Newfoundland Chopper crash

[jabrrr]

Hi, I am Canadian reporter and I am wondering if it was possible for anyone to capture radio transmissions between the Cougar helicopter and the Hebernia or White Rose oil platforms before it crashed. Are these transmissions private and therefore unaccessible? Any information would be great. Thanks for this wonderful site as well.

Cheers,

Jorge Barrera
jbarrera@canwest.com

[dave]

Jorge-

We do not cover that area.  Sorry.

Dave

[kea001]

CHI91 - COUGAR HELICOPTERS INC. Flight Path - CADORS Number: 2009A0212
Occurrence Date: 2009/03/12, Occurrence Time: 1215 Z
Make: SIKORSKY   Model: S92A

CHI91, S92, enroute from St. John’s (CYYT) to the Hibernia Oil Platform at 12:15Z, declared MAYDAY due to a main gear box oil pressure problem and requested to return to St. John’s. Air Traffic Control cleared the flight as requested. At 12:25Z aircraft ditched at position 472605N515658W.







I just discovered this process and thought I might share it.


Steps in this process:

1. Have Google Earth installed and open
2. Have a graphics program installed and open.
3. Find the flight number - CHI91 - In my case I found a reference to the incident on CADORS.


CADORS site:
http://www.tc.gc.ca/Aviation/applications/cadors/English/main.asp

4. Go to fboweb.com.  In the upper left corner under the logo there is an input box surrounded by green.
Input the flight number here i.e. CHI91. This will open up a new page.

5.  The flight tracking page has a map on the left and flight details on the right. Because the flight has been technically completed, the map won't show anything. Ignore it anyway. Underneath the flight details there is a button marked 'Google Earth'. Left click on the button and it will download a *.kml file. This is the google earth file of the flight.

6. Open up this kml file with Google Earth. You will now be able to manipulate the image of the flight however you would like. Zoom in, rotate, etc. until you come up with a view that you want to copy.

7. To copy the image, go to EDIT>COPY IMAGE in Google Earth. Now it is copied to the clipboard.

8. In your graphics program, create a new file by going to FILE>NEW. Because you have an image copied to the clipboard, the graphics program will create a blank image matching the size of this clipboard image.

9. On the new,  blank image, go to EDIT>PASTE. You can manipulate this image further, i.e. crop, to suit.

10. Check that you have authority to publish the graphics so as not to infringe copyright.


Google Earth
http://www.google.com/permissions/geoguidelines.html

fboweb.com
http://fboweb.com/pu/media/crash.aspx

...and yes it would be nice to have altitudes and distance notations but, hey, it's free.  I expect for a fee, fboweb would be more forthcoming.