Aviation Support Branch (POLAIR) - ACA 04-06-2013

[matthewn1983]

For those interested in PolAir, ACA was onboard Polair 3 demonstrating FLIR and other new technologies the ASB have.

"It's the middle of the night but there's nowhere to hide. The elite members of Pol Air are in hot pursuit across the sky chasing down the law breakers in your suburb."

http://aca.ninemsn.com.au/video?videoid ... 4143b6a222

[citabria]

Until they run out of fuel...

Turbine choppers are frightfully expensive to run in terms, of fuel, maintenance and insurance...

An RFS BK117 costs about $6000 an hour, while Elvis runs at about $11,000 per hour...

[Garry]

but at least with Elvis you get a show

[Bigfella237]

It's not only the money, I can't remember where I read this but apparently for each hour in the air there's like 17 hours of maintenance and paperwork!

Andrew

[citabria]

Actually the maintenance is the bulk of the cost of having it in the air..

[JimK]

Polair5/Fireair1 (BK117) is costed at $3600 / hour to operate according to NSW Hansard, but it is not fitted with FLIR.
Polair 1 and 3 are at $2100 / hour, Polair 2. $2600 / hour.
(This is all costs added up)

[Chrisco]

with wages and pilot training??

[citabria]

The numbers I got were from an operator doing RFS work at Mittagong. As for the accuracy, who knows...

[cartman]

I have never understood why the Police dont use the choppers to intensively target the rail corridors
There are a large number of graffitti offenders out there night and day, particular nighttime after midnight
Railcorp have a massive bill on graffiti removal (which I might add has got a lot worse since Police since took over the security function ... not my opinion but now discussed constantly by senior rail management ... i work for people at that level)
An intensive blitz plus wide media coverage will get the message over loud and clear
They might do it on an ad hoc basis but it really does need to be done systematically, given the PTC are short on numbers (they might patrol railway stations but not moving trains except you might see a posse of 6-8 for travelling to next job)
Given that rail graffitti damage runs into millions of dollars the use of polair would seem to be an effective use of $
I suspect it would be probably force the graffiti offenders to target more private property


Grant

PS
It is hard to miss the graffitti offenders between Macdonaldtown and Central Station.
They are there most nights after last train and often before

[Mike Alpha]

I have never understood why the Police dont use the choppers to intensively target the rail corridors....

Metro in Vic are using their own chopper to keep an eye on copper thieves in the rail corridors.

http://www.humeweekly.com.au/story/1258 ... er-thefts/

http://www.theage.com.au/technology/tec ... 2o1o5.html

"It costs Metro about $20,000 each time it sends a chopper into the sky, Mr Lezala said."

One of the TV news reports said that $750 worth of copper wire was stolen. I Don't think desperate junkies needed to know that.

Mike