Seismic Support
An oil or seismic company operating out in the field needs a helicopter for various reasons. First of all, there are not likely to be any roads, or, at least, no more than forest access roads to the staging area, and people (such as slasher teams and drillers) will need to be moved, as well as their supplies which will be anything from fuel for the drills to explosives. This will mean a lot of slinging into tiny areas at the end of a very long line – in the latter stages, you might have a carousel at the end holding six bags which you must drop carefully in precise locations, as they hold about $6000 worth of equipment each. The expected rate for “production longlining”, as it’s called, is between 35-45 bags per hour. Sometimes, you will have a Dynanav or Kodiak machine to help, which produces a series of squares on a screen, and when they all line up, you will be on target (there is a danger here of not looking where you’re going when concentrating on the machine). With this taking the strain, the slashers only have to clear a couple of trees here and there.

In the early stages of the operation, the slashers (big guys with chainsaws) will create the helipads so you can position them in every morning for the rest of the week while they cut lines a metre wide for the surveyors to mark out for drillers, who make holes for explosive charges (when the whole lot is blown up, the vibrations are recorded and analysed in the hope of finding oil or gas – alternatives are electric vibrators or falling weights). You will need to know how to work a GPS, as there is some precision involved, although, outside of winter, decent map reading skills are good enough once you know where the pads are. However, when flying the lines so the surveyors can check on how the slashers are doing, you want one that can pictorially show you the lines to be flown.
There will be a truck acting as a flight watch station and you will be expected to report in every time you land and take off at any helipad. Here is a typical one: The person in the truck (usually the medic) will be keeping a log of all movements and radio calls and will therefore have the most information to hand if an incident occurs. Expect also to be given an Emergency Response Plan, which is a bit of paper telling you what action to take in emergencies, together with the following information:

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Your location (Lat/Long)

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Who's in charge

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Any Radio frequencies

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Police, Fire, Ambulance,
Hospital

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Other helicopter companies

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Medic

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Safety etc

All this concerns your second job of aerial ambulance. You should always have enough fuel for the nearest hospital, but not so much that you can’t lift the patients, which, typically, will be the heaviest guys coming out of the tightest clearing with the tallest trees. This is one: A couple of tips – try to get fuel in the staging area, to save both dead flying time and unnecessary starting of the engine. This is not always practical, but as it saves them a lot of money, you should find them more than interested. More importantly, it stops you being away getting fuel when an accident happens. A handheld radio is also useful, for keeping in touch with the ground crews when the helicopter is shut down, and for you to call for help with when you see a bear tying a large bib round its neck.