Category Archives: Flying

Stories about flying — for pleasure or for hire — and the things I’ve learned.

Lake Powell from the Air

Posted on by
2

I get a few sample photos from the photographer I took over Lake Powell last month.

In April, I had the pleasure of flying five photographers on an afternoon photo flight over Lake Powell. I wrote about it in “Flying At Lake Powell” in this blog.

The photographer who arranged it all, Mike Reyfman, is based in Chicago. He’s a professional photographer, with quite a portfolio of excellent work. His Web site, Mike Reyfman Photography, displays his images, which are available as stock photos and enlargements. He seems to do a lot of work out here in the southwest.

Lake PowellAlthough I enjoyed the scenery while in flight, I didn’t really know how the photos my passengers were taking were coming out. Not until Mike sent me three sample images. Here’s my favorite of the bunch, downsized for Web display.

This is the difference between a professional photographer and a tourist out taking snapshots. I have a terrible time capturing the beauty of what I see around me — and there’s plenty of it sometimes. But a good photographer can focus (pun intended) on a part of what he sees to create a truly memorable image.

If you’re interested in seeing other images Mike took on that trip, visit his Web site. I think you’ll be amazed.

And if you’d like to try your hand at aerial photography over a beautiful place, visit the Flying M Air Web site to learn more about my charter services.

The Lost Truck

Posted on by
Comment

I take two guys up to find a misplaced pickup truck.

The call came mid-morning on Tuesday, just as I was preparing to take Zero-Mike-Lima down to Mesa for scheduled maintenance. The woman told me that her son and father were out in the desert looking for her son’s pickup truck. He’d parked it somewhere on Sunday before dawn, left it for some coyote hunting, and couldn’t find it in the morning.

One thing led to another. The son and his grandfather showed up at the airport. I gave them a safety briefing and loaded them on board the helicopter. A while later, we were heading out to the triangle of land between routes 89, 93, and 71, just north of Wickenburg.

Normally, I can spot just about anything larger than a washing machine from the air — especially if it’s a color other than desert beige. The truck had a crew cab and was pewter — about as close to desert beige as you can get. But it was a truck. A shiny, four-month-old truck. And that triangle of land isn’t that big.

I started by following the son’s directions to where he thought he’d come in from route 93. No luck. He claimed he’d parked near a corral. There were about a dozen cattle tanks in the area, each with its own bit of fencing that could be considered a corral. We flew over and around each one. Nothing.

I then went into a standard search pattern grid. Back and forth across the desert, moving northeast to southwest. Nothing.

“It must have been stolen,” the son said. “I can’t believe it. I left the windows open a crack. I guess someone must have found it and taken it.”

I found it hard to believe. It’s not as if there are car thieves hanging out in the desert, waiting for a hunter to park a brand new, $38,000 truck and walk away.

But the truck just wasn’t there.

I climbed about 1,000 feet for a final look. The entire area was spread out beneath us. No luck.

I headed back to Wickenburg. I wrote up a statement they could show the police to prove they’d looked hard for the truck. I cut them a good deal on the flight time, feeling sorry for them.

This morning, I called the mom to collect my fee via a credit card. I told her how sorry I was that we hadn’t found the truck. She told me that they’d found it afterward. It was by a hill. She didn’t have all the details.

I got the credit card info and hung up.

I’ve been thinking about it ever since. There was only one hill in that entire area. We circled it and flew all around it. It’s not as if it’s a forest out there, with big trees to hide something the size of a truck. If it were out there, we would have seen it.

Which leaves me to wonder whether he had me looking in the right area after all.

I guess I’ll never know for sure.

Sedona Update

Posted on by
Comment

Good news for pilots flying into Sedona.

I did a Sedona charter today. It was a birthday gift for one of my passengers. His girlfriend had me fly the two of them up to Sedona where they went on a Jeep tour with the Pink Jeep Tour company there. Then I flew them back to Wickenburg.

Both flights were great — smooth and uneventful. I flew the helicopter from Wickenburg to downtown Prescott, then skirted around the south end of Prescott’s airspace over Prescott Valley, crossed over Mingus Mountain at the 89A pass, flew past Jerome, then toured the red rocks north of there all the way into Sedona. Although I expected the flight back to be hot and bumpy, I was very pleased to be wrong. Bumpier and hotter than the trip out — yes. But not too bumpy or hot to enjoy. We flew from Sedona past the south end of Cottonwood, over the tail end of Mingus Mountain, over the weird mountain town of Crown King, and straight into Wickenburg. Total flight time: 1.7 hours.

The good news for pilots flying into Sedona is this:

First, the restaurant, which was supposed to close for good in May (this month) is remaining open. So you can still get breakfast or lunch or dinner on that wonderful shady patio or indoors — with red rock views either way. I had lunch there today while waiting for my passengers and really enjoyed a nice, leisurely meal in the shade, with a cool, comfortably breeze keeping me feeling refreshed.

Second, the terminal now has wireless Internet access. So if you show up with a laptop or other computing device that uses wireless networking, you can hop on the net, do your e-mail, or surf to your heart’s content. That’s a nice thing when you find yourself waiting a few hours for your passengers.

It was a nice day out — the first flight since my surgery — and it felt good to be in the sky again. I had great passengers and I think they really enjoyed themselves.

Sedona is still my favorite charter.

Fan Mail

Posted on by
Comment

Why I find it so embarrassing.

Every once in a while, I get an e-mail message that’s clearly categorizable as fan mail. The messages are usually the same in tone: “I can’t believe how much you’ve accomplished! I try to do some of the things you do and can’t manage to succeed. How do you do it?” The only thing they don’t say is “You’re my idol,” but if you read between the lines sometimes, it’s there.

I’m embarrassed by all this.

I’m a pretty normal person from a pretty average background. Lower middle class parents, not much money in the family. I got my first jobs at age 13: paper route, babysitting, fence painting. Because there weren’t too many things handed to me, I quickly learned that if I wanted something, I had to work to get it. So I did.

(Personally, I think this is why America is doomed. With so many parents handing out things to their kids, kids don’t build healthy work ethics. They’re lazy and unmotivated, concerned more with what they’re wearing than what they’re learning, and someday they’ll be running this country. Hopefully, I’ll be dead by then. But I digress.)

I think the only thing that sets me apart from other people is that I’m driven. I see something I want to achieve and I do what I can to achieve it. I work hard almost all the time. As I finish one project, achieve one goal, I’m thinking of the next.

Back in college, I took a management course where they discussed Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. At the top of the pyramid is Self Actualization, the need that must be filled after all others are filled. The trouble is, if you fulfill the need for self actualization, there’s nothing left. So to remain happy, self actualization must always be growing and changing, like a moving target. That’s the way I understood it back in my late teens. And I think that’s what drives me to this day — the need to always have something different to reach for and achieve. I think you can say that I live for challenges.

But are my achievements that incredible? I don’t think so. I admit that I’m fortunate in that I have a good brain and decent health (although the health thing has been a bit questionable lately), but there’s nothing special about me. I’m not a genius. I don’t live on four hours of sleep a night (I wish!). I’m not rich. I just make the most of what life’s dealt me.

People marvel at my achievements as a writer. I’ve written 60+ books and hundreds of articles since 1992. Do you think that’s because I’m the world’s greatest writer? Of course not! It’s because writers generally don’t make much money, so if you want to earn a living as a writer, you have to produce an awful lot. I learned how to work with editors and publishers to deliver what they wanted when they wanted it. My mind has the ability to take a task and break it down into its most basic steps — this is natural to me and I don’t know why. My writing skills make it easy to communicate the steps of a task to readers — my writing skills come from years of reading and writing. I don’t let ego get in the way of delivering what my editors want. By reliably producing year after year, I got into a position where I didn’t have to look for work anymore. It looked for me. I kept producing. And I still keep producing.

People think it’s incredible that I fly a helicopter. It’s not that incredible. It took me a year and a half of part-time lessons, driving 180 miles round trip each lesson day and thousands of dollars, to build my flight time and to get my private helicopter license. That’s not an achievement — it’s perseverance and the willingness to throw large sums of money at what I thought would be a hobby. If I’d quit doing my other work for a while, I could have completed that training in three months. But you’re not independently wealthy or supported by someone with deep pockets, you have to work before you can play. And, for the record, just about anyone can learn to fly. Helicopters aren’t harder to fly than airplanes, either; they’re just different. Anyone who says they’re harder to learn is using that as an excuse for not really trying. Unfortunately, they are more expensive to learn. And that’s usually the stumbling block that stops people from learning.

You want to achieve something? Go out and do it! Stop making excuses, stop procrastinating, and for God’s sake, stop watching crap on television — the eternal time-waster. Only when you dedicate yourself to your goal, fitting each task of its achievement into your regular work and family schedule, can you make it happen.

If you keep at it, the achievement of one goal will surely lead to the next.

And please, stop embarrassing me with fan mail.

Racing [with] Boats

Posted on by
Comment

What a rush!

My Lake Havasu job on Friday turned out to be two jobs.

I’d been hired by a man based in Oregon who had designed and built a totally custom, stainless steel speedboat. His company, Liquid Technologies, had brought the boat down to Havasu to participate in a big boating event there. It was the second time the boat was in the water and he wanted to get video of the boat out on the lake. He’d hired Todd from Joker’s Wild Promotions to do the camera work.

Todd met me at the airport at 8 AM on Friday. He decided to sit behind me in the helicopter, so we’d both have pretty much the same view. We took just that door off. It was still cool and the last thing I needed was to catch a cold. Then we put on our life jackets and climbed on board.

Todd told me the game plan as I warmed the engine. The boat would be at the cove at the Nautical Inn, just southwest of London Bridge. We’d go there and circle it as it backed out, then follow it slowly through the no wake zone to the open lake. Then the boat would cruise at about 50 knots and we’d fly with it.

He asked how low I could fly. I told him I didn’t know — I hadn’t flown with a boat before. He told me to stick with my comfort level. No problem there — I’d never do anything I wasn’t comfortable with.

We took off and got to the cove within minutes. The boat was about 45 feet long and silver, looking very sleek. It was surrounded by literally dozens of similar boats, most of which had bright paint jobs, just parked along the cove. We circled the cove three times as it backed out, getting lower with each pass. Then we followed it.

The day was perfect for flying. Little or no wind, still cool and comfortable. The lake water was almost mirror smooth. Zero-Mike-Lima seemed to have all the power in the world with just two of us on board, even with close to full tanks of fuel.

The boat had four men in it, each wearing life jackets and headsets. They did their absolute best not to look at us. That turned out to be a pain in the neck later on, when Todd wanted them to speed up and they never saw his hand signals. We followed them down the lake at a good clip and I got closer and lower in gradual steps. After a while, I was about 15 to 20 feet off the top of the lake, 30 feet from the boat, cruising along beside it at 50 to 60 knots.

Todd gave me instructions to position us in relation to the boat. In front, looking back. Behind, looking forward. Above, looking down. Low, looking straight on. I followed his instructions, keeping an eye on the boat and on the lake in front of me. There were only a few boats out there and I didn’t want to overfly any of them at low level, so once or twice I had to shift position to dodge around another boat.

What’s interesting to me about all this is that I didn’t have to give the flying much thought. Both hands and feet just did what they needed to do to get the helicopter where I wanted it to be. I’d expected the work to be challenging and to require a lot of concentration to do. But it wasn’t that difficult at all. I think it’s because of the flying conditions — which were so darn easy — and the power available to me. There’s no way I could have done the job as easily in an R22 with its limited power and two good-sized people on board.

We got down to the pumping station for one of the two reservoirs near the Parker Dam and I saw an unpleasant sight: high tension power line towers. “I think there are wires ahead,” I said to Todd.

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “I forgot to tell you about them.”

Great. “Well, I want to stop before we get to them,” I said.

He assured me that that’s as far as they’d go. I stopped over the water, climbed up a bit, and went into a slow circle about a half mile upriver from the wires. The boat kept going, then turned around and came back to us. Then we started up again, now going upriver. We started getting fancy, coming up behind the boat, passing it, and flying around its front end as it sped by us. A maneuver very similar to one I’d done at a carmaker’s test track for a film crew months before. Todd was very pleased.

We got back to town and they boat turned around again. Todd switched to still photos. He had a professional Canon camera capable of 6 shots per second at 8 megapixels. We followed the boat about 1/4 back down the lake. It turned and came back. More still photos, more video.

Then we were done. We headed back to the airport. The 1.2 hours of Hobbs time had gone quickly.

I asked Todd how I’d done. He said that I was now his current favorite pilot. Unfortunately, he doesn’t want to pay my ferry costs from Wickenburg (1.6 hours round trip), so I don’t know how much work he’ll give me in the future.

We shut down and I closed up the ship. Then we went into town, where he dropped off the video and still photos at his office. One of the guys who works with him, Larry, wasted no time feeding the video into a computer. I got to see some of it. The beginning wasn’t too impressive as I warmed to the task and Todd got used to a new video camera. But then there were a bunch of great sequences. He had over 45 minutes of raw video to go into a 10-minute final video. The still photos were even better. I got to see them on Todd’s computer. He promised to send me a few; maybe I’ll get to show one or more of them off here.

Larry dropped me off at the Nautical Inn, where I met with the client and presented my bill. He was a nice man, excited about the sport and his new boat. He paid me with a check and I left them to find my next client.

Todd had gotten me hooked up with the guys from Extreme Boats magazine. They wanted to get photos of some of the other speedboats as they went downlake for a “lunch run.” So I met with Casey, the magazine publisher, and hitched a ride out to the airport with him and two other guys from the magazine. The other guys left us at the helicopter and a video guy joined us a while later. I took off two doors, stowed them in the video guy’s truck, handed out life vests, and we climbed aboard. A while later, we were on our way back to the cove south of the bridge.

This flight would be significantly different. There were a bunch of boats to shoot and they were all waiting for us. A soon as they caught sight of the helicopter, they took off downlake. Although I was already moving at close to 100 knots, these guys weren’t planning on cruising at only 50. They were race boats and they wanted to race. With a helicopter.

I caught up with our first target boat and dropped down to lake level. I was flying at 90 knots, 20 feet above the water’s surface, and got a real rush out of the experience. Casey snapped away at each boat — his camera could do 8 shots per second at 8 megapixels — then instructed me to chase down the next one. I’d do what I could — some boats were just too fast and too far ahead to catch up with — and then we’d turn around and head back up the lake looking for other boats to shoot.

This was entirely different from the morning’s shoot, which I now considered a training exercise. This was closer to real life race boat photography. The only difference here is that the drivers weren’t in a real race. They wanted the helicopter to take pictures of them. So when they saw me drop back and pick up another target, some of them turned around and chased me down.

To further complicate matters and make it a bit more challenging, it was after noon and the lake was full of boats. Dodging them became a real chore, but overflying them was not an option at that altitude for safety reasons. There was a slight breeze that occasionally sent a ripple of air over the water — just enough to give the helicopter a vertical wiggle. A downdraft — even a slight one — was not something you wanted when you were only 15 feet off the water’s surface.

Meanwhile, the video guy shot some video out the bubble and through his open door. One of his targets was a boat full of girls promoting David Clark products. We were racing along beside them and he was shooting what was probably excellent video when one of the bimbos on board decided to stand up and moon us.

“What the hell is she doing?” one of the guys said.

“We’ll have to edit that out,” the other guy said.

The guys obviously weren’t amused. Sometimes women can be so stupid that I’m embarrased to be one.

We flew around the lake for about an hour, chasing boats, trying to pass them for bow shots, and sometimes succeeding. One of the boats we were supposed to shoot was having engine problems and was dead in the water. They didn’t shoot any pictures or video.

On the way back to the airport, Casey told me about how one of his photographers had taken a swim in an R22. The pilot had been flying so low along the water that he routinely dragged one or both skids along the water surface. The photographer had asked him several times to fly higher, saying that if he wanted photos from that low, he’d be in a boat. The pilot evidently hadn’t gotten the message. On one of his low dips to the water, he dug the skid in too deeply and it caught. The helicopter flipped over and sank. The pilot and photographer were okay, but I wonder whether the pilot learned his lesson.

I don’t think I’d impressed Casey as much as Todd. I like to think that isn’t my fault — that the boat driver’s desire to race with a helicopter — and beat it — had made me look bad. But my helicopter’s never exceed speed with doors off is 100 knots. How can I be expected to catch up with and pass a boat going faster than that?

I settled up with Casey and spent a half hour relaxing in the FBO while the fuel guy topped off my tanks. (There’s still a price war going on at Lake Havasu City Airport and the fuel at Sun Western Flyers is cheaper than in Wickenburg.) It was about 2 PM when I climbed on board and headed home.