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-   -   North Atlantic Crossing - Survival Suit (https://vansairforce.net/community/showthread.php?t=112359)

RV4UK 04-26-2014 04:37 PM

This is an interesting thread, perhaps I can provide some food for thought. I fly over the sea for a living and have jumped into the sea and used underwater escape trainers many times to practise what could happen during the ditching and how to escape, as well as how to survive once you've escaped. I have also flown on Search operations, so here are a few things that might help.

Firstly I am not convinced having the immersion suit half donned is such a good idea, even if you have tried it in the car. Most immersion suits I know of are difficult to don in an open room let alone the confined space of a cockpit. You don't know what emergency may lead you to a ditching and what actions you need to take as a result. For example, a benign engine failure where you have plenty of height to glide, you might have time to don the suit. However I think the time would be better spent flying the aircraft and doing any drills, either trying to restart or securing the engine if it won't restart. If you had a fire in the cockpit that leads to a ditching, are you going to be in a position to don the suit in this scenario? That's just a couple of examples, I'm sure there are many more if we thought about it. We have a saying where I work that; "it's worth the sweat if you're going to get wet". Although the suit can feel a bit uncomfortable and cumbersome it is worth putting up with it for a few hours versus not having it donned properly and not surviving as a result.

Rather than having to don a suit it would be better to fly the aircraft, do any emergency drills, unlatch/jettison doors/windows, locate where you are and make emergency transmissions. Donning the suit is just a distraction from these important tasks.

The impact may or may not be violent depending on how the aircraft is flown and the sea conditions, but it is likely the inrush of cold water will be quick. You suggested that the liferaft is less important, I would argue that it is the most essential piece of kit you could have.

If you think about the basic survival principles in order of importance;

1. Protection
2. Location
3. Water
4. Food

These apply at sea just as much as they do on land.

Your liferaft will provide Protection and Location. Depending on where you were to ditch in the North Atlantic you could be there for some time awaiting rescue. On the UK side for example we no longer have long range maritime patrol aircraft as result of defence cuts. Despite having an immersion suit on you will at best have 12 hours survival time in the North Atlantic in calm water. If you have a liferaft your survival time will increase rapidly. The other point is that if you are just floating in the water the most that will be visible is your head and shoulders. Having searched for people and small objects of this size in the water you will not see them until you are virtually on top, literally a couple of hundred feet in height and a couple of hundred yards, in calm conditions. The liferaft presents a much bigger target to detect and markedly increases your chance of being visually located. If for some reason you can?t get into the liferaft then make sure all the survivors buddy up. This makes you a bigger target to locate but also will helps morale and trying to keep each other warm.

Make sure you have plenty of fresh water, whilst being absolutely surrounded by water none of it is drinkable. You can get survival sachets of water and they are essential. It is also essential to take sea sickness tablets once on board the liferaft, whether you feel sick or not. If somebody is sick it is likely to start a chain reaction. You don?t want to be sick as it will dehydrate you and deplete your energy. A reverse osmosis pump would also be a good bit of kit. It will generate you fresh drinking water as well as giving survivors a task to concentrate on.

There is a lot more to do and think about once in the raft but I am sure a judicious search on Google will come up with more on this. If not, I am more than happy to answer any questions.

Here is a link to a regulatory document the British Armed Forces use; it has a good couple of pages on survival times in the water at different temperatures with different layers of clothing on. The information is on pages 38 & 39 of 166 of the.pdf

http://www.maa.mod.uk/linkedfiles/re...eriesprint.pdf

To give you an idea of temperatures of where you are flying, this could be useful;

http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/sst/co...al_small.c.gif

Hope this provides some useful food for thought.

Simon

RV4UK 04-26-2014 04:45 PM

I forgot to mention gloves.

A good set of waterproof gloves that are sealed at the wrist as well as the seams or neoprene gloves if you can't get waterproof ones are essential.

Without gloves your fingers will have dexterity for about 30 seconds in North Atlantic temperatures. With gloves you will get a couple of minutes of dexterity in the water.

This could be the difference between successfully operating your life jacket, liferaft and location beacons or not operating and therefore not surviving and being located.

Once out of the water and in the raft completing survival tasks your hands will start to warm up again.

kjlpdx 04-26-2014 05:01 PM

I white water kayak all winter in 38-44? water. we wear gortex drysuits with various layers. my favorite layer is merino wool, very soft, doesn't smell. kayak drysuits have a diagonal front zipper which you could leave open so as to not overheat. I agree that getting into the raft is paramount. when I swim on the river the heat loss is significant after say, a 2 minute river swim. I'm not hyperthermic, but chilled for the next hour. [I also have like 3% body fat].

Kevlor 04-26-2014 09:07 PM

Very good point about donning the suit being a distraction in a potential emergency RV4uK Maybe the sweat factor can be mitigated a bit by keeping cabin temp cold. In my practice with the suit it gets toasty and sweaty pretty quickly.

The thing about all these suits is the more effective they are in the water, the more uncomfortable in the cockpit.

Regarding survival time in the water with the suit: Would it be reasonable to assume that if I can do a 30 minute ice dive in this suit in winter with my hooded head immersed (brain freeze!). That I would have at least that long when floating?

Mark thanks for the link to the Doug Ritter article about Ditching wives tales. Seems to offer an upbeat spin on the subject but between the lines the message is pretty clear about the lethal nature of cold water.

Uffda too much ditching study for one day.....thanks guys.

Kevin

Kevlor 05-05-2014 02:46 PM

Journey underway
 
We arrived Iqualit Nunavut this afternoon. Dry suit was pretty tolerable on the 3.5 hr flight from schefferville qc to cyfb. Legs and arms in the suit and head out of the zipper. I could get head thru and zipped up in about 15 sec.

Feet pretty sweaty but otherwise not too bad with the vent blowing -16 degree outside air in my face. The only overheating was when my friend and pic and I got into a hot discussion about glide speed in the event of engine failure.

Vlad 05-05-2014 03:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kevlor (Post 877216)
We arrived Iqualit Nunavut this afternoon.

... snip...


Hi Kevin,
Do they still sell avgas by drum?

F1R 05-05-2014 08:07 PM

Where to Chief?
 
Any chance your 206 is going on to Tanzania or is it staying in Europe?

Best Of Luck with everything.

Mark Albery 05-05-2014 09:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vlad (Post 877223)
Hi Kevin,
Do they still sell avgas by drum?

I don't think anything has changed. The drums of avgas usually arrive around July when all the shipping channels are open. This was the latest count that I saw.

I heard from Kevin earlier today and it looks like they are set for crossing to Greenland tomorrow. I hope they're ready for Avgas at $17/gallon and $150 landing/parking/handling fees.

N804RV 05-05-2014 09:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ironflight (Post 874439)
... and I'd opine that if you don't have the suit on when you go down, you don't have a prayer of getting it on later.

Ditto! I'd also suggest that whatever you decide to wear, test fly it well. I used to wear a 1/4" pile wetsuit under my flight gear, for SAR plane guard duty.
Even wore it during "Team Spirit" one year. I was so cold, and exhausted just from wearing that under my flight gear, that I had serious doubts about surviving in the water myself, let alone rescuing anyone. I can't imagine wearing meaningful cold weather survival gear in the cockpit of a small aircraft.

David-aviator 05-06-2014 07:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Noah (Post 874403)
A friend is planning a North Atlantic ocean crossing along the Crimson Route in a single engine aircraft in a week and he's trying to iron out some items on his equipment list. He plans to bring a scuba diving dry suit in case of ditching, and wear the bottom half in flight for quick donning. Any thoughts on the performance of this gear compared to a USCG approved "gumby" style survival suit, in the North Atlantic, much of which apparently still contains ice? One concern he has is that the Gumby Suit is too warm to wear in-flight, even the bottom half of it, and there is no way to don it quickly.

My buddy is a frugal guy, and cost is a consideration. But I guess I lean towards "You use the right gear, or you don't do the trip". Can survival suits be rented for a reasonable price? Anybody got any leads in that direction? Thoughts?

In reading between the lines, your frugal friend appears to contemplating this trip for his personal satisfaction, not ferrying an airplane headed to a mission in Africa.

My take on such a trip is if there is a need to pluck him from the frigid waters of the North Atlantic, he should pay for it.

It is irritating that people take on risky endeavors for their own reasons and when things go bad expect the tax payer rescue them. It just happened on Mt. Everest with the avalanche.

Why are people on a mountain looking up at lots of snow or over the north Atlantic looking down at ice bergs? If you are tired of living, fine, but don't cry help me when things go bad. You asked for it.


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