00:00 My name's Sammy Wills, I'm a paramedic for Yorkshire Air Ambulance and today we're at
00:05 Nostal Air Support Unit. I have been working for the Yorkshire Air Ambulance for 21 years now.
00:12 It's been a privilege and my favourite thing is I think because I've been able to serve alongside
00:18 every single paramedic that there's ever been, from the founding fathers right through to our
00:23 brand new five that started last week. 74 paramedics. I'm a paramedic, I'm a critical care paramedic
00:30 that works for Yorkshire Ambulance Service, the NHS Trust, but I'm seconded to work on the Air
00:35 Ambulance and the two have a partnership level agreement where we're able to provide the best
00:40 clinical care for the whole of Yorkshire public. Over the 21 years it has changed incredibly. My
00:48 bag used to be like this big, one, now I've got a selection of which I have to choose what I'm
00:53 going to take and they're a lot lot heavier, which means we've got additional kit, we've got blood,
00:58 we've got ventilators, we've got the ability and the capacity to literally bring the hospital
01:03 to the patient side and treat them and then fly them swiftly to the most appropriate hospital.
01:09 It's a dream job, it is a dream job and the satisfaction comes from knowing that as a team
01:15 we are able to provide the best care together and the fastest with the most up-to-date kit,
01:22 with the best drugs, with the best people and it is a collective of fantastic teamwork.
01:28 Hey, so I'm Gary, I'm one of the pilots and also head of training for Yorkshire Air Ambulance.
01:34 I've been with the charity now for just over 10 years, I've just received my 10 years award from
01:38 the charity for the longest serving pilot. Well I started off 10 years ago just as a normal line
01:43 pilot, we didn't have instrument rating back then, I got off of my instrument rating then I went on
01:48 to a training role and an examining role and now I'm just head of training and covering leave and
01:53 sickness with the chief pilot. Before I was with charity, I was with another charity flying the
01:58 same aircraft down south, before that I worked for the police for three and a half years before
02:03 it moved to Enpas and before that was military, flying for the army air corps. I started off as
02:08 infantryman, yeah many moons ago, so I was in the green hours back in the late 80s in Northern Ireland
02:16 and I got fed up of walking and progressed into flying. In fact I was in Catrick in the green
02:21 hours for many years, then I moved to Northern Ireland and various other places but then I moved
02:26 to the army air corps down Middle Warwick. It was starting off with Sash and Sems on the old MD902s
02:31 then we moved on to Yak and Yowa which are the 145 D2s and now we've got the brand new D3s,
02:38 Yorks and Yaw which are the new ones all singing all dancing, yeah very good aircraft. They're
02:44 fantastic to fly, it's more like flying a computer, it's pretty much similar to flying an airliner
02:50 inside the autopilot wise, you've got full four axis autopilot so it'll bring itself to the hover,
02:55 we can pretty much fly it just by pressing buttons. Then doctors, top notch, I'd like to
03:01 say we're the the leaders in the country, full crew wise today we've got myself TCM in the front
03:07 seat, two paramedics and a doctor so we are at the end of the game really. I've got so many memories
03:13 being in the charity, one of the big ones is landing here at Nostal Priory, it was the first
03:17 pilot to land in here when we moved from Leeds Bradford airport into here, that was different,
03:21 you could see around here it's completely changed but that was a an highlight I think,
03:26 moving the first aircraft into here. It's amazing what the fundraisers and the charity do,
03:31 getting the money in and the general public, how they donate it, I don't know how they do it really,
03:36 it's a great achievement and we won't be here unless it was the general public donating.
03:41 so
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