On November 10, at the Zmeyovo airfield in Tver, more than 40 cadets from Russia and Kazakhstan, who are studying at the Avialesoohrana FBI in the Moscow Region, took part in amphibious descents from a Mi-8 helicopter.
Get ready
On Thursday, cloudy weather and drizzling rain met the future pilot-observers at the Zmeyevo airfield. Representatives of Sakha (Yakutia), Komi, Irkutsk region, Karelia, Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, Buryatia, Murmansk, Tomsk, Kemerovo, Magadan, Arkhangelsk regions, Khabarovsk, Kamchatka, Trans-Baikal territories, Khanty-Mansiysk and Yamalo-Nenets autonomous regions gathered here.
"Today is the final stage of landing training. [The cadets] must perform descents from 10 meters, from 20 meters and from 30 meters. In addition, they must work as graduates. Today they are taking an exam in aerial training,” says Viktor Konovalov, Deputy Head of the Parachute Service of the Avialesookhrana FBU Avialesoohrana.
Among the cadets, there is a slight jitters and excitement, but it is not surprising, because for many these descents are the first.
Pilot-observers supervise the extinguishing of forest fires by ground forest guards. They are eyes that allow you to assess the situation from a bird's eye view. And also those who carry out the landing of parachute teams, lower paratroopers and cargo from the aircraft.
Reade set Go!
While the tractor is pushing the Mi-8 to the runway, the training leader is instructing the cadets. It determines who and in what order will go to perform the task.
When all preparations are completed, the leader gives the command, and the first crew runs to the helicopter. Under the crow's cackle of the blades, the ship rises up - initially 10 meters - the door opens, a special trigger device (SUR) is released, one pilot prepares for the descent, the second releases it.
The landing looks like this: the cadet, secured by the SUR, rests his feet on the helicopter body and turns out to be head down (looks quite extreme), then with a slight movement of his hand, already on a special rope, he turns around and smoothly falls to the ground. When landing, pilot-observers do not stand on straight legs, but actually squat down - so that these same legs do not break inertially.
The first descender insures the second, the second - the third and so on. Each action is evaluated by the training leader in order to later note the shortcomings of each cadet separately in order to avoid mistakes already in their professional activities.
Finish the exercise
Each pilot-observer has two professions: forestry and aviation. There are quite a few such specialists, so they are in great demand in all regions of Russia. Many come to study this specialty after years of work in the industry:
"I am an employee of the Far Eastern air base. The work of an observer pilot has long interested me, since this is the only profession in which nature and aviation are combined. At the moment I am doing training descents - I am satisfied as much as possible. Because he had never gone down before. I am the head of the aviation department and have never taken part in such events. He only led the paratroopers, ” said Sergey Tkach, a cadet from Khabarovsk.
The exercise was also attended by employees of Kazavialesoohrana (Kazakhstan) from the branch of the city of Almaty.
"I think that this profession is amazing,” Zhasulan Satbaev shares his impressions. It turned out that a cadet is not a cadet at all - in terms of experience. He works as a paratrooper in Almaty and is regularly involved in fighting forest fires - he has previously descended many times. I took the course for the sole purpose of improving my skills.
FBU "Avialesoohrana" in Pushkino near Moscow is the only training place for pilot-observers in Russia and Kazakhstan. The Zmeyovo airfield has been cooperating with the Forest Guard for many years, so the exercises are held in Tver.
The exam-training was successful - all cadets coped with the tasks. It should be noted that in 2022, 11,809 forest fires broke out in Russia, in which Avialesoohrana employees were involved. 9 thousand 346 fires were extinguished in the first day.
Author/Photo: Nikita Makarov/Vesti Tver
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