Civilian Aviation

As I was loading up the car with concrete to take to the tip on Saturday, I saw a helicopter come over the house, bank round and start descending. Guessing that Bedford Park was the most suitable landing site in that direction I jumped in the car and headed there to find the Magpas air ambulance charity's shiny, new Leonardo AW169, with only 80 hours on the clock including the delivery flight from Italy, attending for an incident at Bedford prison.

G-MGPS - 2018 Leonardo AW169


G-MGPS - 2018 Leonardo AW169 departure.


Cheers,
Oz

That's a nice catch.

Any ideas, anyone, on the under nose torrent mounting ?
Trying to work out if it is camera / spotlight / night vision etc. I could understand those being on a police H/C, but interested what it is on a medical ship.
Cheers, Pete.

Hi Pete. It's a spotlight. Presumably so they can see what they're landing on when it's dark.

Done a bit of digging.
I wonder if it is actually night vision equipment to enable single pilot operation.
Noticed the same mounting on pictures of G-KSST, the Aw169 of Kent Ambulance.

Pete.

Wow A nice catch of this Heli.
The little boy seems overwhelmed by the machine

A couple of nice shots there. Living a couple of hundred yards from Bedford Park, I've seen and heard quite a few air-ambulance choppers using the cricket pitch just inside the main gate, either to drop off patients for transfer by road to Bedford Hospital or to pick up and transfer patients to Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge. Below are a couple of shots of MAGPAS MD902 Explorer G-HMDX taken on a cold, crisp afternoon in January 2015.

P1050322 by mustang 5861, on Flickr

P1050325 by mustang 5861, on Flickr