'There are three shifts: 7am to 4pm, 1pm to 10pm and 10pm to 7am.There is usually some overlap so you have more manpower at certain times and you can hand over the job to the next shift.
Between Monday and Friday we're busy with scheduled government tasks. For example, the Lands Department might want to take some aerial pictures; the Marine Department might have a station on an outlying island that needs a generator or fuel; a justice of the peace has to be flown to one of the jails; a country trail is being maintained and you'll have to take out some cement or wood.
Saturdays and Sundays are always busy for the search-and-rescue team, but that also depends on the weather. When the weather's not so good, not many people go hiking, so we're less busy. If there is a typhoon passing, perhaps we'll have to go long range for some search and rescue in the South China Sea, usually for a fishing boat. For our fixed-wing aircraft, that can be up to 700 nautical miles, which is about 1,400km.
It takes me about 30 minutes to get to work by bus from Tung Chung. I normally arrive 10 minutes early to familiarise myself with the weather forecast, then we have a joint crew briefing, where the supervisor tells you which aircraft is on standby, who are the standby crew for search and rescue, what the schedule for the day is and so on. There are usually 10 to 15 people in, depending on the day.
We change around, so I could be flying with anyone - it depends on who comes in. Each team has a pilot, a co-pilot and two aircrew officers. I'm a co-pilot on the Eurocopter Super Puma. We've also got a Eurocopter B1, which we call the dolphin because of its nose, plus a fixed-wing Jetstream for long range.
The briefing lasts about 10 minutes and if there's an early task, I'll immediately do the planning for the flight.