"tiirrep's new Jiddah Page" a Jiddah Travel Page by tiirrep

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I had the opportunity to travel to Saudi in 1992. I went there to install an Infrared sensor on a Dauphine Helicopter that belonged to the Royal Saudi Navy. The Dauphine is a French product and was supported by French Technical Representatives along with the help of U.S. trained Saudi Enlisted Electronics technicians. The Saudi’s were very eager to have the system installed and flown on their Helicopters because of the performance of our company's IR sensors in Desert Storm. Unfortunately, the Saudi’s were not technically competent enough to make decisions on their aircraft and had to rely on the expertise of the French. The French, on the other hand, were not at all interested in giving the Saudis the opportunity to see our product because they were attempting to convince the Saudis to stick with European manufactured systems. At the time they were pushing an Italian system, which the French, the Saudis, and we knew could not compare to ours. Anyway, to make a long story short, the French put up every obstacle they could think of but in the end we persuaded to Saudis to install and fly the system. To test the capability of the system we made two flights over Jiddah at night. I was pretty worried about having to fly with two separate crews of pilots but I found that the Saudi pilots were quite competent and the test flights went extremely smooth. What an awesome view of the city, which was lit up for the evening. Pictured above is Tony, the program manager who I was working for at the time. Tony is also a mechanical engineer and came along to ensure that our interface housing would fit securely on the aircraft’s pylon. After the initial install Tony went back home and I remained in Saudi to battle it out with the French.