The radio crackles: a casualty is down somewhere out there, and you're the closest crew. WinchLine turns X-Plane 12 into a helicopter rescue service. Every call is a new place, a new approach and a new decision: put it down in the field, or hold a hover while your crew winches the casualty aboard.
You're never flying alone. Your hoist operator talks you over the casualty – "forward ten… left five… steady" – calls your height on the way down and warns you when you drift. Dispatch finds the nearest airport or heliport, even a rooftop pad, and an ambulance is waiting when you land. Every mission is logged with the track you flew, paid, graded and counted toward your next rank.
WinchLine works with any helicopter, anywhere in the world, in the scenery you already have. No internet connection, no tablet, no setup: open the window and take the call.
Features
A crew that talks you in
Hoist talk-down: your hoist operator guides you over the casualty in metres – "forward twenty… right five… steady" – and warns you when you're too fast, too high or drifting.
Live hoist and loading commentary: "Rescuer on the ground", "Casualty secured", "Casualty at the door". If you drift out of limits, the hoist stops until you're steady again.
Height calls from the radar altimeter on short final, from 500 ft down to 10 ft.
Distance calls with clock positions: "Scene, two miles. Eleven o'clock."
Dispatch on the radio for every tasking, receiving airport and handover, with subtitles on screen.
Hear it in your headset (X-Plane's copilot channel) or through the cockpit speaker.
The briefing room
A full-screen crew room to walk into between flights. Click around it like the real thing.
Read the whiteboard: the job, the weather, and the mission sketched in marker, with distances and a flight plan.
Open the logbook on the table, check the weather at the window, review your pilot file on the laptop and admire your awards on the wall.
Call dispatch on the radios to take the next job, then grab a helmet to go flying.
A live room: the wall clock runs on sim time, the duty roster tracks your rank and shift, and at night the room dims and the airfield lights come on outside.
An offline map
Shaded terrain and water drawn from your own X-Plane scenery: no internet, no map tiles.
Shows the scene, the drop-off, your base, nearby airports, the track you've flown and the route ahead.
Zoom, pan, follow your aircraft or show the whole mission at a glance.
Real rescue missions
Endless missions anywhere in the world, always on dry land, checked against X-Plane's terrain.
Two ways to pick up: land beside the casualty, or hold a precise hover while they're winched aboard.
Smart drop-offs: the nearest airport or heliport, read from your own scenery including add-on airports and hospital heliports. It picks a helicopter parking spot or helipad, recognises rooftop pads, and sends you back to base when nothing is in range.
A marked scene: red smoke, a ring of cones and the casualty. At the pad: a marker, cones, green smoke and a waiting ambulance.
Casualty weight: every patient has a weight, and it's added to your helicopter once they're aboard.
Preview the site: a camera circles the rescue site or the pad before you fly there.
GPS integration: the scene and drop-off are added to your flight plan automatically, without touching your own route.
Night operations
Fly at night automatically when it's dark in the sim, or with one tick of a box.
Green landing-zone lights around the scene, a flashing strobe on the casualty, lit pad edges and an ambulance with its light bar flashing. All of them are real X-Plane lights, visible from miles away.
Career, logbook and awards
Pay and XP for every mission: a base fee and distance, plus hoist and night bonuses, a fast-response bonus and grades for your landings.
Six ranks, from Trainee to SAR Commander.
18 awards with progress bars, from your first rescue to hoisting a 100 kg casualty and landing on a rooftop.
A logbook of every mission, with the track you flew on a map, times, landing grades and earnings.
A detailed debrief after every mission.
Built for X-Plane 12
Works with any helicopter: default, freeware or payware.
A hover display for hoisting: drift, radar altitude and vertical speed at a glance.
A resizable window that can be popped out to a second monitor, plus key and joystick commands for everything that matters.
Light on your frame rate: objects load in the background and the map fills in a little at a time, so the sim keeps running smoothly.
How a mission plays
Take the call. Press Dispatch in the WinchLine window, accept the tasking on the briefing room whiteboard, or use a key binding. Dispatch radios the tasking, and the scene appears on your map and your GPS.
Fly to the scene. Follow the steering cue as your crew counts down the miles. Look for the red smoke.
Pick up the casualty. Land inside the ring of cones and let the crew load them, or hold a hover while your hoist operator talks you into position and winches them aboard.
Fly them in. Dispatch names the receiving airport or heliport. Follow the green smoke to the pad, where an ambulance is waiting.
Hand over and debrief. Land on the pad and the ambulance crew takes over. You see your times, landing grades, pay and XP, and the mission goes into your logbook.
Then take the next call, or head to the briefing room for a coffee and a look at the board.