Author Archives: Maria Langer

Sleep Cycles

Posted on by
Comment

The importance of an uninterrupted night’s sleep.

Early Saturday morning, around 1:30 AM, a car came down the road that leads to my house and two others. I know this because my dog decided it was worth waking me up about. He started with a low growl and wound up to full barking mode. It took a short while to calm him down, but by that time, I was wide awake.

The car went to my neighbor’s house.

I lay in bed, wide awake, for about an hour while Mike snoozed peacefully beside me. Even the dog had gone back to sleep at the foot of the bed. I got up, went into the next room, and spent about an hour reading. Feeling sufficiently bored with that (believe it or not, I’m reading a writing style guide called Lapsing into a Comma: A Crumudgeon’s Guide to the Many Things That can Go Wrong in Print and how to Avoid Them by Bill Walsh; it’s about as entertaining as a grammar book can get), I tried to go back to sleep. After about another hour lying awake in bed, I finally dozed off. That was shortly after 4 AM. By 5:30 AM, I was awake again, ready to start my day.

With a total of about five hours of sleep.

I had a lot of things to do. After feeding the horses with Mike, we gathered up all the trimmings our landscaping guy had left in front of the house and dumped them in our landscape trimmings dumping area in a corner of the property. Its the same place we occasionally dump horse manure, so it turns into a nice compost pile. After a few years, the wash flows big and takes away all that nice soil we created, usually a month or two before we’re ready to use it in the garden. That job took two trips in the pickup. It wouldn’t have been so difficult if the trimmings didn’t include agave leaves and cactus pads.

Then I had to rush over to the airport to wash my helicopter. Someone was coming to see it at 9:30 and I wanted to make sure it looked clean. I got wet while I was doing it — that happens when you wash things over your head — but it looked great when I was done. Come to think of it, it really didn’t look bad before I started, either. Then I blew 90 minutes with the potential buyer, answering his questions and keeping him company while he filled a 128 MB smart card with photographs of every inch of my ship. Jeepers. When I left, he was trying to figure out how to get gas in his homebuilt helicopter (now THAT’S a brave man!) without moving it to the fuel island.

Alex the BirdBy that time, Mike was gone on a four-day trip to New Jersey. Alex the Bird had been picking his feathers lately and I decided to take him down to the bird stores to get him out of the house and to pick up some new toys and food for him. Sadly (but not surprisingly), Wickenburg doesn’t offer much in the way of caged bird supplies. Alex is an African Grey parrot and he eats Harrison’s bird food, which isn’t even sold in Petco/Petsmart. So a drive down to Surprise wasn’t going to do it. Instead, I went to BirdWorld on Greenway and 39th(?) Ave and JD Birds, etc. on Bell near I-17. These places have everything a bird owner could want or need. I went to both because I hadn’t been to BirdWorld for a while and because JD Birds has a great collection of cheap, chewable toys. Alex came in with me and I let him stand on my shoulder for much of the time in BirdWorld. He didn’t really like shopping; he was very nervous and wouldn’t talk to anyone in the store. I spent about $150, which should last about 6 months. Among my purchases were some long pieces of hardwood, which I’ll use to build a tabletop stand for Alex. The one he has is stupid and I wasn’t about to dish out $169 for one that was marginally less stupid.

I hopped on the 101 westbound and made stops at Petco (for fish food) and A.J.’s Fine Food (for Maria food). If you’ve never been to A.J.’s and you like to eat, you owe it to yourself to stop in. I went because they have a sushi bar and will make sushi for you and pack it to go. While the sushi chef did his thing, I swept around the store, picking up fresh mozzarella balls, gourmet frozen tamales (not anything like the lady who sells them in front of the Wickenburg post office makes), and eggs (okay, so I could have gotten them in Wickenburg, but why make two stops?). I also stopped by the butcher counter, which is A.J.’s best feature. That’s where I bought freshly made Thai peanut yakitori skewers and some barbeque pork. The butcher only charged me for one of the skewers because I had to wait more than three minutes for him to see me (he thought I was with someone else standing there). I told him that was a good thing, because I probably could only afford one of them anyway. (A.J.’s ain’t cheap.) I admired the fresh meat and beautiful fresh seafood on my way back to the sushi bar to pick up my order. After leaving a small fortune at the checkout counter, I actually made it out the door before the magnetic pull of the bakery counter pulled me right back in. The bakery counter is A.J.’s best feature. (Oh, did I already say that about the butcher counter? Well, one of them is.) I took it easy (and cheap) by ordering a cream cheese brownie and a pecan pie square. Their cakes, however, are beautiful. They also cost about $50 each. Probably worth it, but I’m not supposed to be eating any of this stuff anyway.

From there, Alex and I went home. I had a wonderful sushi dinner and chardonnay (sadly, a Trader Joe’s purchase from another journey south, although I do buy most of my wine in Wickenburg) while surfing the Web on my laptop. I spent quite a bit of time at Michael Moore’s site. A lot of interesting reading there this political season. Then I fed the horses and went upstairs to read.

Right around this time — 7 PM or so — the lack of sleep from the night before was starting to get to me. I literally could not stay awake. (Okay, so maybe that grammar book has something to do with it.) So I put out the light at 7:30 or so and immediately passed out.

And woke up at 3:30 AM, refreshed and ready to start my day.

This has happened to me before and it’s not fun. First of all, there’s not much you can do at 3:30 in the morning. Sure, you can have coffee and breakfast. But you can’t call anyone and you can’t do anything outside because it’s still dark. If you live with someone else, you can’t even make noise in the house because you might wake him up. (Or, in my case, wake the bird up.) So what’s left? Take out the laptop and do some blogging — hence this entry. Hop in the car and go to the office — heck, I can get three hours worth of work done there before I have to come back home to feed the horses.

But waking up early isn’t the big problem. The big problem is how I’m going to feel again at 7:30 PM. Like I want to go to sleep. And if I do, what time will I be up? 3:30 AM. Or earlier.

It’s a vicious cycle, one I need to break out of today.

Two possible solutions. One is to take a nap in the middle of the day so I’m not ready for bed at 7:30 PM. The other is to force myself to stay up later, perhaps by watching a movie.

Maybe I’ll hit the video store in town for a copy of Fahrenheit 9/11.

Scams, Time-Wasters, and More

Posted on by
Comment

I put my helicopter up for sale and learn that things don’t always go as smoothly as they should.

Sometime early in December, a brand-new, shiny red R44 Raven II helicopter is going to be wheeled off the assembly line at the Robinson factory in Torrance, CA. And my initials will be on its tailcone.

But before I can take delivery of this thing, I need to sell the R22 in my hangar, N7139L.

I put some ads online with Trade-A-Plane and AeroTrader on October 8. The calls and e-mails started immediately.

One of the first e-mails was from a man — we’ll call him by his initials, KG — based in the UK. According to KG, his company had discovered oil on some mountainous island and they needed a helicopter to get around. He didn’t know anything about helicopters, but mine was right at his budget. He didn’t waste any time asking typical questions. He went right into negotiation mode. We decided on a price and he said he’d be in touch when he’d arranged for shipping. For me, it was too good to be true. Way too good. But I arranged for a title/escrow agent anyway and had him get in touch with KG by fax. KG never responded. Meanwhile, other people were calling and they sounded interested. I sent KG an e-mail message and a fax, telling him that if he didn’t contact my escrow agent by noon Thursday, the deal was off. He e-mailed me before the deadline and said he’d made all his arrangements and was going to send me a certified check via DHL. The check would be for the purchase price PLUS $10,500 that I’d turn over to his shipping agent. The idea was that I’d cash the check and then make my own certified check for the $10.5K. I e-mailed him back, telling him to work through my escrow agent. I told him I would not accept delivery of a check. I didn’t give him my address.

I haven’t heard from him since and don’t expect to. It’s a scam, one that almost sucked in someone else I know for far less money. You cash the check and pay the shipping agent. Then the “certified” check you cashed bounces and you’re out the amount of money you paid to the agent.

As my friend Rod said, “I was born at night, but it wasn’t last night.”

The calls asking for more info aren’t all that bad. They’re usually short and to the point. People probably dreaming about a helicopter, trying to convince themselves that this is the one. Or people who are serious buyers but want to pay about $15K less than I’m asking. They get pretty rude about that, too. “You’ll never get what you’re asking,” they say. Yeah, but I’ll get a lot more than what you’re willing to pay.

Today a time-waster came all the way up to Wickenburg to waste about 90 minutes of my time. That’s how long he spent looking at it and taking digital pictures. He now has more pictures of it than I do, and I’ve owned it for four years. At the end of his visit, he admitted that he didn’t think he should buy a helicopter with only 5 years left on the main rotor blades. Hell, he knew how much time was left before he came up to Wickenburg. Why waste half a day on the trip? I guess some people don’t have anything better to do with their time.

And then there’s the cheapskate. He makes me an offer over the phone and wants to close the deal when he comes to Wickenburg so he can fly it away. I tell him he needs to work with my escrow agent and that he’ll have to pay the escrow fee, since he’s offering $5K less than I’m asking. He tells me he doesn’t need a title search. That he’s already looked up the N-number online and knows there’s no lien. (Says it very smugly, too, like he’s so much smarter than me.) I tell him he’s wrong, there is a lien. (Silence on the other end of the phone. Seems he wasn’t as smart as he thought.) And that my escrow agent has all the payoff paperwork. And that I won’t do a deal without an escrow agent. Period. End of statement.

We’ll see if he shows up in Wickenburg anytime soon.

There are a few others in the running. One guy from Texas. Another from St. George, UT. And the flight school in Long Beach that made a low offer I already turned down.

I figure I have at least two more weeks before I have to start worrying. Near the end of November, my insurance runs out. And I need to have N7139L gone by then.

Another Chapter Done

Posted on by
Comment

I revise book number 59 or 60 — I’ve lost count again.

These days, I’m hard at work on a revision to my Microsoft Word for Macintosh book. Officially titled Microsoft Word 2004 for Macintosh: Visual QuickStart Guide, the book covers the latest and greatest version of Word for Macintosh.

The book I’m revising (which covers Word v. X) is only about 300 pages long. It has a companion book that covers more advanced features. For this edition, I’m rolling the two books into one big fat book. That’s what I did earlier in the year for the Windows version of the book (which covers Word 2003). That book is 450+ pages long.

Revisions are not as easy as they sound. Books in the Visual QuickStart Guide series are extremely screenshot-intensive, with 3-6 images per page (on average). The tiniest little change in Word’s interface requires that any screenshot of that interface element must be redone. Since Microsoft changed the way the ruler looks, for example, any screenshot that includes the ruler — basically any shot of a screenful of text — must be redone. Rather than try to determine what elements have changed and run the risk of missing something, I just redo every single screenshot in the book.

Of course, not only do I write the book, but I lay out its pages using InDesign software. When I’m done with a chapter, I create a PDF and e-mail it to my copy and production editors. They print out the pages, mark them up, and mail them back to me. I then make changes as they requested, finalize the files, and send them to the production person on CD or via FTP. The book is in print 3-4 weeks later. The whole process, from my start to book in stores usually takes 6 to 8 weeks. But as soon as I’m finished with one book and have taken a week or two off to clear my head, I’m starting work on the next book.

I’ve got revisions down to a science. For this book, I’m starting with the InDesign files for the Windows version of the book, which has most of the content I need, organized in the right order. I’ve printed out an outline of that book’s contents with a few Macintosh-only features inserted in the appropriate areas. For example, Chapter 13 will be a brand new chapter covering Word’s NoteBook Layout View feature. Then I open a chapter file and go through it, page by page. I edit the text for correct Mac OS terminology and instructions. I replace the screenshots, removing some completely while adding new ones. I modify all the figure references and caption numbers as needed. (This is, by far, the most tedious part of the revision job.) When I’m done, I have a finished chapter, all ready for review and edit.

I try to knock off a chapter a day. Sometimes, when the chapter is short, that’s easy. Yesterday’s chapter was only 20 pages. But Wednesday’s chapter was 28 pages. That may not seem like a big difference, but it is. This will be a 20-chapter book, so I’ll have it done in 20 working days. If I get two short chapters in a row, I’ll try to do them both in one day to speed things up.

The deadline for this book is roughly around Thanksgiving time. I’d like to get it done sooner, since I have out-of-town guests coming in that week. More important, my Mac OS X book is due for revision shortly. That book takes priority over all others. If it’s ready for revision before I’m done with Word, Word will go on the back burner until I’m done.

I wrote somewhere that I sometimes feel like a machine. When I work on revisions like this one, I do. But I’m a well-oiled machine with the parts worn in just right to get the job done smoothly.

A Friend Drops In…Literally

Posted on by
Comment

How I’m pleasantly surprised by the visit of a good friend.

It was about 5:30 PM and I was just getting ready to step out of the shower when I heard the helicopter fly over the house. I immediately assumed it was LifeNet, the local medical evacuation company, which is based in Wickenburg. They often fly over our house on their way from Phoenix to the airport for fuel. But this helicopter was a lot lower than LifeNet usually flies. And, as I reached for my towel, I realized it was coming back for another pass.

It must be Jim, then, I thought to myself. Jim, who lives in Wickenburg, flies a Hughes 500c. Sometimes, when he’s out flying around, he’ll fly past my house. But Jim normally flies in the morning, not in the evening. I wrapped my towel around me and went out on the upstairs patio to take a look.

It wasn’t Jim. It was a Bell 206L LongRanger. With a rainbow colored paint job. And that meant it could only be one person: Rod Carr.

He came by for another pass as I waved wildly with my free hand. The other hand was holding my towel on. He must have seen me, because he veered away suddenly, climbing out toward the airport.

Rod Flies InI ran downstairs and grabbed my aviation radio. I turned it on and tuned into Wickenburg just as he was making his call.

“Hey, Rod. You’re landing at the airport?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“Going to be here for a while?”

“Just a bit.”

“Let me get some clothes on and I’ll be right over.”

I got dressed in a hurry, loaded Jack the dog into the Jeep (since Rod likes Jack), and raced to the airport. Raced is actually the right word here. I caught myself going faster than I should have several times and slowed down each time. It was getting late and the sun had already set. I figured Rod’s visit would have to be short since he probably wouldn’t want to fly wherever he had to go in the dark. It gets very dark out in the desert around Wickenburg.

But when I got to the airport, Rod was tying down the blades. That isn’t the kind of thing you’d do if you were only going to be around for a short while.

Turns out, Rod was working out in Salome, which is about 60 miles west of Wickenburg. He was on a Game and Fish contract that had something to do with counting bighorn sheep up in the mountains. He’d flown into Salome a while before and shut down for the night. But when he met up with his fuel truck driver, he learned that there were no more motel rooms in town. (Frankly, I didn’t even know Salome had a motel.) So he decided to fire his helicopter back up and fly to Wickenburg, where there were lots of motels.

Of course, I wouldn’t let him stay in a motel. I helped him close down the ship for the night, then loaded his gear into the back of the Jeep. Then he, Jack, and I went home.

We had a nice evening, with dinner at House Berlin (the local German restaurant; highly recommended) and then several hours of chatting out on the back patio. I heard all kinds of helicopter pilot stories — Rod is full of them. Then we all turned in for the night.

This morning, Rod reported that he slept like a log. He said he got his helicopter log book up to date, then laid back on the bed and — pow! He was dead asleep. He didn’t get up until almost 7 AM.

I took him back to the airport and helped him with his preflight. (After all, not long ago I was preflighting helicopters just like it.) Then, after listening to him thank me about a dozen times, I watched him climb into the cockpit. I retreated with Jack in the Jeep to give him some space. He started up and took off to the west.

And I’m looking forward to the next time he buzzes my house.

BFR Blues

Posted on by
4

I go for my R22 and R44 biennial flight reviews and come away feeling as if I should have done better.

If you’re a pilot, you know that in order to stay current (that is, legal to fly), you must take a flight review with a flight instructor every two years. This review is referred to as a biennial flight review (not bi-annual flight review, as many pilots call it), or simply BFR.

I took two BFRs yesterday down at Scottdale. I flew with George McNeil, one of the owners of Universal Helicopters. Universal has four locations: Scottsdale, Provo UT, Long Beach CA, and somewhere else in the southwest. (Heck, I can’t know everything.) Universal’s Scottsdale students often come up to Wickenburg for their cross-country flights. Their blue and yellow helicopters are easily recognized, and easy to spot in the air.

I had to take two BFRs because I currently fly two kinds of helicopters: the Robinson R22 Beta II I currently own (which is for sale) and the Robinson R44 Raven II I will soon own (which should be emerging from the factory in mid-December). These two helicopters are so similar that if you can fly one, you can pretty much fly the other. The only differences are size (the R44 is bigger), hydraulic flight controls (the R44 has them; the R22 does not), and fuel injection (the R44 Raven II has it; the R22 does not). So starting the two helicopters is a bit different because of the fuel injection and they feel a tiny bit different in flight because of the hydraulics. Frankly, flying an R44 is a lot like flying a Bell 206L Long Ranger; they have very much the same feel.

I didn’t have to take a BFR for Bell Long Rangers, which I can also fly because 1) I don’t foresee myself flying one in the near future and 2) the Part 135 check ride I took back in April or May covers me for that type of helicopter until April or May of 2006. That’s a good thing, because getting an hour of flight time in the R44 was expensive enough. I can’t imagine what it would have cost in a Long Ranger.

A BFR consists of an hour of ground review followed by an hour of flight time. I was able to do the R22 and R44 ground review together, saving time and money, but the flight time had to be done in each ship. I brought my R22 to save me some money and it did.

The ground part of the review went well. As with any good BFR, the pilot should learn something new from the instructor. I did. George gave me a good rule of thumb for operating at high density altitudes. It requires you to compare two power settings, get the difference, and use that difference to decide whether the landing can be to a hover, straight to the ground, or run-on. We also reviewed the usual things I always forget: light signals at airports (in case the radio goes out), weather minimums (the weather in AZ seldom goes below minimums), etc. I also proved that I knew a few of the weird little things R22 pilots know; for example, the minimum rotor RPM for flight: 80% + 1% for each 1,000 feet of density altitude.

The ground part done, we went out to fly. We flew one of Universal’s R44s first (see photo; no, that’s not me flying). I did a complete preflight. I needed George to remind me where few things were, since it had been about 6 months since I’d flown an R44. I used a ladder for the preflight; Universal doesn’t like students climbing on the helicopters. Of course, I don’t like climbing ladders. Doing this preflight reminded me just how much bigger an R44 is. I’d better get used to heights, since the main rotor hub is about 12 feet off the ground.

PhotoI’d had trouble starting the last Raven II I’d flown (about 14 months ago, in St. George, UT), so I was very surprised when this one started right up for me. We went through all the checks and I brought it into a hover without really thinking much about it. It did feel a lot like the Long Ranger and it had been less than a month since I’d flown one of those. We went out to Deer Valley where I did some maneuvers; steep approach, normal approach, maximum performance takeoff, normal takeoff, hovering autorotation, straight in autorotation. Along the way, I got a throttle chop (simulated engine failure), which I handled pretty well. (I have pretty good reaction time.) But I did have a bit of trouble with the steep approach when the governor was disabled — kept chasing the RPM with the throttle. And my autorotations, although “survivable,” were not very pretty. Afterward, we went over to the Cave Creek Dam (the earth dam) for a pinnacle/confined space landing. Although I did a perfectly fine landing, George said he wanted to hear more from me as I did my reconnaissance. That’s a problem I have, though. I don’t vocalize what I’m thinking and seeing when I fly. Unfortunately, flight instructors expect to hear their students vocalize. So although I’d seen and considered most of the things he listed, I hadn’t vocalized them, leading him to believe I hadn’t even thought about them. Interesting, I think, that someone who talks and writes as much as I do would keep quiet when expected to talk.

We went back to Scottsdale, shut down, and climbed into my R22. Then we did most of the same things in my helicopter back at Deer Valley. I was absolutely horrible when it came to doing a steep approach with the governor off. It was really pissing me off that I couldn’t get it right, too. George said it was because the R22 was so much more sensitive than the R44. But I’ve put close to 1,000 hours on that R22 and should be able to get it to do anything I want. My autos weren’t pretty either. I think that had something to do with coming from an R44, which is easy to do an autorotation in, and going into an R22, which is not. We did some 180 autorotations, too, and I just wasn’t making my turns the way George wanted. But I know the reason for that. There was a big airplane parked on one end of the practice area we were using and I kept trying to go around its front end when George expected me to go around the back. When he made that clear, I did much better.

I did a fine demonstration of settling with power, which I really hate doing. To demonstrate this maneuver, you climb to about 1500 to 2000 feet above the ground, point the helicopter into the wind, and bring it into a hover. It’s the hover part I have trouble with. In flight, the helicopter sort of leans forward as it moves through the air. To bring it into a high hover, you have to pull the cyclic back, thus putting the nose up. Trouble is, when you get to the zero airspeed you’re looking for, it feels as if you’re leaning (and moving and falling) backward. I don’t like the sensation. So I got the maneuver over with as quickly as possible. The idea is to lower the collective and establish a descent rate in which you’re descending into your own rotorwash. The controls get mushy and pulling up the collective does not stop the descent. The only thing that will stop the descent is lowering the collective and moving in some direction — forward is always a nice idea. Because you need to get good 500-800 foot per minute straight down descent rate going, you always practice this maneuver well above the ground. After all, you don’t want to run out of space before you recover. And in case you’re wondering, the purpose of this exercise is not to learn how to enter settling with power. The idea is to learn how to get out of it if you stumble in. They also teach us how to avoid it and that’s what I normally do.

Anyway, when we finished playing around with the R22, we went back to Scottsdale where I ordered some fuel and settled my bill with Universal. Flying the R44 had been extremely expensive. I’m glad I’m buying one so I don’t have to pay to rent one ever again. By the time I fired Three-Niner-Lima back up for the return flight to Wickenburg, the sun was setting. It was technically night when I landed.