Success Stories

Wes Adams

Commercial Pilot, Veritair Aviation
Cardiff Heliport

Wes is a home-grown Helicentre Aviation success story who has proven it is possible to go all the way through from student to police air support pilot.

WHAT IS YOUR CURRENT ROLE IN THE HELICOPTER INDUSTRY?

I work for a company called Veritair Aviation. Each week varies as regards flying missions. So far I have been involved with British Transport Police Air Support and Television Mast Digital Calibration.



HOW DID YOU GET INTO FLYING HELICOPTERS?

It all started from a 30 minute gift trial lesson on a Saturday in late February 2004. I was addicted and by Monday morning I had my Class 1 Medical arranged and was booked in for lessons!

DID YOU ENJOY THE TRAINING?

It was great! Helicentre staff and instructors became friends and the atmosphere with other students made it all the more enjoyable. Four months later I had my PPL completed. I had decided from an early stage that instructing was not something I was going to do immediately after CPL so I did a type rating onto the Bell 206 and later, onto the EC120. I tried to do some hours in them around the R22 time (funds limiting of course!!!!!). I was lucky enough to get a lot of maintenance positioning flights which helped bring the cost down.

DID YOU GO ANYWHERE EXCITING DURING HOUR BUILDING?

Helicentre had some great trips going on at the time I was hour building, of which I flew around Ireland in an R22, in and out of some interesting sites (one of which I remember the directions given were "it's the field with the barn with the red roof" - of course there were multiple red roofs and luckily another guy went in first in a B206 only to find out it was 2 miles down the road!!!!). The second trip was down to Biarritz, in the South of France. Well that is a very long story, but invaluable experience and lots and lots of fun.

Other trips were HUET Dunker training at Southampton and Newquay, and teaming up with a fellow pilot to tackle the London Heli Routes and the 'dreaded' Heathrow Crossing (I'm sure Heathrow ATC wait for you to be pointing the wrong way in an orbit before asking you to cross!). All the trips provided a great way of doing unusual flying which could be nerve racking but you have the support of fellow pilots and instructors to offer advice.

For the rest of my hour building I tried to vary my experiences by going in and out of confined areas (hotels and pubs), long cross country nav-exs, through busy airspace and Military Zones, night rating with some night flying after, not so good weather flying (thought might as well get used to it), and heli routes (London is fantastic from the air).

HOW DID YOU GAIN EXPERIENCE IN THE INDUSTRY?

As part of the Helicentre 'crowd' I helped out with ground crew at pleasure flying events and around the office to try and enhance my understanding of the industry. During all this time of course, self studying for Modular ATPL's which took me a while longer than hoped; around 20 months to complete due to working full time.

AS A NEWLY QUALIFIED CPL, HOW DID YOU GET YOUR FIRST BREAK?

Following the issue of my CPL I was offered some charter work, pleasure flying and flying with aircraft owners, all through Helicentre which got my turbine time ticking over. I was later offered a job with Veritair following a recommendation from Chris Line (Chief Pilot, Helicentre). Between the time of completing my CPL and starting with Veritair I also obtained an FAA CPL/IR, doing the FAA CPL through Helicentre and the IR out in Arizona.

WHAT'S INVOLVED IN THE POLICE FLYING YOU DO?

This in itself is varied flying. The 'normal' flying is Railway patrol flying both day and night in response to either major railway maintenance work or as a direct response to intelligence of vandalism and cable theft. We are also required to respond throughout the UK to incidents. One of my last BTP missions was in support of the Royal Train Steam Locomotive journey from York to Leeds, which involved a lot of in flight planning and ad-hoc landings to deal with trespassers and over enthusiastic train spotters. A lot of fun!!!

WHICH DO YOU FIND MOST CHALLENGING?

The Television Mast Digital Calibration is some of the most challenging flying I have done in my flying career so far. It has taken me around the UK, Ireland and Belgium. These flights are split into amazingly beautiful transit flights from Cardiff or London to the TV masts (transiting up and down the Great Glen and across the Welsh mountains is fabulous!) followed by flying a helicopter in all the positions that you get told not to during training hoping that your performance calculations and escape routes are correct!

WHEN YOU GET TO THE MASTS WHAT DO YOU DO?

The calibration part is split into two sections; first is normally VRP's, which entails establishing a hover at very low level (downwind, crosswind and into wind) then climbing vertically up to 1200-1500ft whilst keeping a picture of a helicopter in a very small circle on a computer screen. Meanwhile an engineer holds a TV aerial out the back left sliding door. All very easy in nil wind, not so easy in 20+kts which is normally the case! I end up having to spend 99% of the time watching the little helicopter on the monitor, as well as the power setting, torque splits with wind direction and gusts, rate of climb (aim for 500ft/min), other traffic, cloud (very easy to look up and see only white fluffy stuff), etc.

This is then followed by HRP's - which entail flying approx 50kt orbits with very little bank angle (almost all pedal only input) at a measured height and distance (keeping another helicopter picture within small boundaries on the computer screen) again with the aerial pointing out of the door. This is the only flying I have done so far that has encountered running out of the Non Power Pedal (left pedal in AS355) and requires a small jolt of power to help with the left hand turn (due to low power setting and a very limited movement on the aerial which has to stay focused on the antenna).

HAVE YOU BEEN INVOLVED WITH ANY OTHER KIND OF FLYING?

I do get involved with the general filming and charter work, and have just completed some underslung load training. I'm eager to go into the Welsh mountains to have a go for real!!!

WHICH TYPES ARE YOU FLYING TODAY?

All my flying at Veritair has been on AS355's (Twin Squirrel) both F2 & N variants which is good fun. The AS355N has FADEC which is great. Almost just flick the switch from Off to Flight and 30 seconds later you're airborne!

WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO THOSE THINKING ABOUT BECOMING A PILOT?

My advice to anyone starting out on this career path would be to stay open minded about the type of flying you want to do once qualified as a CPL. Research the different roles helicopters play in the world and most of all try and vary your flying experiences through the hour building stage of the course to make yourself more attractive to potential employers.