KINGSBRIDGE Rugby Club are now up and running with the Devon Air Ambulance, enabling nighttime flying and landing on the pitch at High House.

Toby Russell, community helipads development officer for DAAT, came to Kingsbridge Rugby Club on Tuesday to explain the new system, which involves a switch connected to a mobile phone SIM card, so the pilots can turn the floodlights at the rugby club on and off remotely.

Toby said: ‘How this will work in practice is that someone calls 999, that call goes into a centre of the South West. Listening to that call are the Helicopter Emergency Medical Services (HEMS), they are the people who send the helicopter, so they are listening for the type of injuries or problems that would mean the air ambulance would make a real difference in getting them to help.

‘They’re the people who, when they ask the pilot to go to Kingsbridge, the pilot will give them an estimated time of arrival for the helicopter and he will ask the HEMS team to turn the lights on. So they would ring the number to the system.’

After three rings the lights come on and they take a few minutes to warm up to full level, and the system pings a text to the HEMS team and the pilot to say the lights are on.

Toby explained that the system is designed to only accept calls from certain numbers, removing the chance of them being turned on by accident.

‘The pilots come over at 1,000 feet, switch on a floodlight, checking the ground’ said Toby. ‘The pilot also has an iPad strapped to his leg with all the survey information about the site - the height of trees, the posts, the building, the whole layout so they can assess quickly and get on the ground that much quicker.

‘They then circle at 500 feet and then come in to land. This process takes around six minutes, and without the lights and the survey information, it might take them ten to fifteen minutes longer than that.

‘So this is what your town council has very kindly paid for, and that’s what the guys at the club have very kindly facilitated.’

Kingsbridge Town Council donated £832 from a ‘community benefit’ fund supplied by Canadian Solar for the recently constructed solar farm off Belle Hill. KTC received £4,102 this financial year,

£1,000 for every megawatt of electricity produced.

Kingsbridge Rugby Club also raised more than £1,800 for the Devon Air Ambulance at their golf day back in the summer, held at Thurlestone Golf Club.