Helicopter landing in rough weather

In Service
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Royal Danish Navy training rough weather helio landing:

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I don’t quite understand why the frigate’s heading is so poorly set up generating both roll and heave. Good way to expose a final day to crew and a very expensive piece of capital equipment.

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My comment. The coast didn’t look far away. See you when you have got somewhere quieter. The automatic pitch, roll and other sensors that we transmitted ashore would have kept the helicopter in the hangar.

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That coast doesn’t look like Denmark.
Could be off Faroes, which is part of the Danish Navy’s area of operation.

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Been a minute- but we would do helo ops with a deck that looked like that on the Coast Guard 378’s I was on.

For some of the comments above, if memory serves- course is determined by relative wind - 15 or so degrees off the bow.

The ability and calmness on those pilots was always amazing.

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The old rule of thumb was; “two point off the bow” for a “comfortable” ride.

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Somehow I doubt that the relative wind was either a governing factor or of primary concern to the two pilots in this instance.
Our helicopter land on operations had a limiting factor of 5 degrees of roll and naturally the aircraft was always landed into wind but the relative wind direction was less than critical. The OP’s video basically displays operational stupidity. There is nothing smart about this.

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5 degrees of roll !! wouldn’t have been worth feeding the flight crew if we had that rule in the Bering sea.

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The wave direction are the governing factor for minimizing vessel motion.

For helio operations both wind direction and vortexes caused by the superstructure and legs are an issue. At least that is the case on jack-ups and anchored
semi-subs/drillships, where the heading can’t be change while on location.

PS> Exhaust from the funnel(s) was an issue on some drillships, I remember.

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After 50,000 land on transfers, in all conditions inclusive of 45 knot winds…….none of us ended up in the water. No doubt you have great expertise in helicopter land on operations.

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With regards to your Bering Sea reference…….

U.S. Coast Guard Pacific Area

2 4 J a n u a r y ¡


🚁
U.S Coast Guard Cutter Alex Haley (WMEC-39) has been busy up in the Bering Sea!
These helicopter operations included Helicopter in Flight Refueling (HIFR) training. During this HIFR training, the cutter crew and helicopter crew refueled the helicopter while it maintained a hover over the flight deck of the cutter - an impressive evolution=.
The HIFR method is used to refuel helicopters too large to be accommodated on the flight deck, or when flight deck motion is out of limits. Another added benefit of a HIFR method of refueling in the Bering Sea, is that a helicopter engaged in an urgent medevac or search and rescue case may refuel relatively quickly while remaining airborne.

…or when flight deck motion is out of limits…….

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Like I said- been a minute- but I know what I saw at least hundreds of times was landing aircraft with way more than 5 degrees of roll.

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The question you need to ask is …….was your Pilot transfer helicopter fitted with tyres or airbag armed steel skates? Steel on steel has a very low friction coefficient and synchronous rolling even at 5 degrees can create many difficulties. You may have noticed in the OP’s video that the Seahawk did not land until that deck became “magically” stable and then locked down with a pitch change on the main rotor. A classic case of how big is my dick!

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HH-52 with rubber tires - and between the pilot and the LSFO the objective was touchdown on as level a deck as we could- and get the tie down crew on it fast

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Memory jog - think we did the calc for 30 deg relative wind.

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“Two point off the bow” is for the waves, not wind direction.
And for least vessel motion.

Heilo operation was not much of a consideration on cargo ship, or when the rule of thumb was “invented”.

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As your FB post says further down in the text, this video is a Lynx (or Wildcat derivative) small ship landing, within capabilities for pitch and roll as I have seen many times (ex- RN FAA). If you look closely, you can see the “harpoon” extend from underside to lock into (grab) the grid in the centre of the flight deck. Lynx has the ability to push negative pitch to increase traction until the harpoon locks and tensions. Note also the “toed-out” setting of the rear u/c - with the steerable nose gear, this allows rotation/pivoting around the harpoon prior to release for take-off. Very clever kit.
I did more time on Seakings at sea - bigger cab and none of these niceties - but on bigger ships. Always wished we might have had the Canadian Navy “Bear-trap” system that brings their cabs down. I have watched from adjacent ships during RAS as that system parked their paraffin budgies on frigates in a way that we could not!
As Ombugge post #10 implies, “wake and plume” is always an issue. I.e. turbulent wake of the ships structure, and the exhaust/hot air plume from machinery space vent.

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No clue what any of that is, but we sure didn’t have it in 1977.

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I’m pretty sure I’ve seen that video before and it did say it was off the Faroe Islands coast.

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