What's new
Van's Air Force

Don't miss anything! Register now for full access to the definitive RV support community.

North Atlantic Crossing - Survival Suit

Noah

Well Known Member
A friend is planning a North Atlantic ocean crossing along the Crimson Route in a single engine aircraft in a week and he's trying to iron out some items on his equipment list. He plans to bring a scuba diving dry suit in case of ditching, and wear the bottom half in flight for quick donning. Any thoughts on the performance of this gear compared to a USCG approved "gumby" style survival suit, in the North Atlantic, much of which apparently still contains ice? One concern he has is that the Gumby Suit is too warm to wear in-flight, even the bottom half of it, and there is no way to don it quickly.

My buddy is a frugal guy, and cost is a consideration. But I guess I lean towards "You use the right gear, or you don't do the trip". Can survival suits be rented for a reasonable price? Anybody got any leads in that direction? Thoughts?
 
I have, and dive, a drysuit. I wouldn't call it "quick-doning". (but then, I don't know how long a survival suit takes to put on.)

What type of drysuit is it? Neoprene, crushed-neoprene, trilam, other?
In general, Drysuits keep you warm based what you wear underneath and air in the suit. Also a hood and gloves (if not using dry gloves) would need to be put on separately; this will take more time. So, with the drysuit, he will still need to dress warm.
 
Concur on the previous comment. A drysuit is going to only be as good as the undergarments you have on under them and the diving variety is designed to keep you somewhat dry, not warm. Even up here in the Puget Sound with our nice 46F water this time of year, after an hour we tend to get a little chilly. Take that to the North Atlantic for hours and you might have some issues.

I'm also not sure how you buddy would wear "the bottom half" as diving drysuits are normally entered through either a front cross-chest, or across-back zipper, they just don't come in halves, and if he's not zipped up outside the airplane, he's going to have a tough time zipping it when needed.

Maybe the mil-spec guys can chime in as to what they wear for exposure protection in event of a bailout over cold water.
 
Mark Albery is the guy to ask - flew the North Atlantic in his RV-8 last year, wrote it up in Kitplanes. Check his article for details!

I used to run dive operations on the North Shore of Lake Superior many, many years ago, and I'd opine that if you don't have the suit on when you go down, you don't have a prayer of getting it on later.
 
Agreed Paul, I sent my buddy the Kitplanes article from the December issue, and it has been his go-to source for info on the trip. Would you have any contact info for Mark Albery?

Funny enough, my buddy is also a Minnesotan and dives in Superior frequently himself!
 
I'd be glad to help out any way I can.

I had an insulated swimming suit as a base layer and an ex- North Sea rig workers immersion suit as my outer layer. Overheating was not a problem!
I just had the immersion suit unzipped to the waist, so that it could be pulled tight very quickly if needed.
The life-raft and grab bag need to be very close to hand or there's no point having them. A mentally rehearsed ditching drill is a good idea too.

The base layer suit is available if it fits. It's ML size (I'm 175cm and 75kg).

What aircraft type is he taking?
 
Wow great to see Mark Albery's name on this thread. The Kitplanes article is a gem.

I'm Noah's "Frugal Friend" from the beginning of this thread. First time posting. I have a musty private ticket but am basically a (hopefully) helpful passenger on this trip from Minneapolis to Scotland via Greenland and Iceland. I'm mostly focused on the safety gear and other details.

Equipment: My friend's aircraft is a Cessna 206 that's maybe 8 years old. It's been retrofit with long range tanks. He's an IFR pilot with about 3500 hrs. He flies to the coasts, up into Canada and to the Rockies so I feel pretty good about his experience.

We have 2 weeks to get to Scotland so we can wait for good weather which also makes me feel better about risk (and sightseeing).

This thread is about survival suits so I'll get to it.

We plan to use Scuba dry suits (with boots) that zip across the front. These will be worn with torso out. I know from dry suit diving in Superior that under layers are key. When upright in the water the suit is basically vacuum sealed tight to the body esp legs.

My underlayers are a 3mm neoprene farmer john bottom under wool pants. On top I have a long underwear undershirt and a thick wool fisherman's sweater. Neoprene hood and either neoprene gloves or mits.

I've practiced donning and zipping in the car and it works pretty well. The zip across the front is quite long and allows reasonably easy donning. I might even try having it on totally with the zipper open to see if its bearable.

My life vest has a big pocket where I'll keep the PLB and other most important survival gear. I'd also like use my "fanny pack" type dry bag to keep more gear on my person but am reluctant to get too encumbered for exiting the aircraft.

The remaining lowest priority (if there can be such a thing) survival gear will be in two parcels - life raft and dry bag . These will be on the floor.

We have the Delorme Inreach tracker, Sat Phone, handheld vhf radio and other stuff that's a composite of Marks list and others. The bulk of this stuff adds up!

Lots of info out there - some from people selling stuff. After shopping around for survival suits I decided the solution was right in my dive bag. Any opinions?

When I first started researching ditching I imagined it would be a very violent, low percentage survival situation. I was heartened to learn that it CAN be much less so. Really interesting subject. This helps to temper those early morning ruminations of "WHY are we doing this?"

We are working on a ditching procedure that sort've combines the list for the aircraft with the stuff specific to our team. Hopefully some rehearsals will eliminate the real show stopper problems during an actual emergency.

This next thing may cause you all to think I'm nuts. During spring Kayaking in MN we wear a neoprene hood under a paddling helmet. Since we have LOTS of room in back of the aircraft I thought I'd bring my helmet and don it given time. Really can't hurt - and I sorta feel naked without it.... I can't think of a good reason not to. Thoughts?

THANKS for allowing me into your community for a bit and for any input!

Kevin
 
Hi Kevin,

And welcome to VAF!

Statistically over 90% of ditchings are successful in that the occupants manage to evacuate the aircraft, but that isn't the end of the story.

This article is worth reading.

If you PM me your email address, I'll send you the web links that I harvested while preparing for the trip.

You seem to be thinking in the right direction. I would try to get the immersion gear so that it can be sealed up with the minimum of fuss. Having a co-pilot will undoubtedly help, but donning the whole kit on while seated in the aircraft is unlikely to be successful. The water temperatures are brutal and you need to get in the raft as soon as possible if the worst happens.

When I crossed last year, the Hudson and Davis straits were almost completely frozen. Landing on the ice may work, but going through it doesn't bear thinking about.
 
Read and heed what Mark said. If you don't get in a raft the suit is not going to make enough difference to allow a rescue. The raft is the key. The suit gives you tome to get in the raft and stay warm after that. Have a good raft!

George
 
This is an interesting thread, perhaps I can provide some food for thought. I fly over the sea for a living and have jumped into the sea and used underwater escape trainers many times to practise what could happen during the ditching and how to escape, as well as how to survive once you've escaped. I have also flown on Search operations, so here are a few things that might help.

Firstly I am not convinced having the immersion suit half donned is such a good idea, even if you have tried it in the car. Most immersion suits I know of are difficult to don in an open room let alone the confined space of a cockpit. You don't know what emergency may lead you to a ditching and what actions you need to take as a result. For example, a benign engine failure where you have plenty of height to glide, you might have time to don the suit. However I think the time would be better spent flying the aircraft and doing any drills, either trying to restart or securing the engine if it won't restart. If you had a fire in the cockpit that leads to a ditching, are you going to be in a position to don the suit in this scenario? That's just a couple of examples, I'm sure there are many more if we thought about it. We have a saying where I work that; "it's worth the sweat if you're going to get wet". Although the suit can feel a bit uncomfortable and cumbersome it is worth putting up with it for a few hours versus not having it donned properly and not surviving as a result.

Rather than having to don a suit it would be better to fly the aircraft, do any emergency drills, unlatch/jettison doors/windows, locate where you are and make emergency transmissions. Donning the suit is just a distraction from these important tasks.

The impact may or may not be violent depending on how the aircraft is flown and the sea conditions, but it is likely the inrush of cold water will be quick. You suggested that the liferaft is less important, I would argue that it is the most essential piece of kit you could have.

If you think about the basic survival principles in order of importance;

1. Protection
2. Location
3. Water
4. Food

These apply at sea just as much as they do on land.

Your liferaft will provide Protection and Location. Depending on where you were to ditch in the North Atlantic you could be there for some time awaiting rescue. On the UK side for example we no longer have long range maritime patrol aircraft as result of defence cuts. Despite having an immersion suit on you will at best have 12 hours survival time in the North Atlantic in calm water. If you have a liferaft your survival time will increase rapidly. The other point is that if you are just floating in the water the most that will be visible is your head and shoulders. Having searched for people and small objects of this size in the water you will not see them until you are virtually on top, literally a couple of hundred feet in height and a couple of hundred yards, in calm conditions. The liferaft presents a much bigger target to detect and markedly increases your chance of being visually located. If for some reason you can?t get into the liferaft then make sure all the survivors buddy up. This makes you a bigger target to locate but also will helps morale and trying to keep each other warm.

Make sure you have plenty of fresh water, whilst being absolutely surrounded by water none of it is drinkable. You can get survival sachets of water and they are essential. It is also essential to take sea sickness tablets once on board the liferaft, whether you feel sick or not. If somebody is sick it is likely to start a chain reaction. You don?t want to be sick as it will dehydrate you and deplete your energy. A reverse osmosis pump would also be a good bit of kit. It will generate you fresh drinking water as well as giving survivors a task to concentrate on.

There is a lot more to do and think about once in the raft but I am sure a judicious search on Google will come up with more on this. If not, I am more than happy to answer any questions.

Here is a link to a regulatory document the British Armed Forces use; it has a good couple of pages on survival times in the water at different temperatures with different layers of clothing on. The information is on pages 38 & 39 of 166 of the.pdf

http://www.maa.mod.uk/linkedfiles/regulation/fly2000seriesprint.pdf

To give you an idea of temperatures of where you are flying, this could be useful;

http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/sst/contour/global_small.c.gif

Hope this provides some useful food for thought.

Simon
 
I forgot to mention gloves.

A good set of waterproof gloves that are sealed at the wrist as well as the seams or neoprene gloves if you can't get waterproof ones are essential.

Without gloves your fingers will have dexterity for about 30 seconds in North Atlantic temperatures. With gloves you will get a couple of minutes of dexterity in the water.

This could be the difference between successfully operating your life jacket, liferaft and location beacons or not operating and therefore not surviving and being located.

Once out of the water and in the raft completing survival tasks your hands will start to warm up again.
 
I white water kayak all winter in 38-44? water. we wear gortex drysuits with various layers. my favorite layer is merino wool, very soft, doesn't smell. kayak drysuits have a diagonal front zipper which you could leave open so as to not overheat. I agree that getting into the raft is paramount. when I swim on the river the heat loss is significant after say, a 2 minute river swim. I'm not hyperthermic, but chilled for the next hour. [I also have like 3% body fat].
 
Very good point about donning the suit being a distraction in a potential emergency RV4uK Maybe the sweat factor can be mitigated a bit by keeping cabin temp cold. In my practice with the suit it gets toasty and sweaty pretty quickly.

The thing about all these suits is the more effective they are in the water, the more uncomfortable in the cockpit.

Regarding survival time in the water with the suit: Would it be reasonable to assume that if I can do a 30 minute ice dive in this suit in winter with my hooded head immersed (brain freeze!). That I would have at least that long when floating?

Mark thanks for the link to the Doug Ritter article about Ditching wives tales. Seems to offer an upbeat spin on the subject but between the lines the message is pretty clear about the lethal nature of cold water.

Uffda too much ditching study for one day.....thanks guys.

Kevin
 
Journey underway

We arrived Iqualit Nunavut this afternoon. Dry suit was pretty tolerable on the 3.5 hr flight from schefferville qc to cyfb. Legs and arms in the suit and head out of the zipper. I could get head thru and zipped up in about 15 sec.

Feet pretty sweaty but otherwise not too bad with the vent blowing -16 degree outside air in my face. The only overheating was when my friend and pic and I got into a hot discussion about glide speed in the event of engine failure.
 
Where to Chief?

Any chance your 206 is going on to Tanzania or is it staying in Europe?

Best Of Luck with everything.
 
Hi Kevin,
Do they still sell avgas by drum?

I don't think anything has changed. The drums of avgas usually arrive around July when all the shipping channels are open. This was the latest count that I saw.

I heard from Kevin earlier today and it looks like they are set for crossing to Greenland tomorrow. I hope they're ready for Avgas at $17/gallon and $150 landing/parking/handling fees.
 
... and I'd opine that if you don't have the suit on when you go down, you don't have a prayer of getting it on later.

Ditto! I'd also suggest that whatever you decide to wear, test fly it well. I used to wear a 1/4" pile wetsuit under my flight gear, for SAR plane guard duty.
Even wore it during "Team Spirit" one year. I was so cold, and exhausted just from wearing that under my flight gear, that I had serious doubts about surviving in the water myself, let alone rescuing anyone. I can't imagine wearing meaningful cold weather survival gear in the cockpit of a small aircraft.
 
Last edited:
A friend is planning a North Atlantic ocean crossing along the Crimson Route in a single engine aircraft in a week and he's trying to iron out some items on his equipment list. He plans to bring a scuba diving dry suit in case of ditching, and wear the bottom half in flight for quick donning. Any thoughts on the performance of this gear compared to a USCG approved "gumby" style survival suit, in the North Atlantic, much of which apparently still contains ice? One concern he has is that the Gumby Suit is too warm to wear in-flight, even the bottom half of it, and there is no way to don it quickly.

My buddy is a frugal guy, and cost is a consideration. But I guess I lean towards "You use the right gear, or you don't do the trip". Can survival suits be rented for a reasonable price? Anybody got any leads in that direction? Thoughts?

In reading between the lines, your frugal friend appears to contemplating this trip for his personal satisfaction, not ferrying an airplane headed to a mission in Africa.

My take on such a trip is if there is a need to pluck him from the frigid waters of the North Atlantic, he should pay for it.

It is irritating that people take on risky endeavors for their own reasons and when things go bad expect the tax payer rescue them. It just happened on Mt. Everest with the avalanche.

Why are people on a mountain looking up at lots of snow or over the north Atlantic looking down at ice bergs? If you are tired of living, fine, but don't cry help me when things go bad. You asked for it.
 
Are you aware that you have to have a current IFR rating and a plane that is certified to fly IFR to cross the North Atlantic?
 
Also check with Trans Canada. They have a very specific gear requirement list to make the flight and fly through Canadian airspace.

Tim
 
Don't forget to cath up before you don the suit. I presume you would normally for a long x-country anyway. rochester wide band FTW
 
How is the crossing going?

Wow great to see Mark Albery's name on this thread. The Kitplanes article is a gem.

I'm Noah's "Frugal Friend" from the beginning of this thread. First time posting. I have a musty private ticket but am basically a (hopefully) helpful passenger on this trip from Minneapolis to Scotland via Greenland and Iceland. I'm mostly focused on the safety gear and other details.

Equipment: My friend's aircraft is a Cessna 206 that's maybe 8 years old. It's been retrofit with long range tanks. He's an IFR pilot with about 3500 hrs. He flies to the coasts, up into Canada and to the Rockies so I feel pretty good about his experience.

We have 2 weeks to get to Scotland so we can wait for good weather which also makes me feel better about risk (and sightseeing).

This thread is about survival suits so I'll get to it.

We plan to use Scuba dry suits (with boots) that zip across the front. These will be worn with torso out. I know from dry suit diving in Superior that under layers are key. When upright in the water the suit is basically vacuum sealed tight to the body esp legs.

My underlayers are a 3mm neoprene farmer john bottom under wool pants. On top I have a long underwear undershirt and a thick wool fisherman's sweater. Neoprene hood and either neoprene gloves or mits.

I've practiced donning and zipping in the car and it works pretty well. The zip across the front is quite long and allows reasonably easy donning. I might even try having it on totally with the zipper open to see if its bearable.

My life vest has a big pocket where I'll keep the PLB and other most important survival gear. I'd also like use my "fanny pack" type dry bag to keep more gear on my person but am reluctant to get too encumbered for exiting the aircraft.

The remaining lowest priority (if there can be such a thing) survival gear will be in two parcels - life raft and dry bag . These will be on the floor.

We have the Delorme Inreach tracker, Sat Phone, handheld vhf radio and other stuff that's a composite of Marks list and others. The bulk of this stuff adds up!

Lots of info out there - some from people selling stuff. After shopping around for survival suits I decided the solution was right in my dive bag. Any opinions?

When I first started researching ditching I imagined it would be a very violent, low percentage survival situation. I was heartened to learn that it CAN be much less so. Really interesting subject. This helps to temper those early morning ruminations of "WHY are we doing this?"

We are working on a ditching procedure that sort've combines the list for the aircraft with the stuff specific to our team. Hopefully some rehearsals will eliminate the real show stopper problems during an actual emergency.

This next thing may cause you all to think I'm nuts. During spring Kayaking in MN we wear a neoprene hood under a paddling helmet. Since we have LOTS of room in back of the aircraft I thought I'd bring my helmet and don it given time. Really can't hurt - and I sorta feel naked without it.... I can't think of a good reason not to. Thoughts?

THANKS for allowing me into your community for a bit and for any input!

Kevin

Send me a PM with your delorme map address . I keep checking this thread for an update. Best of luck with the WX and AC.
 
Back Home

I am back in Minneapolis after an excellent experience riding along on the Crimson route trip with my friend. Awe inspiring! I flew back commercially from Glasgow May 14. I am in the process of organizing my notes and photos into a more detailed summary but want to address some of the questions raised in the thread.

1. As Mark said the fuel situation at Iqualit is unchanged. Maybe 6 55 gal drums left as of may 6 when we were there. New batch arrives on ship in July. Actually my friend is coming back in about 4 days and is a bit concerned that there will be any left. Talk to Garth or Lewis at Frobisher Bay Flight services to get the current quantity remaining. Very helpfull, professional FBO.

2. This trip was strictly for fun. No higher motive or even ferrying an aircraft for profit. Simply the realization of my friend's longtime dream. Regarding the issue of liability in the event of a rescue situation, an excellent point has been raised by David in his post. The cost of rescue is staggering. A very knowledgeable pilot I talked to in Reykjavik said the price for SAR is $15k PER HOUR in some cases. The liability insurance for the trip amounted to $3000 which I know didn't cover hull on the airplane and I really doubt covered SAR but I just don't know. Basically I decided midway through the journey I was risking my neck as well as my financial future. If I had it to over I would have researched all the legal what ifs more carefully. Of course then maybe I wouldn't have gone at all and that would have been a shame.

3. As Mark let on the cost of this route is staggering - especially in Greenland. At Ilulissat the "official" policy was to charge $100 per hr (first half hour free) to plug the 400 watt engine heater in! My buddy said "that's not really fair" to which our host in town replied grimly "nothing in Greenland is fair".

Thanks guys!
 
Back
Top