Alpnach helicopter base - actual maintenance news

It's always interesting to visit maintenance halls, and Alpnach as maintenance center for all kind of helicopters is of special interest. Unfortunally it was not allowed to take pictures, so the pictures shown here are from earlier public day's - mainly from 2004 🛈

all information out of memory and as accurate as possible

-> save the date !

80 years Alpnach Air Base - April 30th, 2022

Super Puma / Cougar maintenance

- Two special visitors in maintenance actually - Hellenic Air Force HAF 2620 and Albanian Air Force  FA 633. The first in need of an complete overhaul of the aluminium cell due corrossion and the latter on the 150h inspection of the engines.  

- Swiss AF T-318 in regular maintenance circle

- Slowenian AF Cougar expected soon, crashed after colission with an cable and planned to arrive in an NATO C-17A Globemaster to Emmen a few days ago. Due availability problems now expected to arrive on an truck. Incident happened back in 2019 already, possibly involving H3-72.

EC635 and others

- Swiss AF T-356, T-357 and T-358 in regular 800hrs maintenance circle for about six weeks each.

- There are 15km of cables in an EC635, Swiss Air Force and the german Bundespolizei are using the same configuration (cockpit and other systems).

- There is an avionic deck in the back of the EC635 that can be descended for maintenance.

- EC145 T2 HB-ZVA in regular 5yrs revision, NVG system installed.

LTDB with reduced flighthours of the fleet due COVID'19

 

The Lufttransportdienst des Bundes (LTDB, the military transport agency for the government with BizJets and Helicopters) flew 463 hours for the Administration in 2020 (2019: 680):

Repetition course TA1 in SST

Normally based in Payerne, TA 1 (Helicopter) is making there yearly repetition course out of the former Swiss Air Force base of St. Stephan the next weeks:

SST is known for the famous Hunterfest and has an webcam - so you can watch some activity there:

Webcam SST

Air to Ground Shooting Range Axalp (-Ebenfluh) - Power Demonstration 2018 - last time with our grey Tigers

Every year in October, the Swiss Air Force invites the world to the Power Demo showed up there. No more rockets and bombs since the end of Vampire and Hunter, but still impressive.
Unfortunally it was the last year with the grey Tiger F-5's - the're only used for the agressor role and Patrouille Suisse in the future, but not needed to shoot there bullets anymore.

Payerne Air Force Base Open Doors, 2018

More then 5000 people from all of Switzerland and abroad - dutch, french and german cars is what I saw - visited the main base due Open Door exposition and Airshow today.
With introduction of all the jobs you can learn and work on an Swiss Air Force Base, the exposition saw many interesting work places.
And there was an little airshow too - Swiss Air Force Hornet Demo Team, Super Puma Display Team and fire/SAR demo was sheduled - Patrouille Suisse visited for an flybye too. The most interesting new demo was an QRA / Air Policy Demonstration of two Hornets versus an (NC)PC-7. Let's hope such a demo is standard in the future ;)

Article in German with other pictures by me ;)

Missing Women found after a 45mins search attempt of the Air Force

The Swiss Air Force helped the police of the canton Vaud successfully in the search for a missing woman.

An 89-year-old missing woman was found, albeit injured, again. This thanks to the use of a helicopter of the Swiss Air Force.
The very elderly woman had disappeared on May 28th from the hospital Lavaux in Cully, as the cantonal police reports. Police requested assistance from the air force on the morning of June 1st. An EC-635 started in Dübendorf and took on the flight operational head of the cantonal police in Lausanne-Blécherette.
The wanted person was found only three quarters of an hour later in the Lausanne area. A ground patrol rescued her and immediately took her to the University Hospital of Lausanne. Shortly after noon, the helicopter arrived back in Dübendorf.