On Friday we had the great excitement and pleasure of going down to Sumburgh to visit Search and Rescue at the Bristow hangar and then on to visit the Fire Station and find out about Air Traffic Control.

Our topic was Day & Night but we were looking at how jobs are affected by the different times of day.  What we found out was very interesting!

We saw the control room at Search and Rescue.  It is very busy place.  There are screens to see the weather, showing maps and many other things.  They have maps to show where they are going and how far away it is so that they have enough fuel to fly there and back.

Each crew member has an important role.  Here is someone being winched up in the sling.

The pilots fly the helicopter and keep it steady when hovering over places.  They also land it safely.  Here is a photo showing the cockpit and one of us thinking about being a pilot!

When it is dark or poorer weather, the crew looks through a special camera under the helicopter to find and zoom in on people they are rescuing.  They have a special thermal heat locator that they can turn on to see folk quickly.  We found this very interesing!

The helicopter also takes things with them that may be needed in a rescue.  They keep these in the hangar, ready to collect and put on the helicopter when needed.

We loved being down at Search and Rescue, finding out about a lot of things!  After that, we went to the Fire Station.  That was cool and very different.  We did see all the things the fire fighters need in the fire engine and also what they need to wear to keep safe when fighting a fire.  Again, they had thermal imaging cameras too to help them with their job and to help them when they couldn’t see things so well because it was dark or smoky.

We saw watched how the firefighters work together as a team when going into a building or plane.  They talk to each other all the time and someone on the unit checks on them all the time to see that they are ok.  This was great to see how working as a team is important.

Then we got to look around the fire engine, pretend to drive and some of us thought what it must be like to be a firefighter and maybe even want to be ones when we grow up.

After that, we heard about what staff need to help direct planes when they land and get them to park up at the airport building.  Some of us pretended to have a go at this.

Then Jillian Mouat told us how the Air Traffic Control helps aircraft to land during the day and night.  It was all very interesting.

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