15 mars 2019 | Local, Aérospatial
Jane Adey · CBC News
Imagine you're an offshore worker on a helicopter flying to an oil platform and you hear the words "prepare to ditch" from your pilot.
Adrenalin surges through your body as you raise your arms across your chest and assume the brace position. But will you remember what to do? Will panic take over?
A St. John's company is working with the Marine Institute to help offshore workers become more comfortable in the air and better prepared for emergencies.
Ten years ago, in the days after the crash of Cougar 491, Anthony Patterson began thinking about how to improve safety in the offshore.
His company, Virtual Marine, was in the early days of developing simulators for lifeboat training in the water.
But Patterson, whose team specialized in marine simulations, knew his company had some technologies that could apply to the air.
"We brainstormed on how we could create a better training experience," said Patterson, and they developed a small helicopter simulator.
"We're very good at modeling boats in the water and then even the helicopter floating in the water, but the part about the helicopter flying through the air, of course, we had no expertise with that whatsoever," said Patterson.
That's when Cougar Helicopters got on board.
Virtual Marine brought its helicopter simulator to the lead pilots at the company. With the simulator, they flew the different kinds of manoeuvres they'd use if they had to ditch at sea.
The simulator collected the data. and Virtual Marine embedded it into their simulation system to create the flight paths in an emergency.
The simulator consists of a large box made to look like exactly like the inside of a helicopter. A motion bed, attached to the underside and controlled by a computer, allows workers to feel the same kind of movement as they would during a flight.
The seatbelts are the same, the windows are the same and the views out the windows are the same as they would be in real life.
It's important that the simulator be as realistic as possible for Liz Sanli, a researcher in ocean safety at the Marine Institute with expertise in skill learning over time.
She's focused on how workers learn and how much they retain when asked to perform a task again at a later date.
"So we're looking at how we can train during practice to help them remember all those steps when they're in a stressful situation down the road," said Sanli.
Right now, workers are trained in a swimming pool on how to escape a helicopter submerged in water but training for the actual flight occurs in a classroom. By sitting inside a helicopter flight simulator, Sanli says, the workers' experience is more accurate.
"You're getting that experience of physically doing the task so you get to go through the steps you get to experience them you can sometimes experience mistakes in a safe environment and learn from those mistakes rather than just watching somebody else do it, for example," said Sanli.
"You also can simulate some of the feelings, so you can hear the sounds, you know that you're in a different environment and that can better match some of the more advanced training or perhaps even a real emergency."
Sanli measures anxiety levels of participants and follows how well the protocol sequence is followed under a variety of conditions.
She monitors what happens when trainees are seated in different positions and when they train in light and in darkness, getting as much information as possible to make training efficient and effective.
"It's a big responsibility to have this evidence to make decisions when it comes to regulations, when it comes to decisions about training to have it based in evidence. It's safety that's at stake," said Sanli.
For now, research on the simulator continues with hopes it will soon augment the training done by offshore workers. Patterson,says ten years after 17 lives were lost in the offshore, he's glad to have contributed what he could to try and make the industry safer.
"This really was something that was more than a job," he said. "It was something that we had to do, to do our part to bring safety to the community. Everybody in the company, we all worked extra hours. I'd say this is the one that all of our engineers have the most pride in, accomplishing this task."
13 avril 2021 | Local, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu urged NATO ally Canada on Monday to review defence industry restrictions which it imposed on Ankara last year.
20 août 2019 | Local, Aérospatial
With the election looming, the Liberal government has set in motion, at least on paper, its commitment to consider bids for the purchase of new fighter jets. Of course, how committed the government is to move ahead on its renewed commitment remains to be seen. Meanwhile, any Canadian truly committed to seeing a modern, well-equipped RCAF, supported by a capable military procurement program, should take special note of one of the top contenders to replace Canada's aging fleet of fighters: Sweden. This non-aligned country, approximately the size of Newfoundland and Labrador, with a population only slightly larger than that of Quebec, has not only succeeded in developing generations of fighter jets, but has seen impressive success in exporting them. Apart from Sweden, Saab's JAS 39 Gripen, the latest version released in 2016, is being used by the Czech Republic and Hungary within NATO. The governments of Brazil, South Africa and Thailand are also purchasing the aircraft. Other countries such as India, Botswana, Indonesia and the Philippines are seriously considering the Gripen. But instead of fretting about how much Canada's aging fighters stand to potentially be outdone by the air forces of the developing world, we should instead look squarely at how Sweden came to be a serious contender to arm and equip this country's emaciated airforce. We should instead look squarely at how Sweden came to be a serious contender to arm and equip this country's emaciated airforce. The answer lies in the national mindset of the two countries. Unlike Canada, and especially when it comes to defence, Sweden refuses to allow itself to fall into dependency status vis-à-vis Europe, NATO or any other military power. In other words, while they actively cooperate with NATO in the defence of Europe, they make it clear that the defence of Sweden is first and foremost a Swedish responsibility. It is why the Swedish army, navy and airforce use high-tech equipment, much of which is built by the Swedes themselves. It is why the Swedes supplement their advanced military technology with elaborate defence-in-depth war plans and civil defence policies. The manual, “If crisis or war comes,” has been recently mailed to every household in Sweden. By contrast, we Canadians have chosen a quasi-colonial mindset with respect to our defence, clearly reflected in our epically embarrassing procurement shortcomings and failures. For the last 60 years, beginning with the cancellation of the Avro Arrow, Canada has been falling into a pattern of dependency on the United States on all matters related to defence. Sweden, on the other hand, has remained committed to designing and developing much its own military aircraft, ships, submarines and army equipment. In the mid-1950s, both Canada and Sweden were working independently on their own advanced fighter aircraft. While Canada was working on the Arrow, the Swedish military and engineers were hard at work on the Draken, which came out the same year. The Draken had a similar delta wing design to the Arrow and was the first European-built fighter jet to break the sound barrier. But that is where the comparison ends; the two countries went on very different paths with respect to their airforces. Canada cancelled and destroyed its Arrow aircraft and took on second-rate Voodoo fighters from the United States. It is what we Canadians wanted, as no successive Conservative or Liberal government has since tried to “bring back the Arrow.” Sweden aggressively continued development of new fighter technology, replacing the Draken with the Viggen in the 1970s, while Canada continued to try to squeeze more life out of our then-aging fighter jets. In the 1980s, as Canada was finally taking on the U.S built F-18, Sweden was working on the first version of the modern Gripen. Of course, as had been well documented, the early Gripen had problems. But as with the Draken and Viggen, the Swedes, unlike Canada, stayed with their national fighter jet. Today, Canada can only dream what our military aircraft industry might have been like in 2019 if then-prime minister John Diefenbaker, with the tacit support of the opposition Liberals, had not cancelled the Arrow, accelerating our descent into military dependency on the United States and national impotence on military procurement. https://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/columnists/smol-why-sweden-is-leagues-ahead-of-canada-on-fighter-jet-technology
21 avril 2023 | Local, Aérospatial
The Royal Canadian Air Force is dealing with a high number of inexperienced personnel, as well as shortages of staff in key jobs.