when you develop your skills without having to worry about pleasing your instructures. Plus learning to think independently & build your PDM skills at the same time.
There's no one there to save your ass if you screw up.
 
Now Vortex Ring, I'll trade you ANY DAY to fly your trusty old machine. Been in love with the Sea King since age 5, and I hope I'll hold the pole in the air one of these days!

Are you Strider or Shark?
 
Hey guys,

Why is the CF going to more complex A/C for training? They want a retractable gear A/C for PFT, and multi engine helos for AFT. What happened to the common sense approach of teaching the basics? I cannot see the advantage of cramming NVG and all that crap into a basic 100 hr course. What's the point of learning the autopilot when you can't hover yet? I can compare it with my 1 hr of longline training when I did my CPL. Very interesting, but completely useless to a guy with 3 hours total slinging time...

As for helicopter solo time, I agree w/ AOG. It's a completely new A/C to most CF pilots coming through the sausage factory. They have to develop their hands and feet, along with their confidence.

Why not actually take a step back and use piston machines for the ab initio portion? If you want to save money you could farm it out to a civvie company? It's not much different learning to sling stuff with a 300 as it is with a 206 or bigger machine...The crew stuff could then be taught in the later phase.
 
I agree with using a simpler single engine beast for initial helo training. The point however is that pilots get to solo during the Harvard II phase of training. Currently pilots going multi-engine fixed wing never solo again. Fixed wing guys get their wings on the King Air and then we throw them into a C130, so why not take the kid out of the Harvard II, into the Griffon and then the Sea King? The thought process for helo guys is that we do not operate any single pilot helos anymore so why train to that level, we are always in a crew of two pilots.

As I said before most of us common slugs prefer the idea of starting students on the Jet Ranger and going into the more complex machine after being able to solo and fly a decent hover.

But as to why teach all that more advanced stuff so early, it's not really that early if you understand how we train anyhow. Pilots now just get their wings and go to the Griffon OTU, Operational Training Unit, and have to learn basic NVG, hoisting and slinging. It would save us some time at the individual OTU for each aircraft if the student already had those basic skills.

I am learning that our progression is very different than a commercial pilot's. Civilian pilots graduate with a licence and endorsement on the 206. Their career progression is then usually many thousands of hours in the bush flying light singles before moving up to a Bell 204/205 and sometime after 12 to 18 years of flying they get to an S76 or S61 or similar machine.

In comparrison the military will take a brand new pilot from Wing graduation, put them into an S61 for around 500 hours and then make them the aircraft captain with full IFR tickets and send him off to the Persian Gulf flying off the back of a ship. It is very common on our squadrons to have pilots with less than a 1,000 hours as captains on the Griffon or Sea King. A very different progression as you can see. The exception is the Cormorant because that community is not accepting pipeline pilots for the time being, until their own guys all convert successfully onto the Cormorant and gain more experience.

So you see military pilots will never again fly solo after receiving their wings except for the few flying Griffons in Cold Lake or Bagotville and the units can check them out on that. So I believe that is the reasoning mostly. Another reason is financial, if they can save money by cutting out solo hours and going right into the Griffon it is very feasible that we will at least try to do it rather than get new equipment.
 
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