You might have seen the Coastguard helicopter in the skies during trips to the mountains or the seaside, but who are the people who work on it? Kit Vickery went to find out.

From the outside, the modern, grey, and frankly unimpressive building doesn’t look like much, but for the crew of Caernarfon’s Search and Rescue (SAR) helicopter, it’s home for 24 hours.

Four people will be “on-shift” to man the vital part of H.M Coastguard each day – a pilot, a co-pilot, a winchman, and a winch-operator.

The crew will start work at 1pm, finishing their shift the next afternoon, eating and sleeping at their home away from home.

A piano in one of the offices, with the sheet music to Scott Joplin’s The Entertainer on the music stand, and the gym set up in a storage area in the hanger gives me a hint of what people get up to in their spare time.

Martin Shepherd, originally from Bury, is the deputy chief pilot at the base, and took me on a tour of the facilities and told me a little more about the Sikorsky S-92, the aircraft they use.

He said: “The aircraft has space for at least two stretchers and seating for around 20 people.

“You will often need to take a casualty and their family and we have plenty of room to do that.

“It’s great for them because they get to have someone that they know and trust with them.”

The team have to be in the air within 15 minutes of getting a call between 8am-10pm, and within 45 minutes between 10pm-8am.

Martin said: “We usually get airborne within 9-11 minutes during the day, and about 25 minutes overnight.

“It’s easy to get yourself in quite a rush overnight but I like to encourage the crew to grab a coffee before we launch.

“We need to look after someone else and it’s hard to do that if you’re half asleep so taking a few minutes extra to wake up properly is worth it.”

The 48-year-old joined Bristow, the company responsible for providing the service, from a similar job in the Royal Navy.

The three other people on duty, Paul ‘Jonesy’ Jones, 36, Mike ‘BW’ Boissier Wyles, 47, and Richie ‘Smoo’ Smith, 50, are all ex-RAF personnel, working on the Westland WS-61 Sea King that formerly provided SAR services across the UK.

SAR operations were run by the military from 1941-2016, when the SAR Force was officially disbanded.

Smoo said that the role is very similar to what was expected from them in the RAF.

He said: “We do need to do quite a lot of training, there’s a lot of skills needed such as mountain flying, landing in tight areas, winching to cliffs, mountains, boats, people in the water and even more.

“We try to fly at least once a shift and like to train with the lifeboats and mountain rescue teams but if that phone goes then we have to ditch all plans for that call.

“I love it, I was really keen to stay in SAR so I was really chuffed when I got the job here.”

Bristow were awarded a £1.6 billion contract for privatising the service in 2013, with the Department for Transport hoping the new provider could increase efficiency of the service.

Under military operations, average flight time to incidents was 23 minutes, with 70% of high and very high risk areas in the region reachable within 30 minutes.

Bristow’s contract was supposed to decrease flight time by 20% to 19 minutes, with 85% of areas now reachable in the same timeframe.

The more modern aircraft used, the S-92 and the slightly smaller AgustaWestland AW189, have allowed these efficiency targets to be met or exceeded.

The building at Caernarfon Airport was specifically constructed for Bristow’s Coastguard operations, opening in July 2015.

It’s in an excellent state, but it still has a very clinical and unused feeling – partially because the crews are rigorous with their organisation, ensuring everything is in its place.

No day is the same, with staff dedicating time to keep their training qualifications up-to-date, and also making sure they’re to be ready to launch the aircraft at short notice, where they can spend hours responding to a call.

Work doesn’t stop when they’re not in the air – new information has to be filed in the correct place, equipment checked and restocked, and paperwork needs to be completed.

The base has its own first aid training room, where the winchman, normally a trained paramedic, makes sure that each member of the crew is able to provide first aid to a casualty, just in case.

Jonsey, the deputy chief crewman on site, is one of the people responsible for training and ensuring all medical equipment is stocked and in-date.

He puts his life in the hands of the winch-operator, as they have control over the winch whilst he dangles from the helicopter attached to it.

Oddly, this was a job the Salford lad always wanted to do, saying: “I was in the Air Cadets when I was younger and the group we were in did a lot of flying.

“We would go on camp every year at Preston and I would see crewmen and think it was something I wanted to do and then saw the winchman job.”

Jonesy and BW were stationed at RAF Valley together before joining the team at Caernarfon.

The duo were on shift yesterday, returning to their young children in the afternoon to celebrate Christmas as Martin had to leave his family yesterday to start work at 1pm, and won’t see them again until this afternoon.

What can crews be called to?

There are four types of tasking that crews can be called to – pre-arranged transfers, rescue/recovery, search only, and support.

Caernarfon was called to 291 incidents between April 2018 and March 2019, the fourth busiest base in the country behind Lee-on-Solent, near Portsmouth, Prestwick, near Glasgow, and Newquay in Cornwall.

Most of the calls taken by the Coastguard are for rescue/recovery jobs, when the team has to pinpoint the location of those in trouble, and navigate difficult terrains to reach them.

The Coastguard will normally be called out to places hard to reach by road, as they may be the only emergency service able to make it to the scene.

This is because the winch attached to the helicopter allows them to lower the medical professional into tight spots on mountain sides or on boats out at sea.

This allows the helicopter crews to drop off the winchman and then pick him and the casualty up, rather than landing to load them both onto the aircraft.

Due to its location near Snowdonia National Park, Caernarfon mostly receives calls to walkers or climbers, with almost half of all operations taking place in the mountains.

Only 48 calls were to someone on a beach or cliff, and the crews went out to a boat just 19 times.

Crews may also be asked to complete hospital transfers, often when a patient needs urgent treatment at a specialist hospital.

Almost every major trauma centre has a helicopter landing site, with Salford Royal Hospital the last of the 27 units in the Major Trauma Network to add landing facilities, planning to add one in 2021.

These sites are not always helipads – only four hospitals in the North West have primary pads, a landing pad linked to the hospital that allows the patient to be transferred on a trolley.

Others have secondary landing sites, meaning that an ambulance is needed to make the rest of the journey to hospital.

Secondary sites can be anything from a large field to a nearby airport, but the informal nature of these sites can often pose problems, as they are usually not set up for use at night, and can often require someone on the ground to prepare the site and clear the area.