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PILOT TRAINING CENTER
Training of the Mi-8 and Mi-17 pilots also takes place on the air base. ELMAK (Elbit Macedonia) has won a 43 million euro ($61 million) deal to set up a helicopter pilot training facility for North Macedonia's military and police.
Shraga Yaari is the director of the Helicopter Pilot Training Center (PTC). With an impressive track record of over 7000 flight hours, most of which were flown on the AH-1 Cobra, he retired as a squadron leader in Israel before Elbit selected him to set up and run the Pilot Training Center in North Macedonia. Candidates for the PTC start with an air screening process on the Zlin 242. Yaari explains, “This is a kind of evaluation, we have special drills, our examiner will perform the drill first, and the student has to try to copy it, and we try to analyze if they can complete this specific course in a set time frame.” After a year of ground schooling, and more training on the Zlin, students will transfer to the Bell 206B-3. Yaari continues, “The first six months on the Bell are what we call a basic training session, that is kind of a transition to the helicopter world, including a solo, and touching all of the relevant maneuvers that the helicopter can perform. After that comes an additional six months of advanced training, related to instruments, emergencies, tactical air navigation, and missions.”
Every pilot in the aviation brigade must pass an amount of hours on the helicopter in real flight, and an amount of flight hours on the simulator every year. The simulators are also used for new pilots to make the transition from the Bell 206 to the Mi-17 or Mi-24. The training center is home to two advanced simulators for the Mi-17 and Mi-24. Those two simulators are produced by a subsidiary of Elbit, Simultec in Romania, and are used by military pilots and police. According to Yaari, “We have a lot of spaces for international trainees. Just recently we’ve had pilots from Cameroon that made their transition to Mi-24, so we did all the ground schooling here. We’ve placed one of the Mi-24s in our hangar to study the systems. We’ve had Nigerian trainees, we’ve had trainees from Bosnia, and some from Croatia.” Mr. Yaari is very proud of the simulators, and not without reason: “In the world, there are many simulators for the Mi-17 and even for the Mi-24, but none of them are full motion, and none of them are equipped with this specific upgraded avionics.”
The PTC is in close contact with the North Macedonian Air Brigade and Yaari says he sees the center as another unit of the Air Brigade. Yaari explains: “Any of our changes in the flying syllabus, or ground school topics we do in consultation with the Military Academy and with the Air brigade. We are limited by the Israeli minister of defense to transfer any doctrines, but helicopter flying in the same whether it is a Cobra, Mi-17 or Bell 206. We believe we can share a lot of our experience and that is what we try to do.” (Continued on Page 37)