Image:Kuopio vene 7.jpg

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Description	Hydrocopter Kuopio Vene 7 (K V7).
Source	Picture taken by Marko Mali.
Date	Picture: January, 2006. Text: Pöllö in 1st of May, 2007. Picture & text added to Wikimedia on May 1st, 2007 by Pöllö.
Author	Picture: Marko Mali, text: Pöllö. Please notice the original sources referred in some parts of the text.
Permission (Reusing this image)	Picture used with kind permission of Marko Mali (permission granted on 26th of April, 2007). The permission for use of this work has been archived in the Wikimedia OTRS system; it is available here for users with an OTRS account. To confirm the permission, please contact someone with an OTRS account. Ticket link: https://secure.wikimedia.org/otrs/index.pl?Action=AgentTicketZoom&TicketID=879018&ArticleID=1094009 Deutsch | English | Español | Français | Italiano | Lietuvių | +/-

Please notice the licensing before using the picture.

The picture is taken in front of Kuopio Rescue Station n:o 1 on a dark, mid-winter January evening. The unit code K V7 means: K = town where the unit is located, Kuopio; V = unit type, boat (in Finnish: vene); and 7 = unit number.

This hydrocopter is used for rescue purposes on lakes near town Kuopio in Finland by the Pohjois-Savo Regional Rescue Services ^[1]. It can carry a crew of 1+3 persons or a total load of 500 kilograms (approx. 1100 pounds)^[2]. When a stretcher is taken to the cabin, there is space for two crew members. The weight of this hydrocopter without load is approx. 1300 kgs (approx. 2870 pounds). Its turning radius is only 15 meters as smallest in low speeds.

A hydrocopter is a rapid vehicle to move on water during summers, ice & snow during winters, and during the times of spring and autumn, when water is freezing or melting, ice won't carry a person, but it's difficult to use a light rescue boat due to ice. This hydrocopter can carry surface rescue firefighters, divers, EMTs, or firefighters with their equipment to various kinds of water rescue, emergency or fire scenes on lakes, boats or islands. The unit can easily be transported on a trailer (see the hydrocopter on a trailer: http://www.fireimages.net/displayimage.php?pos=-19746). This hydrocopter has a 240 horsepower turbodiesel engine ^[3][4].

In addition to a hydrocopter, various kind of boats are used for rescue, medical emergency, fire, and oil prevention scenes. During winter even snowmobiles are used, and sometimes a helicopter can be used in urgent situations. On rough seas, also rigid-hulled inflatable boats are used. In the middle of winter in the Northern parts of Finland, the ice carry even light rescue vehicles. However, roads on ice-covered lakes and seas are not necessarily the primary and safest way to drive with a car. Especially routes outside the marked and enforced ice roads (water is pumped to freeze on the ice, which makes the ice thicker so it will carry more load without cracking) might be dangerous, if the ice is weakened due to cracks, melting, or currents. Some shipping lanes are kept open even during the winter, and open shipping lane causes naturally a danger to non-buoyant vehicles. However, a hydrocopter or a hovercraft can easily drive from over the ice to an open water and back over the ice.

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[edit] Licensing

I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby publish it under the following license: This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 License. In short: you are free to share and make derivative works of the file under the conditions that you appropriately attribute it, and that you distribute it only under a license identical to this one. Official license

• Hydrocopter