Z-20 (all variants) thread
- Thread starter delft
- Start date
TerraN_EmpirE
Tyrant King
Deleted by user.
Equation
Lieutenant General
Air Assault...PLA style!Self-explanatory.
Self-explanatory.
PLA really needs to relook their whole PR policy of publicity photos being posed by people without a clue. The optics presented by this pic is seriously bad ... makes no bloody sense and is downright laughable.
The height is low enough that a handful more metres lower and you can just jump down.
The height is ideal for fast rope but instead they rappel.
They have troopers queuing up in the cabin and they rappel off a single rope ... it's gonna take many agonising minutes to process this lot rappeling down a single rope. A single fast rope will take <1 minute.
I have no idea wtf is happening here in this pic. Anyone?
Equation
Lieutenant General
They could be just practicing for the real deal later. Notice they still have their ruck sack attached to them, otherwise they would dump it to the ground and jump off quickly at safe height. This is probably part of the exercise for quick extraction from the Z-20.
Doesn't answer the question of why they're only on a single rope with a whole gallery of guys in the door looking on. They can easily have 4 ropes with 4 guys in one go (2 off of each door).
If you're practicing for the real deal than practice at the real height. These troopers will have done enough descent on a rappel tower at much greater height (than in this picture) that the height isn't an issue.
Even for fam training (first live descent), we go to the correct height (30m) and put a safety belayer at the bottom of the rope. I've honestly never ever seen a heli rappel done at that height before, with a single rope, with troopers in the cabin looking on.
It just screams posed PR shot to me.
It looks fine to me.
I think the background of the landscape makes it look like the level of the ground is higher than it is.
If you look carefully at the way the rappel line is flowing, you can tell that the level of the ground that they are rappelling down to is actually quite a bit lower than you think, and is only barely in frame with the bottom of the picture.
If the helicopter were a handful of meters lower I wouldn't like to jump down, because chances are at that height it'll be more than enough to break both my legs.
As for rappeling, I'm also not sure what the big deal is. You need to train to rappel, and they're doing it, and the height they're doing it at seems reasonable.
Everything looks in order to me.
No worries, I wasn't thinking that ground level was the tree line on the knoll in the back. If you follow the rope to where it actually goes into the scrub - Chopper is in a hover less than 10m actual.
Slight stretch on my part about the handful of meters but it's close enough. Highest I've jumped out of a helo (onto land) is about 3+m (~10 ft). PLF comes in useful.
Seriously, if it's rappel training, for all the effort to get the helo there, do it high or else fast rope already. Considering fuel burn, max out your guys on rope. It takes a ton of time for one guy to descend, get off rope, clear out and for the next guy to clip on and step out.
The progression for rappel training is to go from a tower to what you see in the picture above, max ropes out a 100ft altitude with safety belayers. Then you proceed to operational insertion - no safety, possibly rope bags, night, etc.
Nothing like the original posted pic.
Anyway, will love to have some context for what is happening in that pic but otherwise, I'll leave it here and we'll agree to disagree.
Bad camera work is all, not the first time and certainly won't be the last time.
here this video shows how the SOF unit trains at least