No good LZ. Look carefully and you’ll see that the terrain isn’t level and there’s really no clear area.
It’s not easy to tell unless you’re used to that kind of territory. This rescue took place within sight of my home of 30+ years in Phoenix on trails I hiked with my kids until they grew up and left.
I wonder if the jellyfish (or sea jelly as we’re supposed to now call them) found that fun or terrifying?
By the nature of things she’s spinning around her center of gravity, which is somewhere not too far from her navel. The feet, being farther away, are getting more acceleration (same angular velocity, greater distance) than her head. In both cases the blood is being pushed away from the axis of rotation.
ETC: Local news reports that the (female, age 74 – corrected) patient was not seriously [1] injured and is doing well. No aspiration.
News also reports that the stabilizing line was in use but something or other. Pilot got to an altitude where he could crank up the speed, which took the patient out of the direct downdraft and got her to an LZ where she could be transferred to an ambulance.
[1] Broken bones, abrasions, etc. but nothing life-threatening even at 74. Why she was hiking on a June afternoon is another matter.
Yeah, no shit! I had to do slingload operation with an Avenger (attaching equipent to the underside of a helicopter in flight) underneath a Chinook in the desert outside of El Paso. In addition to being sandblasted, there were 1/2” wide bolts of static electricity discharging everywhere because the flight crew had little to no experience with slingload ops and didn’t use a discharge line. It was crazy, but I didn’t understand just how crazy until I actually went to Air Assault school a year later.
Some people would pay good money for that E(mergency)-Ticket ride!
Wheeeeeeee!
I prefer my Martini’s dry and my hikers shaken, not stirred.
Some irony here: The basket could have used a tail rotor to prevent rotation (like the helicopter… and for the same reason). That’s a joke, people.
It’s very unlikely that vertigo inspired aspirated vomitus could have been an issue. Prior to spinning up, no vertigo. During her high speed spins centrifugal forces would have prevented aspiration and it is doubtful given how long the rapid spinning lasted that if she started vomiting it would only be at the end when she slowed back down. Even if she vomited then, it’s be dry heaves.
The greater danger was losing the hiker due to either being thrown out of the basket or the line snapping after so much twisting/kinking. She did a LOT of RPMs on a cable that was only a few yards long…
Even if center of mass (and thus spin) is closer to the head than the feet, the head is the bigger risk. Centrifugal forces to the feet are rarely a problem, there’s not that much that can go massively wrong down there. 8 G’s to the head could easily burst a blood vessel in the brain ==> stroke ==> death.
One of the three DON’Ts you are taught about helicopter rescue when studying for a yacht skipper’s qualification is don’t touch the line until it touches the water (to earth it). Otherwise it will earth through you.
The others are don’t attach the line to your boat, and don’t launch parachute flares if you can see the helicopter. Both of these can result in the helicopter leaving and not coming back.
The baskets I’ve seen have a bearing in the line at the junction where several basket lines join and connect to the copter winch line precisely to keep them from winding up.
As for the mechanics of vomiting you might well be right. I would not bet my life on it, though, much less someone else’s.
Looked anything like this?
On topic, I wondered if snow can cause static charge/discharge in helicopter rescue missions. Got an opinion on that?
I don’t know. I would think that relative humidity is the big driver there, so I would think a tundra environment with low humidity may cause excess static. As I understand it, static is always an issue with helicopter operations involving external contact.
yes. there are supposed to be two cables supporting the basket to prevent rotor spin, but one of them snapped.
I don’t have an opinion but I’ve been helping a professor whose research is all about lightning. Snow absolutely transfers charge, but the conditions are a bit less common. Lightning requires both liquid and solid water in the cloud to build the charge up. Most of the time the solid is higher up than the liquid, but for snow it the lower elevations are solid so you need a temperature inversion or something of the sort.
Partial pressure of water, actually – “relative” has nothing to do with it.
Aha. What does that mean?
The partial pressure is essentially the amount of water in the air.
The relative humidity is the ratio of the water in the air to the maximum that the air can hold without condensation.
At lower temperatures the air can hold less (basically exponential) so even when saturated there isn’t much; that’s why winter is notoriously dry to the detriment of nasal mucosa.
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