Flying Mountain Rescue

[RobinGriffiths]

Blimey!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-54331994

[2xw]

No longer going to gg unless I can use one of these

[Fulk]

Wonder if it would work in, say, GG?

[Huge]

Aven bolting a thing of the past?!

[mak]

Whilst it may work underground - I assume it kicks out a significant amount of exhaust fumes - so GG is probably one of the few places you may want to use it!

[PeteHall]

Have you seen the physical training regime needed to control one of these things? Unless you are a top gymnast I imagine using one of these anywhere near a hard surface would be pretty dangerous 

[mikem]

& the suit costs about the same as a small helicopter (£340,000). It also won't be sensible to use in wind conditions that the helicopter will cope with.

[crickleymal]

I can imagine the problems.  One unexpected gust of wind and you'd have two casualties not one.

[Ed]

Its Air Ambulance not MR

Still going to be the job of volunteers to hump kit up the hill and carry the casualty down - plus no doubt there is an expectation of MR also carry the used flying kit down to......

[rhychydwr1]

Wonder if it would work in, say, GG?

Descending?  Sounds dodgy.  You would have to get 360 feet in the air before starting to descent the main shaft.

[Fishes]

I would be quite happy if they could focus on getting ambulances out to houses in the Peak District first. That's been a significant problem over the last few years. I can only imagine that the situation have got worse during the current circumstances.

I know some MR teams have also had problems getting ambulances.

[Ed W]

Saw this guy and a mate do a flying demo in Salisbury last year - the demo ended with his mate having a fairly spectacular accident.  It is also effing loud.

Although interesting, I think that there is more than a hint of publicity hunting going on here.  I am far from convinced that this is practical.  In the video the (can we call him a pilot?) doesn't seem to be carrying any equipment, it would be interesting to know what payload can actually be carried.  As I understand it endurance is measured in a few minutes and I would be amazed if this technique would be viable in adverse weather - poor visibility, wind and precipitation would all be significant issues.

Additional to the cost of the kit would be the training overhead required to keep the paramedics up to speed with their flying.

[mikem]

There's also video of him splashing down at Bournemouth on YouTube.

[ILT]

Doesn't show how he navigated to the corner of the 100m grid square to begin his actual search of that for the casualty (who luckily managed to fall a long way from the cliff  and thus into the open space required to operate the jet pack).

[mikem]

Ambulance service use what 3 words (their controllers can't cope with grid refs)

[ILT]

Ambulance service use what 3 words (their controllers can't cope with grid refs)

I was referring to the publicity video where the location is given as a six figure OSGB reference.

However, ambulance service use postcode for basic area along with full numerical OSGB co-ordinates on their MDTs throughout the NWAS area

[darren]

https://www.nwas.nhs.uk/news/knowexactlywhere-in-an-emergency-with-what3words/

Is it this NWAS you are referring to? 

[ILT]

https://www.nwas.nhs.uk/news/knowexactlywhere-in-an-emergency-with-what3words/

Is it this NWAS you are referring to? 

Yes. They ask the public to use what three words as that is simpler for none map savvy people to pass over the phone. For operational use it's still postcode/OSGB co-ordinates.

For instance:
12:12:36
INC 12345678
29B03X
About 300 yards before junction xx, Junction xx to xx xbound, Mx CAxx xXX
Unknown
Unknown Y
Car on fire on hard shoulder
GRD eeeeee nnnnnn

(real incident number and details that would specifically identify this live call removed)

FRS messages within North West Fire Control area are somewhat similar and also use postcode/full numerical OSGB co-ordinates.

[mikem]

Of course it may just be the police controllers (who dispatch MR) that struggle...

[paul]

The week before last I was walking in the Borrowdale area and on two consecutive days we saw the Great North Air Ambulance helicopter flying back and forth and up and down various crags nearby for quite a while.

At first we thought it was some sort of tourist helicopter having a look around Borrowdale but it turned out to the Great North Air Ambulance helicopter looking for the casualty needing help each time as there wasn't and exact location. E;g; on the second day a walker fell backwards on Base Brown and fell around 50m down a slope out of site. The incident was reported by others nearby who witnessed the fall but weren't able to give a precise location. We saw members of the Keswick MRT making their way up Sour Milk Gill to attend.

I would imagine that the jetpack's flying range and time would have meant it not being able to get the paramedic on site quickly enough in such cases. Though it would probably speed things up greatly if the paramedic could get to the casualty quickly due to their location being known very precisely and being easily visible from the air.

[Ed]

https://www.nwas.nhs.uk/news/knowexactlywhere-in-an-emergency-with-what3words/

Is it this NWAS you are referring to? 

Yes. They ask the public to use what three words as that is simpler for none map savvy people to pass over the phone. For operational use it's still postcode/OSGB co-ordinates.

For instance:
12:12:36
INC 12345678
29B03X
About 300 yards before junction xx, Junction xx to xx xbound, Mx CAxx xXX
Unknown
Unknown Y
Car on fire on hard shoulder
GRD eeeeee nnnnnn

(real incident number and details that would specifically identify this live call removed)

FRS messages within North West Fire Control area are somewhat similar and also use postcode/full numerical OSGB co-ordinates.

North Yorkshire Fire is very ssimilar

[ZombieCake]

Looks like it needs a fair bit of tinkering to get to full 'Iron Man' operational status. 

[andrewmc]

Yes. They ask the public to use what three words as that is simpler for none map savvy people to pass over the phone. For operational use it's still postcode/OSGB co-ordinates.

If you are going to write it down, OSGB is a perfectly good system, but a word-based system like WW3 should be much better than OSGB for transmission by voice (especially when over noisy radio links). Unfortunately, not only is WW3 a commercial system with minimal IP but very good marketing, it's also a very poor implementation of a word-based system. It uses long complicated words and (worst of all) there are homophones in the word list.

A better system would use 4/5 words, drawn from a shorter, simpler word list with no homophones and using a different word list for the first/second/third/fourth word (so that order of the words is no longer important). You could increase the size of the grid (say 40m x 40m for the three words version) to simplify the word list for the 3-word version, and add a fourth (or fifth) word to narrow it down closer.

It wouldn't even be that hard to do, and I think had already been done before (as a toy on the Internet) before WW3 developed their system...

Unfortunately, that's not how its worked out...

[mikem]

Similar to the QWERTY keyboard being designed to slow typists down.

[zzzzzzed]

If you could strap one of the jets to the side of your welly - like a pantin - you could just slide up the rope.

You could call it a 'No Panting'.