Author Archives: Maria Langer

Telemarketing Gone Very Wrong

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A telemarketer goes postal on me.

TelephoneAll of my phone numbers are listed in the Do Not Call Registry. I have zero tolerance for telemarketing calls and report every single one I get.

Today, I received a call from 347-982-0051. It was a recording. I pressed 1 and got a company representative. He said he was from YourSearchListing.com. I told him I was on a No Call list and would be reporting his company. They would likely receive a $5,000 fine. I then told him to get a real job and I hung up on him.

I filed the complaint.

Next, I got a call from 714-869-1805. The man on the line was barely understandable. It sounded as if he were looking for someone. I told him he had Flying M Air and asked him if I could help him. He hung up.

I called back, angry. The phone was answered by a recording for YourSearchListing.com, which is “affiliated with Google.” I pressed 7 when prompted and likely wound up with the same guy I spoke to the first time. I told him to stop calling me and hung up.

I filed another complaint.

I was in the supermarket when I got a call from a “private” number. The man on the line, who had some kind of Hispanic accent, asked me if I got his e-mail. I told him I didn’t know what he was talking about. He sounded confused. I realized he was the same guy who’d called the second time. He asked if he was speaking to Maria and I told him he wasn’t. He asked again if I was Maria and I denied it. He then said he made a mistake. I told him he probably had a wrong number and hung up.

When I got back to my RV, I found an e-mail message sent using Flying M Air’s contact form with the following text.

Subject: you bitch

http://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/flying-m-air-c370249.html
look at your link bitch
you should get a real fucken job u peace of shit

I followed the link. It was a compliant against my company on ComplaintsBoard.com:

They took me in a tour and what they did is get a girl to give me a blowjob in the air, they are realy an escort service. At the end of it all i let her give me a blowjob for $100 then i decided to fuck her she loved it. I RECOMEND FOR HORNEY GUYS

I understand now why telemarketers are telemarketers. They lack the simple social skills needed to get real jobs and do real work that benefits others. All they know how to do is interrupt people’s lives and then, when people fight back, pull immature and obscene stunts like this.

On the advice of several Twitter friends, I tracked them down via the BBB and filed a complaint. I included the text you see above.

My advice: Do NOT do any business with YourSearchListing.com. They’re likely as fraudulent as the complaint they filed against me.

About the Cherry Drying Posts

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And why they’re were password protected.

Drying CherriesA few weeks ago, it came to my attention that this blog was the primary source of information about cherry drying by helicopter. Every day, pilots who wanted to learn more about cherry drying were stopping in to read up.

Normally, I’d be pleased. But I also began to realize that these same pilots were using the information I provided to compete with me for cherry drying work.

That would simply not do.

The truth of the matter is, there simply isn’t enough work to go around. Every year, I struggle to get my contracts together and signed and then struggle some more to get my standby pay. Other pilots I know who have been doing this work far longer than I have go through the same process. None of us can afford to have competition for what little work is out there.

In my case, it’s particularly tough. I travel from Arizona to Washington and back at considerable cost. This year, I made the trip with only one contract signed. If I hadn’t been able to secure other work, I would have taken a heavy loss.

In this tough economy, I depend on this work to keep my business afloat. Without it, I’d likely have to sell the helicopter. Right now, there simply isn’t enough tour and charter work out there to cover the cost of my fixed expenses, such as insurance, annual maintenance, and hangaring.

So I’ve password-protected the posts, making them inaccessible to most visitors. I’ll likely remove the password once my friends and I stop doing this work.

August 2013 Update: Since writing this blog post, I’ve moved to Washington state. I’m very secure in my cherry drying work with great clients that I serve faithfully year after year. Indeed, I’ve built the kind of relationships with my clients that I’m proud of. I have so much work during the busiest part of the season that I’m actively looking for other helicopter pilots with their own helicopters to work with me. If you’re an owner/operator with an R44 helicopter, at least 500 hours helicopter experience, and a month or so free every summer and you want to get started in this work, visit the Help Wanted page on Flying M Air’s website to learn more about opportunities.

The rest of this post still applies.

Some Important Things to Know about Cherry Drying

I do need to say a few things about cherry drying for the folks looking for information.

  • Cherry drying requires a helicopter. If you don’t have a helicopter, you cannot dry cherries. Any company that has helicopters for this kind of work already has pilots. Inexperienced pilots cannot expect to be hired for this kind of work by a company that already has helicopters and pilots.
  • Cherry drying is not a good way to build time. I got less than 20 hours of drying time this summer. I got around 5 hours each of the previous two years. Do you really want to blow a whole summer sitting around in farm country waiting for it to rain just to get 5 to 20 hours of flight time?
  • Cherry drying is not for low-time pilots. When you work, you’re hovering 5 feet over treetops, sometimes in very windy conditions. That means tailwinds and crosswinds and LTE. There’s a lot of dancing on the pedals. There’s a real need to know the helicopter you’re flying.
  • Cherry drying is dangerous. All operations are inside the deadman’s curve. If you have an engine problem, you will crash. Read these accident reports to get a better idea of what can happen: SEA05CA122, SEA04LA102, LAX02LA169, SEA00LA101, SEA00LA103, WPR09LA371, and WPR11CA146

I know a lot of helicopter pilots — especially low-time helicopter pilots — out there are desperate for work. If you’re one of them, I can assure you that cherry drying isn’t the solution you’re looking for.

The Trouble with Tech Editors

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Not usually the problem.

From about August 10 until just the other day, I was working on a book revision. It’s my third pass at this software manual that’s now distributed in ebook form. I’m not sure if I’m allowed to mention what it’s for, so I won’t. It doesn’t really matter, does it?

This book was unusual in that for the first time, it was the technical editors that gave me headaches. (Usually, it’s heavy-handed copyeditors.) My publisher waited until the last minute to contract me and everyone else who worked on the book and, because of that, they had trouble getting a good technical editor. They wound up with two people who apparently have nothing better to do than hang out in the support forums for the software and quite possibly hang on every word posted there. The first one worked on Chapters 2-14 before going on vacation. The other one worked on the rest of the 23-chapter book.

The problem I had centered around their apparent misunderstanding of what their job was. The first one kept commenting to tell me to add every known technique for performing each task. I’d decided early on to stick to menu commands and shortcut keys whenever possible, but she kept telling me to add this toolbar button or that hidden dialog option. It got on my nerves until we told her to stop. The other thing she did was introduce obscure problems that people in the forums have, apparently expecting the book to cover them all.

The other tech editor also drew upon his forum experience, this time expecting me to include marketing material that would clarify information about the features so forum participants would have less to complain about. The book’s a straight how-to — technically, it’s the software manual — so addressing the issues of a handful of forum whiners (the worse kind) isn’t part of the program. But what really got me mad was that this second editor was apparently unable to follow the instructions as written and kept telling me that things didn’t work. I’d have to go back and follow the instructions to see where I’d screwed up. But every single time, the instructions worked exactly as I’d written them. This was a huge time suck.

To be fair, they each did have a few comments that were actually worth acting on. I made a handful of changes that improved the book. That’s what their job was — to help me improve the book. But they didn’t seem to understand what would make the book better. All they seemed to know was what would make the book longer.

What neither understood is that I had about 15 days to revise a 600-page book. That’s not enough time to rewrite the book. All I had to do was add or change material for new or changed features. There weren’t many changes. The book, which was originally written by the software developer’s staff, had very few tech edit comments in the two previous editions I worked on. So I couldn’t figure out why these two editors kept coming up with comments that no one else had.

It’s the damn forums, I guess.

Sunrise from Wenatchee Heights

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A time-lapse to remember.

For the past five weeks, I’ve been living in my RV on the side of a hill overlooking the Squilchuck Valley south of Wenatchee, WA. Every morning, I’ve watched the sun’s golden light spread out over the valley, illuminating the hillsides, mountaintops, orchards, and grassy knolls around me.

The view out the door of my RV for the past 5 weeks.

I’m leaving next week and although I think I’ll be back next year, I might not. I wanted to capture the experience to remember it.

So at 4 AM, I was outside, setting up my time-lapse camera. One shot per minute, compiled at 6 frames per second yields this 28-second video. Enjoy.

Planning the Big Move

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I make plans to move my “rolling mansion” and helicopter from Wenatchee to Page, AZ.

My last cherry drying contract for the season ends on Wednesday, August 25. I need to be in Page, AZ with my trailer and helicopter by the middle of September. I’m just starting to plan for the move.

This is an exercise in logistics that I go through twice a year. Every time it’s slightly different.

The fun starts on Thursday, when my husband arrives on a late flight into Wenatchee. We’ll spend a few days in the area on a mini vacation. It’ll be the first time I’ve seen him since May 15. He goes home on Monday morning.

The move starts on Sunday, August 29 (weather permitting) with a flight over the Cascades with the helicopter to Boeing Field (BFI). With perfect weather, the flight should take less than an hour. But I’ve only had perfect weather once in the ten or so times I’ve made the flight. The last time I did it, it took about 4 hours because I had to fly all the way down to the Columbia River at Hood River to get under the clouds.

Planned Routes

Two different routes to get from Wenatchee to Seattle by helicopter. The red route includes a stop at my friend Don’s house.

Moitek Mount

My new Moitek Video Mount, pictured in my friend Erik’s helicopter.

At BFI, I’ll take possession of my new Moitek Video Mount, which I bought from the estate of a helicopter friend who passed away last year. A videographer who used the mount with my friend will be meeting with us to show us how to set it up. He’ll bring along a camera and get some footage on a flight down to Longview, where we’ll meet with the mount’s designer and maker to ask questions and get other tips. I’m hoping my friends Don and Jim, each R44 owners, will accompany us for this little trip. I’d love to get some air-to-air video for a project I’ve been working on for some time.

Back at BFI, I’ll drop off the helicopter for some maintenance. It needs its blades painted (again) and since I’m coming up on my 100-hour inspection, I figured I’d have it taken care of then. It’ll stay at the maintenance shop until I return in September to pick it up.

I’ll get back over the mountains by plane or helicopter (piloted by a friend) on Monday morning. I’ll spend the rest of the day and most of the next prepping the RV for the long drive. I’ll need to put away all loose items and clean up as well as I can.

RV Route

The RV Route

On Wednesday, September 1, I’ll hook up and roll out of here. The plan (so far) is to go to Walla Walla, where I’ll spend a few days at an RV park I know. Walla Walla has some great restaurants and wineries. It’ll be like my own little vacation on the way home.

On Saturday or Sunday, I’ll get an early start and hit the freeway for the 10-hour drive to Salt Lake City. If some friends are available to meet me, I’ll go in on Saturday; otherwise, I’ll do it on Sunday. I’m planning on parking overnight at the Draper Camping World, which should be affordable and convenient. I probably won’t even bother unhooking my truck.

On Monday morning, I head out early for Page. I hope to get there early in the afternoon and find a place to park my rig for about a week. Weather permitting, Mike will fly up to Page in his plane and pick up me and Alex the Bird to take us home. The truck and RV will remain at Page until I return with the helicopter.

On Tuesday or Friday, I’ll head up to Seattle by commercial airliner. Then, on Wednesday or Saturday, I’ll start the long flight to Page. It’ll take 8 to 10 hours, so I’m likely to do it over two days. I might have a passenger; I’ll know more this week. If I do, we’ll be doing the flight on Saturday/Sunday to Las Vegas, possibly with part of the flight along the California Coast, and I’ll be going on to Page alone. If not, I’ll do the flight on Wednesday, making the best time possible to Page by flying through Oregon, Idaho, and Utah on pretty much the same route I followed to get here before the start of the season.

In Page, I’ll set up camp — probably in the campground I lived in for two months two years ago — and offer aerial photo flights over Lake Powell. I have clients meeting with me starting on September 20, so there’s definite business for at least 5 days. On September 25, I fly the helicopter home, hopefully with a passenger (if she hasn’t forgotten). I’m not sure when I’ll retrieve the truck and RV; it depends on whether I have a training video shoot the following week in California.

So if you were wondering what I’ll be doing for the next month or so of my life, you now know.

I’ll be interesting to see how closely I can follow these plans in the weeks to come.