Story Notes: Sky Sweeper, Flight Medic · 1:25pm Aug 30th, 2020
First off, a big thanks to AlwaysDressesInStyle and MSPiper for prereading, and AlwaysDressesInStyle for the coverart.
Sky Sweeper is a fanon name for a canon background pony.
Source
She can be seen pushing around clouds in Tanks for the Memories, and was also in Rainbow Falls.
The story was originally speed-written back in February (I think) for the Quills and Sofas contest Modern Conveniences. I’d been watching episodes of Air Ambulance ER, a British documentary about air ambulances and their crews. I also have been pondering for years (literally) writing a story with pegasi working with the Coast Guard, doing search and rescue out of helicopters, so I had a fair bit of the groundwork already done for the story, which is good, ‘cause there was only one hour of writing time.
As can be expected, the original story was much shorter. Basically, just the part from her microwaving her lunch (a modern convenience!) to her chatting with the captain about flight instruments.
So that’s it for story history; now on to fun facts!
The first fact is the most boring, but it’s also the most fun (for me). Aircraft have registration numbers, and how those are done varies by country. In Silver Glow’s Journal, she simply got the callsign “Pegasus 1” and no identifying number. Typically in the US, aircraft are assigned what’s known as a tail number or N-number, which takes the form of N with three to five additional numbers then letters (they can have one or two numbers also, but those are reserved for FAA use). So your smallest registration number is N100, and the biggest is N999ZZ. As far as I know, the number does not include a class of aircraft, so for exmple N904DD was assigned to a Bell Oh-58A helicopter, N904DE is a McDonnel Douglass MD-88 passenger jet (currently owned by Delta), and N904DF was last assigned to a Bombardier BD-700-1A10, which is a business jet.*
Since this story is set after Silver Glow’s Journal,** various aviation organizations have had time to decide how to assign identification numbers to pegasi (if they choose to). In the UK, where Sky Sweeper is, they do assign numbers based on class. Their country code is G (instead of N), and they only assign four letters. If the first two digits are FA to FZ, it’s a lighter-than-air aircraft.*** I did check, and FALX is not assigned to any aircraft.
Fun bonus fact, a falx is a type of sword or pole-arm.
________________________________________________
*Numbers can be re-used; for example, N904DF was previously assigned to an aircraft which was destroyed in a crash, and N904DD was de-registered when the helicopter was exported.
**Note the two ponies flying in the storm--they were both tornado ponies Silver Glow met.
***The UK may not use this system any more; Wikipedia says that they restarted the sequence in 1928, but doesn’t give any further details except that from 1982, FYAA-FYNA was used for unmanned toy balloons.
Great North Air Ambulance is based out of Teeside Airport, Langwathby Airfield, and Newcastle. Northern Rail does have a platform at Teeside, but only stops there once on Sunday; the rest of the time the trains just zip right by. I have no idea why that is, but there’s surely a reason.
Also worth noting, Great North Air Ambulance helicopters don’t have skids, they have wheeled landing gear (they fly Eurocopter AS365 Dauphin N2s). Those are also used by the US Coast Guard as well as other militaries.
They do have doctors answering the telephone, since the doctors can make a quick assessment based on what the paramedics tell them if it’s a job that suits the air ambulance well.
The statue in the coverart is the Angel of the North, located in Gateshead.
Sky Sweeper herself lives at 89 Marine Parade in Saltburn-By-The-Sea. A bargain at only £450/month.
There really isn’t much to Braidly, but if you drive a few kilometers north(ish) on Cam Gill Rd., you’ll find yourself in Horsehouse.
I know some basic first aid, CPR, and that’s about it for what I actually know about medical stuff. I’ve picked up some things from books and television, but won’t claim to be an expert. I paid careful attention in the show to what they were using, when, and why, and I think I got it all right, but anybody who’s actually a doctor, feel free to correct me.
RSI is rapid-sequence induction (or rapid-sequence intubation), where drugs are given to cause the patient to stop breathing, and a tube is inserted to breathe for them. From what I can gather, it’s meant to be used when it’s likely that the airway will be lost for whatever reason (anaphylaxis, for example). Of course, if they can’t get the tube in, things go from bad to worse really fast.
In case it’s not clear in the story’s context, the helicopter has two advantages. First, it’s often faster than a land ambulance, especially at more remote locations. The second is that it has a fully-fledged doctor aboard who can perform some treatments wherever that normal paramedics cannot (such as a RSI), thus improving the patient’s outcome.
FOD is Foreign Object Damage, generally referring to debris that get kicked up by the rotor wash and potentially sucked into the engines (or flung into other things). That’s something you want to avoid, when possible, but of course the nature of helicopter rescues means you can’t always land on nice, clean-swept helipads.
You gotta go out; you don’t always come back.
“You have to go out but you don’t have to come back” is the unoffical motto of the US Coast Guard. According to one source, that ‘came from the Regulations of the Life-Saving Service of 1899 which stated that one won't give up his rescue efforts "until by actual trial the impossibility of effecting a rescue is demonstrated. The statement of the keeper that he did not try to use the boat because the sea or surf was too heavy will not be accepted unless attempts to launch it were actually made and failed.”’
Great North Air Ambulance is a charity organization, run on public donations, IIRC; I'll include the link to their website when I get home.
Possibly the most famouse, if not totally well known might possibly be N3176S ?
You forgot to tag this with the story.
For the EMS stuff, three things stuck out to me as questionable. For context, I'm a fresh out of school American EMT, so I'm definitely not experienced yet, but I know enough to spot things that are a bit off. Also, American and UK EMS protocols aren't identical.
1. They probably wouldn't get IV access on a patient before assessing their vitals and injuries. Admittedly, this isn't a huge deal especially given the patient presentation.
2. For a fractured limb, if there's still a distal (downstream) pulse present, it's preferable to not reposition the limb. You don't have imaging equipment in the field, so you don't know the extent of the damage. It's entirely possible that adjusting the broken bone could obstruct or lacerate an artery and cause more harm.
3. Defibrillators aren't a standalone thing, they're part of the portable cardiac monitor they'd have, and would probably be referred to as that. Plus, a trauma patient that goes into cardiac arrest is probably going into arrest due to blood loss, not some underlying heart problem, so a shockable rhythm is unlikely. And if their condition was showing signs of shock (or injuries that could degrade into shock), Fire would definitely be instructed to prioritize extricating the more critical patient.
Unrelated to the story, but I'm pretty sure that Advanced Paramedics in the UK can perform RSI without a physician present.
5345370
Huh, I’d never heard of it until just now. Turns out it was used as an air ambulance after the show . . .
5345371
They don’t always get tagged right away, ‘cause I can’t tag a blog post with a story until the story’s approved, but I also can’t put a link to the blog post in the story until the blog post’s published, so I usually submit the story, then the blog post, edit in the link, then add the story tag to the blog post after the story passes moderation. It’s not the greatest system, but I don’t know a better one . . .
5345372
Well, you certainly know more than I do.
I assume that they are doing that in the background and Sky Sweeper just doesn’t notice . . . I did consider putting more of that in, but since I know next to nothing about what’s good and what’s bad.
They did it a lot of times in the show, especially with compound fractures. I would assume that there was stuff that they didn’t put in the show, such as checking for pulse below the injury, but I don’t know for sure. It’s also possible that an experienced doctor (or paramedic) looking at the injury would have a decent idea if it’s better to leave it as is or adjust it in the field (I’m an auto mechanic which isn’t the same, obviously, but there are cars where I can listen to them quickly or smell them and know that the engine’s done for without doing any further tests).
I did change it in the story to being a portable cardiac monitor she goes back and gets (it showed up a couple times in the show, but I had no idea what it was actually called . . . a machine in a duffel bag with lots of wires and a display on it
)
I agree that they’d want to get the most dicey patient out first, but that’s not always going to be possible.
I’m wondering from a medical point of view, if she’s got a dropping pulse and suspected internal bleeding if it still wouldn’t be worth trying a defibrillator--as you said above, they don’t have imaging equipment in the field [I think in one episode they used a portable ultrasound, but I might be thinking of a different show], so they don’t know she’s got internal bleeding. Or is there a way that you would know? Like, would the numbers indicate a loss of blood volume vs. something going wrong with the heart?
5345425
So, general background first for shock:
Again, not a full medic yet, but I know the basics.
So shock is a condition where vital organs (especially the heart, lungs, and brain) aren't getting an appropriate amount of oxygenated blood to function . The medical term is hypo-perfusion (lack of perfusion). Shock is broken up into three stages, compensated shock, decompensated shock, and irreversible shock.
Compensated shock is exactly what it sounds like: there's a problem, but the body can maintain perfusion by doing things like increasing heart rate and blood pressure to shunt blood away from extremities and to the core.
Decompensated shock is when things start going wrong. There just isn't enough oxygenated blood going around for things to keep working right and things start shutting down. When you get to decompensated shock your blood pressure will start to crash down, and if it's prolonged enough your heart rate will slow.
Irreversible shock is what happens when you stay in decompensated shock too long. No points for guessing why it's called that.
Trauma, Shock, and Bleeding:
The typical human body has about 5L of blood in it. You can generally lose 1 to 1.5L and still maintain perfusion (i.e. compensated shock). After that you start going into decompensated shock. 1.5L is kind of a big volume of fluid. In the case of internal bleeding, even if you can't see the hole that blood is coming out of, you can still see signs of it, especially if it's bad enough that you're concerned the patient is going to go into shock.
Signs might include:
Heart attacks, Cardiac Arrest, and Defibrillation:
Heart attacks and Cardiac Arrest aren't actually the same thing. Cardiac Arrest is when the heart stops beating in an organized and functional way. A heart attack is when a blockage in the artery going to the heart is preventing some portion of the heart from getting enough blood to function. A heart attack will eventually lead to cardiac arrest if it gets bad enough, but isn't the only reason that someone can go into arrest.
In order to work properly the different sections of the heart need to beat in a specific rhythm and order. Specifically, it needs to contract and force blood out, and then relax so more blood can come in from the veins to fill it back up.
A defibrillator is only used to fix two specific kinds of non-functioning heart: Ventricular tachycardia (V Tac), and Ventricular fibrillation (V Fib).
In V Tac, the heart is trying to squeeze so rapidly that it isn't filling back up. In V fib, the heart is just quivering, but it isn't actually beating in a usable way.
"Flat-lining" is called asystole, and is not a shockable rhythm. Every medical drama ever lies about that part.
Cardiac arrest secondary to trauma isn't going to be either VTac or VFib.
If you're in shock and go into arrest, your heart isn't malfunctioning, it just doesn't have any blood because you don't have any blood to give it. To be a bit crude, a traumatic arrest needs to have all their holes plugged, and whole blood pushed into them to restore perfusion. That means surgery, as fast as possible.
It could also be something as simple as "the patient won't fit in our helo correctly without repositioning." Medical helicopters are kinda cramped I've been told.
Like I said, it's preferable not to reposition a fractured limb, but nothing about EMS operates in an ideal world. Sometimes you just have to do your best to minimize risks, and do it anyway.
5345460
On news reports we always hear about someone involved in an accident or some other situation who isn't injured but is being "treated for shock". Is that compensated shock or something else?
5345495
Probably.
EMS, especially in the US, operates on the basic idea of "get them to the hospital alive, let the ER fix them." A direct effect of this mentality is a general focus on aggressively treating life threats, including things that might be life threats. Severe shock will absolutely kill a person, so protocol is to go straight to shock management if the patient is displaying any signs of shock, or significant injuries that could cause shock.
The big empty bit in the middle of Australia is serviced by the Royal Flying Doctor Service. (Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Flying_Doctor_Service_of_Australia ) It’s reported to be the largest air-ambulance service in the world. There was even a (fictional) TV drama about it in the early ‘90s.
I’ve occasionally toyed with the idea of an Equestrian citizen joining them. But I’ve nowhere near the knowledge of medical stuff to pull it off...
5345460
Oops, forgot about this:
You might be right; I’ve only seen the one show and a think one episode of another. I believe in some places they have doctors in cars who can assist on tricky cases with advanced stuff the paramedics can’t do, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they have multiple classes of ambulance, as well (in terms of equipment and crew training). I think that’s also the case in the US, where the ambulances can range from the most basic “toss somebody in the back and hope for the best” up to being able to perform advanced life-saving treatments . . . I know from an older book I read from an American paramedic, they didn’t have the advanced equipment and training where she worked; IIRC at the time that book was written they couldn’t even administer epinephrine. [I would imagine that most if not all ambulance services can these days.]
So shock is a condition where vital organs (especially the heart, lungs, and brain) aren't getting an appropriate amount of oxygenated blood to function . The medical term is hypo-perfusion (lack of perfusion). Shock is broken up into three stages, compensated shock, decompensated shock, and irreversible shock.
We learned how to treat the first one in Boy Scouts First Aid--cover the patient with a blanket, elevate their feet. I’m pretty sure that’s what it was for, anyway. Been a few decades.
That’d be the one you can’t treat . . .
Trauma, Shock, and Bleeding:
So ballparking it, that’s about 20-25% volume . . . and am I correct in believing that you can put in saline to help keep the volume up (if you don’t have whole blood to transfuse?)
One of the things they’ve done on the show is put on a pelvic wrap for patients they think might have a broken pelvis, to hold things in place so that doesn’t happen.
That makes sense.
Also seems legit . . . while it’s not the same (obviously) we diagnose internal coolant leaks in much the same way--if the volume of coolant keeps dropping and there’s no obvious external leak, it must be internal.
I did sorta know that. We got trained in them at the group home, and of course they’re the ones designed for idiots to use (which is good when your extent of medical training is a one-day class every few years) that tells you to either push the button or keep doing CPR.
That, and performing CPR for like thirty seconds and then saying, ‘he’s a goner.’
Which I would imagine is why in a case like that you want to get them to the hospital as fast as you can, because there’s no way you’re going to be able to fix internal bleeding on the side of the road. Or some kinds of external bleeding, either.
That could be the case, although as far as I can tell, they put them in the helicopter on a normal-looking gurney, so I can’t personally picture a case where a compound fracture wouldn’t fit . . . but again, I’m no expert.
There’s a lot of that on the show, the ‘how are we going to’ type of questions, since obviously a lot of places a patient might get injured aren’t places where you can easily wheel a gurney in and out.
5345549
There’s also a documentary which covers some of the helo stuff (not sure if it’s the same organization or a different Australian helicopter paramedic service). They fly in stuff the Brits won’t, incidentally.
Coast Guard does some medical flights in Alaska and probably other places (rescuing people from ships and whatnot); also in Alaska and I assume parts of northern Canada they use fixed-wing aircraft for medical flights, although I know little of their operation.
Watch a bunch of documentaries and piece together what you can, and then if you’re smarter than me, find a paramedic to pre-read it and fix all the things you get wrong.
5345564
Yep.
First there's Registry. Registry is an NGO that certifies EMS professionals as competent in their scope of practice. Registry certification says to everyone "yes, I know how to ______." Every grade of EMS (EMT, Advanced EMT, and Paramedic) has a different scope of things Registry certifies.
Then there's licensing. Getting a state license gives you legal permission to work as an EMS professional. Every state in the US has their own requirements to get licensed for EMS. In most of them (48 I think), the only requirement to get a license is passing Registry (and paying a fee). In the rest, some other requirement applies. In addition, each state can remove things from a scope of practice, or add things.
As an example, in the state of California, EMTs cannot collect a blood glucose reading without specific authorization from a physician. In... Minnesota (I think), EMTs can get IV access (AEMT scope according to Registry).
Then there's the local level. EMS isn't a truly autonomous profession in the US. Legally, every EMT and Paramedic operates under the orders of a full MD, this is called Medical Control typically. Everything they do is under Med Control's orders. Most things are in a big protocol book of Standing Orders, but if you run into a unique situation, you can call or radio Med Control to get authorization to go out of your normal scope (such as getting time of death declared in the case of an obviously dead patient). Med Control's standing orders can also add or take things out of your scope of practice.
Outside scope of practice, ambulances are divided into Basic Life Support, and Advanced Life Support. BLS trucks will be typically staffed by EMTs and can do basic interventions (Oxygen, Bleeding Control, transport, CPR, etc.). ALS trucks will have at least one Paramedic on them and can do everything that a local agency authorizes. This will include IV and IO access, narcotics and other controlled medications, and some surgical interventions such as RSI (maybe).
Yes, but... it's complicated. Not a Medic, this is definitely out of my scope of practice, but I'll do my best.
BP getting too low is obviously bad, and yes you can push saline or lactated ringers to get their BP back up. However, fluid that isn't whole blood can cause a few big problems:
5345608
Interesting. It makes sense to have a national standard, but I wonder now about the states that have an additional requirement. Like if it’s something necessary in that state, or if it’s just the state flexing because it can? Why the ban on blood glucose levels in California?
When I got BSA lifeguard certification many, many years ago, the biggest difference between that and Red Cross was that we had to be competent in using boats, because odds were in the Boy Scouts we’d be doing rescues in a natural body of water, not a pool. So it was everything Red Cross required, plus more.
For mechanics, we have ASE which is a national certification organization, and then various states have their own license requirements (or none). As far as I know, you don’t need ASE certification to practice as a mechanic in any states, but if you have it you can often skip over whatever state tests there are for that skill (for example, Michigan does require tests, but if I have an ASE certification in brakes, I don’t have to take the state test for brakes). [Plus ASE is to a higher standard than state tests, but that’s really off-topic.]
That brings to mind three stories. One was from the ambulance book I mentioned, where the author specifically mentioned that they couldn’t pronounce on their own . . . I can’t remember if she said it or I assumed it, but I got the impression that if it was obvious to the whole crew that there was no Earthly power that could help the patient they wouldn’t rush back to the hospital like they might if there was a chance to revive the patient.
The second was when I was driving wrecker I got called to a very bad wreck (I didn’t know how bad on the way there), and on my way I saw the ambulance going the other way, strobes on but no siren, and not in much of a hurry. When I got on scene and saw what was left of the Jeep, I assumed that either the guy was so obviously a goner that they weren’t rushing, or that he’d somehow miraculously been thrown clear without a scratch.
The third was our Snap-On dealer who used to be a paramedic complaining about how the doctor wouldn’t pronounce over the phone despite the fact that the guy’s head wasn’t attached to his body.
I’m assuming our local amublances are just Basic Life Support, since they operate in a region with less than 5,000 people (not sure their exact range, but the town they’re based in has maybe 1200 population).
I knew about saline not being much good at carrying oxygen, I didn’t know it could disrupt clots, but that makes sense. Medical stuff’s complicated!
The reason that train station is only serviced once per week is probably because the process of closing a line is so difficult in the UK that it's easier for rail companies to provide minimal service instead. Wendover Productions did a short video about it.
Interesting; are pegasi officially classed as lighter than air, then, or did that part of the system get modified in this universe?
"FYAA-FYNA was used for unmanned toy balloons"
...Unmanned toy balloons?
"Also worth noting, Great North Air Ambulance helicopters don’t have skids, they have wheeled landing gear"
So they used a different helicopter in this universe, or a different version of that one, then?
"The statue in the coverart is the Angel of the North, located in Gateshead."
Oh, it's a statue! Thanks!
And thank you for the blog post. :)
5345851
Unmanned toy balloons are things like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWUZDOQm_HE
5345787
I'm gonna be completely honest, I have no idea. EMTs not being able to do BGL stick in CA is generally regarded as stupid seeing as how totally untrained laypeople stick themselves all the time. Just California things I guess.
As a rule, a 911 ambulance won't transport a corpse. If he was Obviously Dead when they arrived on scene, they'd stay on scene until the patient was pronounced and then transfer custody to someone else. It's also pretty rare to be going lights and sirens with a patient in the back. Most of the time when you see an ambulance with their siren on, they're going to a call, not transporting.
According to the research the NHTSA has done on it, lights and sirens reduces transport time by an average of 90 seconds, which... isn't really a lot. On top of that turning on the siren can actually make you more reckless, and people just really don't know how to respond to emergency vehicles with their siren on (if they do anything at all). Minimal time saved combined with extra hazard makes for a bad time, especially if you're having to actually work a patient in the back en route, because I can pretty much guarantee that you aren't restrained if you're working in the back.
The number one thing they beat into you in school is safety, because if you get hurt then not only can you not treat your patient anymore, but now another crew has to come and treat you.
Rural EMS will generally be either two EMTs or an EMT and a driver with maybe a few Paramedics in quick response vehicles that can show up and provide care as needed. The sad reality is that a lot of rural services are very underfunded. And it's hard to get people to commit years of their life (EMT + Paramedic school is usually about 2 years total) to do a high stress, and sometimes gruesome, job for low pay. Assuming you get paid at all, lots of rural services are volunteer based. This almost certainly isn't sustainable in the long run, but municipalities generally don't want to increase taxes to fund EMS appropriately, or cut spending to their fire service and reallocate it to EMS despite fires being much less common now.
5345884
Ah, thank you!
Neat.
5345830
That thought didn’t occur to me (although perhaps it should have; I’ve seen that video). I don’t think that’s the case, though, since they have service on both sides of that station multiple times every day of the week.
The station just kind of drops you off in a field near the airport, which could be why it isn’t used much. The one video I saw of a train stopping there, the guy got off the platform and into a car.
5345851
My own headcanon is pegasus magic makes them effectively lighter than air, so that’s how the Brits classified them.
A different one--AFAIK none of the Dauphins have skids. Other air ambulances in England do, though, although I’m not sure what model helicopter they are (I could look it up, I suppose).
You’re welcome! It’s a damn cool statue, too.
5345884
I personally wouldn’t call that a toy balloon, but I suppose the Brits do what they do.
5345887
Gonna assume it’s just California flexing, then.
Huh . . . I never really paid that much attention to it (like, we didn’t called out until after the scene was secured unless a wrecker was needed to move something for recovery, and thank God I never got called to one of those), so I don’t have any first-hand experience to what they did in Kalamazoo when they had an obviously dead guy (or girl). I got to ride in the back of an ambulance once but I don’t remember if the siren was on. I wasn’t exactly in the frame of mind where you note those things, y’know?
Yeah, that sounds legit. I do tend to pay more attention when I hear a siren, since that sets up the expectation that I’m about to see an emergency vehicle, but not all drivers are smart. Just today I almost got blasted by a guy who blew through a four-way stop at maybe 40mph, so. . . .
People are idiots. I had a few close calls in the wrecker, which was big, bright red, and had blinking lights, and that apparently wasn’t enough to make drivers notice me.
Yeah, that’s not what you want.
I think we’re south of it, but when I lived more north (in Michigan), I’d occasionally see MMR suburbans racing like bats out of hell; could be that they were advanced doctors of some sort to help out the rural paramedics with tough calls. I don’t think that they transported in Suburbans, although I honestly don’t know. In theory, you could, although it’d be super cramped if you were expecting to work on a patient.
From what little I know of it, yeah, it would be high-stress and often terrible and likely take a special kind of person to make it. I work part-time with developmentally disabled adults, and according to our training, the average direct-care staff only lasts two years.
I wonder if the lack of funding to EMS (especially rural EMS) is part of the reason that firefighters often also respond to medical calls? Like, not just car accidents where they’ve got the special car-saws.
Also, we could debate back and forth private vs. public ambulances, but one time in Kamazoo, I listened to a radio conversation between Kalamazoo City Police and Kalamazoo Township Police debating who had to respond to a car accident--it had happened in one jurisdiction but the cars had wound up in the other after the accident. The ambulance didn’t care about jurisdiction.
5346921
Ah, interesting; thanks!
Ah, and thanks.
Aye, it does rather look that. :)
:)
Question: I have a mechanical engineering degree, and reading this gave me some questions. Going to rush this off before I forget something that might save lives, however tiny the possibility is.
Is it price, civilians who can't be expected to not turn on their headlights with the intention of helping, or some other factor that prevents night-vision from allowing night operations?
Anyone got any idea what the weigh an alternative device to make night landings "in the field" possible would have to fit within to be practical?
Got some ideas, but they might weigh in the hundreds of pounds.
5378505
Prefaced with not an expert--I’ve got tangential connections to aviation and rescue operations, but no practical experience.
At a guess, it’s a variety of factors. Land ambulance is a reasonable possibility in most parts of England, and they do also have land-based doctors, combined with the infrastructure in much of the country--helicopters don’t like bumping into power lines or tall poles or what have you. Probably a risk vs. benefits thing, really. They do have night vision in some rescue helicopters; I’ve seen one where the RAF (I think) was guiding a pilot down to an airfield, and they had a fully-crewed helicopter and were following him with night vision. I think also that the Great North Air Ambulance is a charity organization with more focus on medics than crack pilots, and having regulations for the safety of the flight crew and doctors aboard the helicopter is more beneficial than trying risky rescues. (Not to mention you wrap a helicopter around a power line in a developed area, you might also wind up killing people on the ground.)
I don’t think that the night vision kit is all that heavy, honestly. Maybe a few hundred pounds, maybe not even that--certainly doable for a helicopter (as evidenced by all the military equipment that has it.) You could probably build a rudimentary system at home using a couple of modified webcams (strip of the IR filter), a tablet, and maybe a couple arrays of IR LEDs in a spotlight housing.
The two problems I can think of are the aforementioned wires (don’t know how well they show up on IR) and other landing site obstructions, and the training needed to take a normal three-dimensional picture and reconcile it in two-D. I’ve heard that’s a problem with night vision systems, especially over longer ranges, but I don’t have any practical experience.
Given their cost, if they were really effective you’d be seeing night-vision systems in more cars by now. A quick scan of Wikipeda suggests that Cadillac is the only one still offering such a system, although there were options across dozens of makes and models in the last couple decades. I’ve thought about it for detecting deer before they run out in front of me, but apparently it’s not that much of an advantage, whereas things like backup cameras (in the US) are ubiquitous now.
5378646
Clarifications:
Obviously, some night-vision systems (albeit with a narrow field of view) are wearable on the head. There was never any question in my mind that retrofitting something BETTER than that onto a medical helicopter would be something that could be done.
I wanted to know why that wasn't done so I could know if my ideas had any utility.
What I have in mind is are ALTERNATIVES to night-vision, and "multiple hundred pounds" is a reasonable ballpark guess for how much the devices I have in mind would weigh.
Lastly, when you run out of knowledge(which you might not have yet) you can suggest where I can ask next.
5378935
Sorry for the late reply; I was out of town over the weekend, and didn’t reply to all the messages I should have.
I’ll start from the bottom
I’m already out of actual knowledge, barring what I’ve seen in a couple documentaries and having a brother who’s a pilot (and some interest in aviation due to that). I’ve got some theories, though.
I suspect it’s risk vs. reward, especially in places where land ambulances can go, but not as fast. Even then, they can’t always land right next to where the patient is, due to terrain or structures--they bring a better doctor and a faster way to the hospital sometimes, but they also don’t have good working room inside--I’ve seen a couple episodes where they transport by road because the patient is in such a delicate state that if they go downhill, there won’t be room to work on them in the helicopter.
I’ve mostly watched the British ones, though (hence the story being in England), and don’t know how it’s done in other parts of the world, other than ‘helicopter flies in and saves you.’
Hmm, curious about the alternatives. Radar probably wouldn’t pick up wires, but I honestly don’t know for sure. Some of the crazy things they do with military helicopters, I gotta figure they’ve got good tech, and there’s probably some augmenting stuff that would work. Even some of the tech they put in cars these days is amazing. . . .
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Well, I don't want to publicly post it in the deeply unlikely case it could get me off government financial support by some company paying me for it. I will try to remember to send you a private message with the basic idea (although in less detail than I've figured out).
Ky Sweeper looks like a flying Flag of Ukraine. Your crystalball works very well.