Zoomie, I didn't dare go near the "Do you convert a TH pilot onto the SK, or do you train an SK guy to fly tactically low over the ground?" An interesting question to be sure.
SKT/H3...trust me, I know the NVG-compatability issue. What should have been an absolute no-brainer for the Twin Huey was: replace all the red filters in the instruments for ANVIS-B compatible filters at the cost of ~$2.00 per filter. Got it! Great! ......uh....*
play forboding music as the engineer creeps into the picture...* "Wait, you must pay $2000 per instrument (I shite you not!) to break open the seal between maintenance intervals!" OK, assuming someone would buy off on that, lets do some math, that would be about $78k per aircraft...pricey, but equal to about 15.5 hours of full-sunk cost flight time for a Twin. "No, that's too expensive!" says the engineer, "We'll design our own system and implement it on the fleet...efficiency in quantity!"
...you can see where this is going... :
End cost to convert the CH135 cockpits to ANVIS-B compatibility (less the non-compliant fire handles
).........$115k+ per aircraft... :brickwall:
I'd take the same mod as I flew on our Chinooks in 1990...eight green glo-sticks and a helmet lip-light per pilot, total cost? $12 + what, $5 per flight for the glo-sticks?
Yes, I'm too seasoned to think that the folks would do it the easy and "combat effective" way...they'll try to fly the thing during the day rather than spend the money to equip them for NVG. Sadly, and I hope to hell this doesn't happen, but it will take somebody getting injured or worse for someone to come up with the great idea to fly with NVG at night... :
To think that many of us in tac hel have been flying NVG for 16-17 years...and that's decades after the US and UK flew with them...
*
sigh*
Cheers,
Duey
