H-92/SAR Equipment

SECTION 8. SAR Equipment

1 RESCUE WINCH SYSTEM

There are two control panels for the winch controls. One near the main cabin door and one on the copilot side in the cockpit. Use of the winch requires primary power, and it will not function on battery only. The control panel includes a power button, six mode buttons with icons for selecting the load on the winch, + and - buttons for increasing or decreasing the winch speed, and up/down buttons for moving the winch up or down. The up and down functions operate while holding the button down. The cable can be extended between 0 and 31.9 meters.

The rescue winch supports six different "load" modes: empty, single harness, dual harness, bucket, stretcher #1 and stretcher #2. The load can be changed through chat commands, or buttons on the winch control panel. In most cases, the load can only be changed when the winch is fully retracted. The exception to this is that you can switch between the single and dual harness loads at any time. However switching from dual harness to single harness while an avatar is occupying the dual harness and the cable is not full retracted is not recommended.

The stretcher functions allow you to bring patients directly into the aircraft and into the medical bays. The harness and bucket however, require an unsit to change from being hoisted to sitting the the aircraft. This is to allow those prims to be used again as sit targets for additional personnel you might want to lift into the aircraft.

Each of the rescue loads allow you to adjust the position of the user by clicking on them when an avatar is sitting in them. You can move the avatar in the x,y or z direction (relative to aircraft) up to 0.5m. Only the user in the rescue equipment or an authorized crew member can make adjustments.

2 RADIO DIRECTION FINDER

An RDF (Radio Direction Finder) is a device for determining the direction to a radio source. The RDF is installed at the observer station of this aircraft. It is designed to detect ELT alarms transmitted through the Shergood Aviation transponder/ELT system. The ELT can be part of a HUD, or built into certain aircraft.

2.1 Main Display

When power is turned on, the left half of the display shows a circular bearing indicator, and a bar graph signal strength indicator. If there are no active ELTs in range, the message "NO SIGNAL" will be displayed. Once an ELT is detected within the 50 region range, an audio alarm will sound, and the bearing indicator will display the relative bearing to the ELT alarm. A bar graph will display a "signal strength" that falls off proportional to the log of the distance from the source.

If there are multiple active ELTs, the RDF will track the closest signal. The volume of the alarm sound can be controlled by rotating the volume knob or by pressing the Mute button.

2.2 Error/Drift

There is a built-in drift in the indicator needle to simulate instrument accuracy errors. The amount of drift depends on the difficulty mode setting, and the signal strength (distance to target). When close to the target, the drift will be small regardless of the difficult mode, but when far from target there will be significant drift in the Expert difficulty mode. Drift can be disabled completely by setting the difficulty to "Novice". There are a total of five difficulty settings that can be accessed by pressing the Menu button on the control panel.

3 NIGHTSUN

A nightsun is mounted underneath the aircraft on the port side. It is controlled through a control panel at the observer station. The switch labeled "System" provides power to the aiming controls and enables the label to be directed, and the "Lamp" switch turns on the actual switch. Note the lamp uses projectors and requires advanced lighting to be enabled in your viewer to see it. It also has a maximum range of 20m due to SL limitations. Aiming of the nightsun is performed by touching the circular aiming grid. Distance from the center indicates the relative elevation of the beam with zero degrees being straight down, and 90 degrees being parallel to the body of the aircraft. Position around the grid is the relative heading of the beam. A red dot on the display shows the current position of the nightsun, while the red circle shows the current target position.

4 FLIR (Forward Looking Infrared)

A FLIR is mounted under the nose of the aircraft with a display at the observer station. The avatar sitting at the observer station can switch their camera to the perspective of the FLIR by either clicking on the display, or typing "cv3" in local chat. It may be necessary to press ESC to clear the camera lock if caming to click on the FLIR panel. The operator should type "cv" in local chat to move camera back inside the aircraft.

5 MEDICAL EQUIPMENT

A heart rate monitor is provided in the bay for each stretcher/litter. The heart rate monitor will automatically connect and come on when there is an avatar laying in the stretcher. You can mute/unmute the sound by clicking on the monitor. Oxygen is also available for patients in the medical bays. Press the black valve on the oxygen tanks to toggle use of the oxygen mask. Avatar position can be adjusted by clicking on the stretcher and using the adjustments from the menu.