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Exercise HOT NL
 
Latest update: August 2020
 
An article covering the exercise will be published at a later moment.
 
Brown out training
 
Annually the Royal Netherlands Air Force helicopter squadrons based at Gilze-Rijen head to Portugal or Spain to conduct their brown out flying conditions training. It was planned to fly to Spanish air base Zaragoza in 2020. From there the squadrons would fly to the several sand areas available. Due to the world-wide COVID-19 (corona) pandemic the Defence Helicopter Command foreign training schedule was heavily impacted. Not only for training purposes but also to 'export' noise 298 (Chinook), 300 (Cougar) and 301 (Apache) squadrons deploy to other countries. These include mountain training in Italy, radar evasive training in the United Kingdom and training of brown (or snow) out conditions. The DHC decided to organize the last exercise in The Netherlands. Normally known as exercise HOT Blaze it was renamed HOT NL for the 2020 edition. Both 298 and 300 squadron would take part in the exercise. Royal Netherlands Army 11 Air Mobile Brigade also took part by providing soldiers which resulted to supports each other’s training needs at the same time.

From August 17 until September 4, 2020 several locations would be visited by the Chinook and Cougar crews. During the last week operations in darkness were trained.

Below photos were taken at the Oirschotse heide which is more known as GLV-V. It's on of the low flying areas assigned to the DHC to train the helicopters crews. For exercise HOT NL several GLV's were used while also non-standard training locations were assigned. Within these municipalities the flights were made: Amersfoort, Apeldoorn, Barneveld, Elburg, Epe, Harderwijk, Leusden, Meppel, Nunspeet, Oirschot, Soest, Steenwijkerland, Westerveld en Zeist.
 
Photo gallery
 
A CH-47D assigned to 298 squadron during its approach to land in the sand at GLV-V (Oirschotse heide)
     
The Cougar assigned to 300 squadron worked with members of 11 Air Mobile Brigade. Training boarding and
     
deboarding during brown out conditions. Cougar arriving to pick up the soldiers of 11 LMB before heading back to
     
 
Gilze-Rijen air base.