St Ives-a new millennium - Flipbook - Page 43
St Ives-a new millennium
4/10/02
3:46 pm
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Right: Police Air Support Unit
Photo: Stuart Littlewood/Ricoh XR7
The police helicopter, a familiar sight in
the skies over St Ives, is operated by the
Air Support Unit based at RAF Wyton. At
the turn of the Millennium the officer in
charge was Insp Tony Yeldham (seen
here with the remote controller for the
cameras) with Sgt Paul ‘Boxer’ Bennett
as deputy and Ian Hardy and 4 other PCs
as full-time observers. Pilots are ex-army
and supplied on contract.
The ASU was set up in 1997 with a Twin
Squirrel machine built by Aerospatiale in
France. It has two engines for added
safety over cities and a top speed of
around 150mph. On-board equipment
includes gyro-stabilised thermal imaging
camera and daylight video camera with
32x zoom lens, ‘Tracker’, GPS, a 30
million candlepower searchlight and a
35mm stills camera (Canon EOS). It
normally flies with a crew of 3 and has a
built-in stretcher for evacuating
casualties from accidents.
The helicopter only responds to incidents
and is not used for routine patrols.
Although it could remain airborne for up
to 3 hours, average flight time is about
25 minutes.
Tony worked closely with Suffolk Police
to help establish their helicopter unit and
retired in 2001 after 30 years’ service to
become the civilian co-ordinator for the
Eastern Region Helicopter Consortium.
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